The officers of the Texas A&M University student chapter of the Institute of Nuclear Materials Management (INMM) and faculty from the Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station's (TEES) Nuclear Security Science and Policy Institute (NSSPI) led participants in a table-top exercise focusing on the practical applications of nuclear security at facilities during the 2015 American Nuclear Society (ANS) Student Conference held at Texas A&M.
The Nuclear Security Initiative (NSI) is an exercise designed by the faculty at NSSPI to be very similar to the exercises used by technical and public policy officials to simulate security and protection systems for nuclear facilities around the world. For many this was their first exposure to this sort of analysis. The session was sponsored by Los Alamos National Laboratory.
The exercise was moderated by Dr. William Charlton, NSSPI director and Texas A&M professor of nuclear engineering, and familiarized students with the basic concepts governing physical protection systems including the design and evaluation of a system to defeat outsider threats. Students were asked to recognize vulnerabilities in a security system implemented in a mock nuclear facility and to find ways to bolster the system against different types of security threats. Teams of participants were confronted with a specific nuclear security risk and then tasked with mapping the various pathways an adversary could use to reach the vital nuclear materials. The teams then considered the impact on security due to collusion of an outsider with an insider threat. Lastly, they developed strategies that could be employed to mitigate the impact of insider threats.
Students who participated in the activity came from universities across the United States, with representation from the University of Tennessee, the University of Wisconsin, Georgia Tech University, the University of New Mexico, and North Carolina State University, among others.
"Overall, the participating students felt this exercise was very informative and helpful,"said Meyappan Subbaiah, Texas A&M INMM student chapter officer. "Most students were extremely surprised by the ubiquitous use of physical protection systems in today's society,"