Exercises in the field of security

In the aftermath of September 11 th attacks, the French government required by an order that large scale exercises, in the field of security in sensitive sectors, must be performed at the national level. The main aim of such exercises is to test national contingency plans. The Authority in charge of security for nuclear materials and nuclear facilities commissioned IRSN to build scenarios related to the French Design Basis Threat - D.B.T.- and representative of realistic situations. All the entities involved in such a crisis – operators, state agencies at local and national levels – are implied. The main characteristic of these exercises is the duality between “safety crisis” whose management of emergency plans has been tested for years and the classic “security crisis” well known by security people in areas like bank, jail, madmen, hostage crisis, etc. Merging these two aspects in an exercise and combining theft or sabotage of nuclear materials and hostage crisis in the same scenario, involves a lot of people and entities and identifies specific challenges. The objective of this paper is to present briefly the different types of exercises performed in the field of security and to develop some aspects of large scale exercises.