Nuclear, Radiological Advisory Team Conducts Advanced Training at Sea


Members of the National Nuclear Security Administration's Nuclear/Radiological Advisory Team conducted advanced maritime training aboard the motor vessel Maersk Detroit while it was on a recent voyage.

 

NRAT is a deployable team of experts that provides critical scientific and technical advice to domestic and international partners in response to a nuclear or radiological threat.

 

Aboard Maersk Detroit, a medium-sized cargo vessel with a capacity of 6,300 Twenty-foot Equivalent Unit containers, the team honed and expanded their advanced shipboard operational skillset. During the voyage, the Maersk Detroit was fully loaded with commercial cargo as it sailed from Savannah, Georgia, to Houston.

 

Over the last 20 years, NRAT has developed and refined specialized tactics, techniques and procedures to better locate and identify radioactive material on container ships.

 

“Combining those tactics, techniques, and procedures with specialized tools and detection instrumentation, NRAT has become the most capable entity in the world for handling this type of operation” said Lonnie Swindell, program manager for NNSA’s Office of Nuclear Incident Response. “At the same time, the team was able to address the challenges and complexities of radiological detection on a large vessel while at sea.” 

 

NRAT, a unit of NNSA’s Office of Nuclear Incident Response, maintains a cadre of highly trained deployable radiological and nuclear experts on-call and ready to solve challenging technical problems. It is one of NNSA’s premier emergency response capabilities in support of the government’s counterterrorism community.

 

The NRAT unit that participated in this exercise was composed of scientists, engineers and technicians from Joint Base Andrews near Washington, D.C., and Nellis Air Force Base in Las Vegas.