How to arrange a big nuclear security exercise

Full text: Sweden held a big transport exercise with spent nuclear fuel out on the Baltic Sea with lots of stakeholders involved, like authorities, private companies and organizations. Everything was also covered by international observers/experts invited by IAEA. Me as the exercise director will discuss how an exercise that big, with more than 300 persons involved from several authorities and private companies, can be managed. Learn from my story, I will give some example of good practice and of areas that could be improved. Do's and Don'ts will also be discussed. The first thing is to have the mandate to do the exercise. This mandate has to be given from highest possible level and needs to be crystal clear about your limitations. It will take a lot of hard work to arrange the exercise lots of obstacles to pass but with these commitments you will have a great help when prioritizing is needed and when you discuss the budget for the exercise e.g. The same goes for the time planned for all involved. It will take time and having these commitments will make your life as an exercise director easier. The goals/objectives should be set early and then communicated to all involved to have your participants/exercise staff working as a team in one direction. Follow-up agreed actions and milestones and make sure that nothing is left behind or forgotten. Report on a regular basis to your highest level, keep them up-dated. Do plan for your evaluation early. It is even allowed to make the exercise in a way so you can simplify your evaluation. Maybe you have a specific method you like to measure, if possible make adjustment of the exercise or the exercise program to give you a better way of checking if you meet that specific goal. Remember to sell your message, use media. This will also be a preventive action for adversaries showing the whole world how good security you have. While arranging big exercise there will be room for lots of smaller exercises under the umbrella of the big one. Give all the participating authorities and organizations this opportunity to train their specific needs. Details that adds extra values to the persons exercised and details that also will help to lift an exercise and make it meaningful for all participants. Put some extra time in to write the exercise guide with help from all involved. The guide will be your number one document for the whole exercise. Make the scenarios credible by testing it on some of the participating experts in advance. Chose those that seem most likely to occur in the future or test some scenarios that already happened in the past. This session will also discuss how an exercise organization could be organized. (author)