EU Including: Countering Radiological and Nuclear Threats with Innovative Learning Objectives

In 2016, 143 occurrences involving nuclear or other hazardous materials were discovered to be outside of regulatory control in 19 countries. The release of CBRNE materials, deliberate or by accident, is a low probability event with a potentially significant impact on society. The European Union (EU) has tasked the INCLUDING project consortium, connecting 15 partners from 10 EU Member States, to address this issue and create an innovative cluster for addressing the training in case of radiological and nuclear (RN) emergencies. INCLUDING will provide comprehensive training in the RN security sector, focusing on the role of first responders. An important part in this endeavor is the development of radiological- and nuclear training learning objectives. For this purpose, partners have analyzed 5 EU HORIZON 2020- and 9 EU FP7-SECURITY projects, and 97 RN training courses offered to the international community by NATO, EU organisations, US military- and civilian agencies, Qatar, and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). This report presents these results, which are being used to develop the basic structure for the Learning Objective Catalogue (LOC), applicable in different threat scenarios. Also, the practical application of the LOC is demonstrated in Joint Actions (field tests and table-top exercises) implemented in Finland, France, Greece and Italy. This includes the deployment of unmanned aerial vehicles and unmanned ground vehicles, as well as the use of virtual reality, network of automated spectrometric detectors deployed on public transit, and 3D modelling.