Y-12 Complex offers military radiation detection training

Y-12 Complex offers military radiation detection training

By ERICA ESTEP
6 News Anchor/Reporter

OAK RIDGE (WATE) -- Some National Guardsmen are getting hands-on training to deal with terrorist attacks and detecting radioactive material, such as in dirty bombs.

It's training offered nowhere else in the world, but at Y-12.

A group of Ohio National Guardsmen were training at the Y-12 facility on Friday to detect radioactive material in a terrorist attack scenario.

"They're trying to determine if material is present for a dirty bomb in this vehicle, as well as if one has been detonated," explains Y-12 Nuclear and Radiological Field Training Center Program manager Derrick Dameron during the drill.  

In the training exercises, real radioactive material, in safe quantities, is used, Dameron says.

He says access to uranium, for training purposes, is something you can't find anywhere else in the world.

6 News was also given access Friday inside training facility like no other. The building has been converted from a former nuclear research facility used during the Manhattan Project to a hands- on training center.

Military personnel from around the country train there. A variety of rooms are set up in scenarios such as a dirty bomb lab, an office that's been fire bombed or stumbling onto an uranium packaging operation.

They're preparing for the worst case scenario, while hoping for the best. 

Congressman Zack Wamp took a tour of the facility and watched the demonstrations Friday.

"It's a little creepy to be honest with you because the business that they're in is something you don't ever want to see them have to do," Wamp says. 

"But at the same time, you want to know with confidence that somebody has been trained to do this in the event of a radiation event in our country," Wamp adds. 

Congressman Wamp adds that there aren't enough forces in the U.S. trained to deal with a dirty bomb threat and says he'd like to see military from every state training at Y-12.