The Texas A&M Engineering Experiment Station (TEES) Nuclear Security Science and Policy Institute (NSSPI) collaborated with the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) to coordinate two events in Brazil between November 3 and November 11. Both events were sponsored by the U.S. Department of State’s Partnership for Nuclear Security (PNS) and provided opportunities for NSSPI to interact with Brazilian professionals and students, respectively, and to provide outreach and training to these groups on the issue of nuclear security. Dr. Craig Marianno, NSSPI deputy director and Texas A&M University assistant professor of nuclear engineering, and Mr. Claudio Gariazzo, NSSPI research engineer, traveled to Brazil to represent NSSPI at these events.
The first event was a two-day workforce development workshop on nuclear security led by NSSPI and UFRJ for employees at the Eletronuclear Angra Nuclear Power Plant (Angra NPP) in Angra dos Reis, Brazil. Twenty-eight Eletronuclear employees participated in the workshop, ranging from administrators to security and safety personnel. The workshop consisted of lectures and exercises on the integration of safety and security as well as insider threat analysis.
The second event was the second annual Nuclear Security Week event on the UFRJ campus for undergraduate and graduate-level nuclear engineering students. NSSPI organized the first Nuclear Security Week at UFRJ in October of 2015, and the event’s success motivated UFRJ faculty to repeat the event in 2016 to include topics not covered in the original Nuclear Security Week. This year’s event focused specifically on security culture, cyber-security, transportation security, and security system design and involved course instructors from NSSPI, the University of Brandenburg, King’s College London, the University of Sao Paulo, Eletronuclear, and the Brazilian Nuclear Energy Commission. The subject matter experts presented lectures on Brazilian security regulations, transportation security, cyber security, consequence analysis, nuclear forensics, security culture, and insider threat analysis, and students had the opportunity to enhance their conceptual knowledge through two practical exercises. Gariazzo also lectured on the World Institute for Nuclear Security and the Institute of Nuclear Materials Management (INMM), and UFRJ students gave presentations on the university’s Young Generation of Nuclear Professionals group and the UFRJ Student INMM Chapter and its activities. At the end of Nuclear Security Week, all participants were given the opportunity to visit the Angra NPP.
