(music)
Here is the scenario: Weapons-grade uranium is being secretly stored inside Pasqua Hall
by the fictional government of Elbonia and a terrorist organization is trying to get it, and blow it up.
Those are the hypothetical terms of, nuclear engineering professor and Governor's Chair, Dr. Howard Hall's class project
pitting one half of class against another.
The blue team's goal is to protect the uranium. They've devised a multi tiered strategy to secure the dangerous material.
The red team is the bad guys. Their goal is to infiltrate the facility and detonate the material.
Their tactics include an induced riot, food poisoning, and sneaking in through steam tunnels.
What the students are learning here today is a real practical exercise in
putting together a system, or really it is a system of systems,
to keep that material out of the hands of the bad guys.
The class played out the scenario in the form of a tabletop exercise using a model of Pasqua Hall.
The exercise took place at the Y12 National Security Complex
a real life weapons grade uranium storage and processing facility in Oak Ridge.
The fact that they can come here, do the exercise,
see the HEUNF, although you could only see it from the outside,
it really brings home the reality of this and the importance of this.
It gives an extra sense of realism that you aren't just sitting in a classroom somewhere, where you have done everything else for the course.
In the exercise, the two teams are separate in one room, they strategize and what to do next.
In the other, they make their move.
We didn't know what the defenses were and how to infiltrate. So you basically,
It is like chess. We move in anticipation that they are going to react this way.
The approach to the exercise is the same used by Y-12 to train nuclear security personnel all over the world.
Moves are made using figurines and dice is rolled to determine who gets shot and with which weapon.
In this exercise, there is even a mole, a traitor on the inside of the blue team.
They really thought that I was safe and trustworthy but the whole time I was delivering all the information from all of our meetings straight to the red team.
All the while, Hall and nuclear security experts from Y12 watched and analyzed the teams' responses.
It's a great liaison for us. It gives us the opportunity to meet with folks who we will probably be working with,
and in the near future and probably be working for.
This is the first time Y12 and UT Knoxville have collaborated in nuclear security education
and Dr. Hall is committed to making sure, it won't be the last.
We are going to continue to partner. We are going to continue to find new ways to bring the real world experiences
and real world facilities like Y12 into the academic mission.
After 4 hours of attacks and counterattacks,
the red team won, obtaining not just the uranium, but most likely a good grade in the class.