The National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) took part in a field training exercise earlier this month with the U.S. Agency for International Development’s (USAID) Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) to test the agencies’ response to radiological or nuclear incidents.
If an international nuclear incident were to occur, NNSA and the OFDA Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART) could deploy to overwhelmed countries to provide humanitarian assistance, disaster relief, and radiological expertise.
The recent field training exercise, called “Concrete Shield,” was held in Virginia. It featured a simulated natural disaster and nuclear incident scenario.
“NNSA’s consequence management experts would join the DART and provide atmospheric dispersion modeling, environmental monitoring and sampling, dose assessment, worker safety, and technical advice and recommendations,” Dan Blumenthal, manager of NNSA’s consequence management program, said. “Our deployed experts at the incident site would request additional reachback support from NNSA national laboratories.”
Concrete Shield is part of an ongoing series of training exercises. Future exercises will deploy to international locations to give team members a more realistic training environment.
“The exercise was an overwhelming success,” Steve Musolino, an NNSA radiological assistance program team scientist and DART asset project manager, said. “Role-playing added a dimension of realism to the exercise that allowed our in-field and home teams to employ a comprehensive technical and strategic response effort.”