Video gaming comes to nuclear security

LOS ALAMOS, N.M. (KRQE) - Some staff at Los Alamos National Laboratory is getting paid to play video games.

However, these video games, actually designed by lab artists and engineers, are helping to solve some critical, real-world problems.

At a computer in one of the many office buildings at the lab, you can play the role of an inspector examining a nuclear facility in a not-so-friendly country. Thanks to 3-D virtual reality, some borrowed from the video gaming industry, LANL can put you in a virtual facsimile of the nuclear facility, and you can practice before you go.

You can weigh containers and take sensor readings along the way.

“They may do, for instance, a sodium iodide inspection, and so this provides them with the spectrum that they would actually see,” says animation developer Adam Watkins. “And they can start to find out if the virtual operator of this plant is actually doing what they said they were going to be doing.”

LANL Research and Development Engineer Kelly Michel says the 3-D training allows lots of practice.

“So they can rehearse and rehearse and rehearse and develop their inspector and detective skills right there at their desk,” she said.

In modern commercial video games, designers try to engage most of the human sense--including sight, hearing and touch--to fully connect each person to the virtual world.

And each time a gamer travels into the virtual world, the experience and the outcome are different.

LANL designers say that variability is also a critical element in their 3-D training.

“So that it's never the same thing twice,” Michel says. “And they have to be on their toes and cognitively, mentally engaged.”

The LANL visualization team is also creating other 3-D worlds for training in a wide variety of emergency response and science scenarios.

They are also helping the Nuclear Regulatory Commission develop 3-D virtual reality training aids for workers at nuclear power plants.