{"id":571548,"date":"2010-05-19T16:54:12","date_gmt":"2010-05-19T20:54:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.utk.edu\/tntoday\/?p=20873"},"modified":"2010-05-19T16:54:12","modified_gmt":"2010-05-19T20:54:12","slug":"ut-and-y-12-team-up-for-nuclear-engineering-class-project","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/571548","title":{"rendered":"UT and Y-12 Team-Up for Nuclear Engineering Class Project"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>KNOXVILLE &#8212; Here is the scenario: weapons-grade uranium is being secretly stored inside Pasqua Hall, the engineering building on the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, campus by the fictional government of Elbonia, and a terrorist organization is trying to get it and blow it up.<\/p>\n<p>Those are the hypothetical terms of, nuclear engineering professor and Governor&#8217;s Chair, Dr. Howard Hall&#8217;s class project, pitting one half of class against the other.<\/p>\n<div id=\"mp4:Y-12_Howard_Hall\" style=\"display:block;width:480px;height:295px;\" class=\"flowplayer\"><\/div>\n<p>\t\t  <script type=\"text\/javascript\">flowplayer(\"mp4:Y-12_Howard_Hall\",\"http:\/\/www.utk.edu\/tntoday\/wp-content\/plugins\/utk-flowplayer\/flowplayer\/flowplayer-3.1.4.swf\", {playlist: [{    url: \"http:\/\/www.utk.edu\/tntoday\/images\/Y-12_Howard_Hall_splash.jpg\",    scaling: \"fit\"}, {\t\t\n\t\t\turl: \"mp4:Y-12_Howard_Hall\",\n            captionUrl: \"http:\/\/www.utk.edu\/tntoday\/media\/Y-12_Howard_Hall.xml\",\n\t\t\tprovider: \"rtmp\",\n\t\t\tautoPlay: false } ],\n\t\t  plugins: {captions: {\n            url: \"http:\/\/www.utk.edu\/tntoday\/wp-content\/plugins\/utk-flowplayer\/\/flowplayer\/flowplayer.captions-3.1.4.swf\", \n\t\t\t\/\/ pointer to a content plugin (see below)\n            captionTarget: \"content\"\n        },\n\t\t    content: {\n            url:\"http:\/\/www.utk.edu\/tntoday\/wp-content\/plugins\/utk-flowplayer\/\/flowplayer\/flowplayer.content.swf\",\n            bottom: 25,\n            width: \"90%\",\n            height:\"15%\",\n            backgroundColor: \"transparent\",\n            backgroundGradient: \"low\",\n            borderRadius: 4,\n            border: 0,\n\t\t\tdisplay: \"none\", \n            style: {\n                \"body\": {\n                fontSize: \"16pt\",\n                fontFamily: \"_sans,Arial\",\n                textAlign: \"center\",\n                color: \"#000000\"\n                }\n            }\n        },rtmp: {\n\t\t\t\t\turl:\"http:\/\/www.utk.edu\/tntoday\/wp-content\/plugins\/utk-flowplayer\/\/flowplayer\/flowplayer.rtmp-3.1.3.swf\",\n\t\t\t\t\tnetConnectionUrl: \"rtmp:\/\/fms1.ites.utk.edu\/utk\"\n        }\n    }\n});\n<\/script><\/p>\n<p>The blue team&#8217;s goal is to protect the uranium. The team members have devised a multi-tiered strategy to secure the dangerous material.<\/p>\n<p>The red team is the bad guys. The team&#8217;s goal is to infiltrate the facility and detonate the material. Their tactics include an induced riot, food poisoning and sneaking in through steam tunnels.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;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,&#8221; Dr. Hall said.<\/p>\n<p>The class played out the scenario in the form of a tabletop exercise using a 3-D model of Pasqua Hall to allow for more realistic movement. The model removes a lot of the simulations or &#8220;playisms&#8221; commonly associated with these types of exercises.<\/p>\n<p>The exercise took place at the Y-12 National Security Complex, a real-life weapons-grade uranium storage and processing facility in Oak Ridge.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The fact that they can come here, do the exercise, see the highly-enriched uranium nuclear facility, it really brings home the reality and importance of this,&#8221; Dr. Hall said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It gives an extra sense of realism that you aren\u2019t just sitting in a classroom where you have done everything else for the course,&#8221; said Dave Dixon, a first-year nuclear engineering PhD student.<\/p>\n<p>In the exercise, the two teams are separated. In one room, they strategize and debate what to do next. In the other, they make their move.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We didn\u2019t know what the defenses were and how to infiltrate. It is like chess. We move in anticipation that they are going to react in a certain way,&#8221; said nuclear engineering senior Jeremy Townsend.<\/p>\n<p>The approach to the exercise is the same used by Y-12 to train nuclear security personnel all over the world.<\/p>\n<p>Moves are made inside the Pasqua Hall model and dice are rolled to see who gets shot and with which weapon.<\/p>\n<p>This exercise even included a mole &#8212; a traitor on the inside of the blue team.<\/p>\n<p>All the while, Hall and nuclear security experts from Y12 watched and analyzed the teams&#8217; responses.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It\u2019s a great liaison for us,&#8221; said Justin Kesterson with Y12&#8217;s national security training and analysis programs. &#8220;It gives us the opportunity to meet with folks who we will probably be working with in the near future and probably be working for.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Y-12 personnel not only were involved in the facilitation of the table top exercise, but also in the development of both blue and red team strategies.\u00a0Periodically throughout the semester, Y-12 Physical Protection Experts from the National Security Analysis and Training Program would meet with class participants and field questions regarding the application of protection strategies learned during the course.<\/p>\n<p>This is the first time Y-12 and UT Knoxville have collaborated in nuclear security education and Dr. Hall is committed to making sure it won&#8217;t be the last.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We are going to continue to partner,&#8221; Dr. Hall said. &#8220;We are going to continue to find new ways to bring the real world experiences and real world facilities like Y-12 into the academic mission.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>After four hours of attacks and counterattacks, the red team won, obtaining not just the uranium, but most likely, a good grade in the class.<\/p>\n<p><strong>C O N T A C T :<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Whitney Holmes (865-235-3302, wholmes7@utk.edu)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>KNOXVILLE &#8212; Here is the scenario: weapons-grade uranium is being secretly stored inside Pasqua Hall, the engineering building on the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, campus 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&#8217;s [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7128,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-571548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7128"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=571548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/571548\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=571548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=571548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=571548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}