Cerberus Nuclear's Commitment to Environmental Initiatives

In an era where environmental responsibility is a high priority across the world, Cerberus Nuclear is committed to incorporating sustainable practices into its operations. The nuclear industry will play its part in the transition away from fossil fuels, but at Cerberus Nuclear we have acknowledged that we can do more.

In May, we announced that we are members of Ecologi to offset our carbon emissions arising from business travel, and the benefits in place to encourage employees to reduce their emissions. In this article, we provide an update, detailing the charities and initiatives we are currently supporting, and lay down our plans for the future.

Mitigating Carbon Emissions from Business Travel

At the heart of Cerberus Nuclear's current environmental strategy is a robust methodology for calculating carbon emissions for travel. This process begins with the Environmental Impact Travel Log, a tool that captures detailed data on business journey undertaken by our team.

Data Collection: The Travel Log records the mode of transportation, distance travelled, and purpose of each trip. Whether it's a local site visit by car or an international meeting by airplane. This data is crucial in creating a comprehensive picture of our travel-related carbon footprint.

Calculating Emissions: For each mode of transport, we apply specific emission factors to calculate the total CO₂ emissions. These factors are derived from provided references and estimate emissions from different methods of transport i.e. petrol/diesel cars are calculated differently from electric cars or trains, ensuring more accuracy in our assessment.

	Car (Petrol/Diesel) [1]	Car (Electric) [2]	Airplane [3]	Train [4]	Motorbike [5]
g CO₂/km	122.10	40.00	101.00	44.43	130.50
g CO₂/mile	196.50	64.37	162.54	71.50	210.02

Emissions for different modes of Transport.

Offsetting with Ecologi: The key element of our environmental strategy at Cerberus Nuclear is tree planting. By analysing the data from our Travel Log, we calculate the number of trees required to offset our travel emissions. This calculation is based on the understanding that, on average, a tree absorbs about 25 kg of CO₂ each year.

It's important to acknowledge that this figure of 25 kg of CO₂ per year is an average, derived from a range of estimates that vary from 10 kg to 40 kg annually. This variation is expected, as different tree species sequester varying amounts of carbon. We have chosen the middle ground of 25 kg of CO₂ per year as a balanced estimate, our primary goal being to contribute positively to the planet by simply planting more trees.

Each tree we support in planting is expected to continue absorbing carbon throughout its lifetime, which often spans several decades. Therefore, when we plant a tree to with the aim to offset emissions from a specific journey, we're aiming to do more than just counterbalance the carbon emitted during that trip. These trees will consistently absorb CO₂ over their entire lifespan, making a lasting impact.

We believe this method of tree planting is a very effective way to manage the carbon emissions from our travel activities. Ecologi's openness in sharing financial information, climate impact data, and governance details gives us confidence that our contributions towards tree planting are not only impactful but also part of a broader, trustworthy effort to combat climate change.

You can view our impact through Ecologi here.

Supporting Local Initiatives

In addition to offsetting our carbon emissions with Ecologi, Cerberus Nuclear has made a donation to the Cheshire Wildlife Trust. We understand that the impact of society is not just carbon emissions, but also nature. A majority of our employees are based in the Cheshire Wildlife Trust’s operational area, and by supporting them, we are helping to protect the local area for our employees and their families.

The money donated has gone towards the trusts campaign to raise £200,000 pounds to buy and rewild a new 100-acre nature reserve in Cheshire. The company has bought 11 3 m × 3 m squares of land for rewilding, one for every two members of staff. The image on the right is from the Cheshire Wildlife Trust website, detailing how they are contributing to nature recovery.

Reducing our Carbon Footprint

We are aware that the best solution for the environment is to reduce carbon emissions. Cerberus Nuclear has a number of employee benefits with this goal in mind:

Electric Car Lease Scheme - a salary sacrifice scheme available to the whole company. Employees can use the cars for both business and home, reducing their emissions.  
CycleScheme - a salary sacrifice cycle to work scheme with a budget of £10,000. Employees can also purchase electric bikes through this scheme.  
Flexible Work - the company supports employees to work where works best for them. A significant proportion of the company takes advantage of this and work from home for part of the week. This reducing emissions from commuting.

Next Steps

We believe that we should all do as much as we can to protect our planet. As a young SME, we can build our environmental strategy now so that it grows with us. Cerberus Nuclear will continue to develop how it reduces its impact on the planet. We have future aspirations to include emissions from other areas of the business, including emails, cloud storage and virtual meetings. We will continue to offset our recorded carbon emissions, fund local projects, and encourage a reduction in company emissions.

New Starter: Nick Seibt

Cerberus Nuclear is delighted to welcome Nick Seibt to the company as the first new starter of this year's graduate intake. Nick first started working with the company during his dissertation project for his Master’s degree in Nuclear Science and Technology. His project focused on the generation of a data set for use with MCNP to train a machine learning model, used for identification of crack like structures in concrete.

Previously, Nick has worked in Germany, supporting the decommissioning process of various nuclear facilities, including handling and calibration of industry standard measurement equipment and analysis of procured data. Nick is joining our Radiation Shielding Team, and will also be supporting Nuclear Characterisation projects in the near future.

Cerberus Nuclear Knit Pumpkins

At Cerberus Nuclear, we are always looking for new things to do together. Yesterday, we started a new group activity: knitting!

The “Crafternoon” was well attended by those with some knitting experience and beginners. The session was seasonal, with a pumpkin pattern being followed by the group. Our Commercial Manager, Emily, took everyone through the knit and purl stitches and was on hand for troubleshooting and catching dropped stitches with her crochet hook.

There were varying degrees of success, with one pumpkin finished, and a couple abandoned along the way, but the remaining four have been taken home for completion. One person even started working through a beginners guide!

I’m really happy with what everyone achieved on our first crafternoon. Everyone who attended came with an open mind and it was great to spend some time in the office together doing something other than work. Thank you to everyone for making this a fun afternoon, and congratulations to Katrina for completing her pumpkin! - Emily, Crafternoon Organiser

The session was finished with a takeaway ordered to the office. The feedback for crafting was positive, and plans were put in place for a Christmas themed crafternoon in December.

Cerberus Nuclear Delivers Criticality Training to Tradebe Inutec

In addition to criticality safety consultancy services, Cerberus Nuclear has expertise in delivering criticality safety training. Our in-house graduate criticality assessor training (aka “Crit College”) is delivered in line with the Working Party on Criticality guidelines, and our more senior assessors are experience in mentoring our graduate recruits.

We have also developed CARTA, a criticality training aid, available in VR and desktop-based versions. CARTA software is available for purchase and Cerberus Nuclear can provide advice on how to integrate it into your own criticality training programme. In addition, we are able to utilise CARTA when delivering training for our clients.

Recently, our Criticality Safety Lead, Toby Tyas, delivered criticality safety training to the SHEQ department at Tradebe Inutec. The first part of the training was held over Microsoft Teams and focussed on the factors that affect criticality. The second training session was held on site and was centred on the principles of fissile mass control.

Toby used CARTA VR to enhance the training. A strength of CARTA is that it allows people to apply the principles discussed in conventional classroom presentations through exercises within the CARTA simulations. We think this makes for more enjoyable and effective learning. On the day trainees were very positive about CARTA and said that they particularly liked the intuitive nature of the spheres in the MAGIC MERV Scenario. CARTA can also be configured for use in a seated position, so people who might be a little nervous about VR can feel confident enough to take part.

As part of the exercise Toby had placed some error traps along the way, which the team successfully identified and resolved, so full marks! Toby is very grateful for the warm welcome and active participation of everyone who attended the training session.

Sarah represents Cerberus Nuclear on YGN Tour of Urenco

Sarah O’Sullivan recently represented Cerberus Nuclear on a tour of the Urenco Capenhurst site which was organised by the Nuclear Institute Young Generation Network as part of their technical tour series.

The day commenced with an introduction to the functionality of the Capenhurst site followed by presentations from early careers technical staff from Urenco UK, Urenco Chem Plants and Urenco Nuclear Stewardship subsidiaries. These covered the current operations and gave insight to both the history of fuel enrichment operations and future projects.

The latter half of the day consisted of a much-anticipated tour of the largest enrichment plant, following the enrichment process throughout the plant.

The tour was a fantastic opportunity for networking and getting site context for our new starter. Our thanks extend to the YGN and everyone on the Urenco site for their time and effort in organising and facilitating the event.

Cerberus Nuclear would also like to thank Urenco for providing the image for our post.

Mental Health First Aid Training

Emily, Sam and Tom recently attended a Mental Health First Aid in the Workplace training course, delivered by St John Ambulance. The course was based at St John Ambulance in Liverpool, and it covered how to create an awareness of mental health in the workplace, how to spot the signs and symptoms of different mental health conditions, and how to respond to a mental health crisis amongst other things. The course was delivered by Netty, who kept the group engaged throughout and created a relaxed and open environment.

The two-day course included putting the training to the test in practical exercises. The group was split into different roles, with one person being a person requiring first aid, and the other being the first aider. The exercises were intended to give the trainees an opportunity to put their new skills to the test in a real environment, with scenarios ranging from someone who has taken on too much work and is worried they can’t cope, to someone who is experiencing a mental health crisis in the workplace.

Finally the team sat two exams. We are delighted that all three Cerberus team members passed their Level 2 and Level 3 exams, and are now qualified mental health first aiders. We would like to thank St John Ambulance and the amazing Netty for delivering a great course!

Since attending, Emily, Sam and Tom have been planning how to improve the mental health awareness at Cerberus Nuclear, including writing a mental health policy, as well as planning improvements to the Business Management System.

Cerberus Nuclear Host Work Experience Placements

This summer, Cerberus Nuclear has been hosting work experience placements. One of our placement students, Henry, is interested in doing a business degree at university. As part of his experience, Henry has written a blog post about his time with the company:

Over the last year I have been studying business at A-level and the time has come to choose my university options. I am thinking of continuing Business through either Business Management or Business Marketing at University. Work experience is something which I needed in order to prepare and understand where a business degree could take me. Work experience at Cerberus Nuclear has definitely given me a very broad insight into the roles and responsibilities I could be taking on after university and how a company manages and makes use of its business model and system.

I spent 3 days working in the office at Cerberus and had a chance to speak to the employees, see and try out some of the software used by the company, take part in meetings and also help out by completing certain tasks. Talking to different employees was very interesting as they specialise in different roles for the company. I was also present in many meetings, and this was a great opportunity to understand how the team works together, using their different skills to run the company and how they handle various challenges that may arise.

Everyone at Cerberus was really nice helpful and if I ever had any queries they were always happy to help. Dan and Sam demonstrated the software they use for radiation simulations such as Cyclone, OpenMC and MCNP which was really interesting. Katrina and Tom let me experience the CARTA Virtual Reality criticality simulation, which was fantastic and great fun. I had some fantastic training for the business aspect of the company from Emily who was really helpful and also set me up with many tasks and meetings throughout the 3 days which was incredibly useful.

Thank you to everybody at Cerberus Nuclear for giving me an eye-opening and interesting work experience!
- Henry

We also hosted Freddie, who initially learnt how to use CAD software, and following that used Orthrus Software's Cyclone^TM to build MCNP models.

Models produced by Freddie in MCNP Geometry using Cyclone^TM

We would like to thank Henry and Freddie for approaching the company for their work experience, and we wish them all the best for their A-Levels and future careers!

New Starter: Sarah O'Sullivan

We are excited to announce that Sarah O'Sullivan has joined Cerberus Nuclear as a Criticality Safety Consultant. Sarah has two years experience as a nuclear safety consultant supporting waste treatment projects before focussing more specifically on Criticality Safety. More recently she has produced criticality hazard assessments for DSRL and EDF Cyclife along with providing criticality advice for High Active Waste Thermal Treatment concept plants at Sellafield. Prior to this, Sarah completed a PhD in Nuclear Materials Science.

Welcome to the team Sarah, we're delighted that you decided to join us!

Cerberus Nuclear's Inaugural Summer Camping Trip

Cerberus Nuclear went camping over the weekend. A group of 10 employees pitched their tents together at Marbury Camp and Lodge along with their partners, children and fur babies.

The group started the weekend in a relaxed fashion, with a takeaway provided while they made camp. We learnt that the team don’t do things by halves, with most people arriving with 5-person tents and blow up beds for a luxurious camping experience. Some of the group took part in a game of cricket before it was paused after one of the dog fielders refused to give the ball back. The team sat around the fire and enjoyed drinks and s’mores throughout the evening, and an impromptu awards (bottle of wine) ceremony was held for employees nominated by their co-workers for recognition. Congratulations to all those nominated!

Saturday was a fun packed day. The team set off early to Manley Mere to meet Carl, Pete E and Lisa and their families for the Adventure Trial. The walk through the woods included obstacles to climb over, swing over, zipline down and plenty of rustic (Sam powered) rides.

With only minor injuries incurred, the team had a quick lunch before water sports in the afternoon. People were involved in kayaking, canoeing and stand up paddleboarding. Particular mention must be made to little Sam for holding his own on the 6-person stand up paddle board, and to Dan for losing his prescription sunglasses in the middle of the lake.

Little Sam on the Stand Up Paddleboard before the Sunglasses were lost

After a few naps were taken on the trip back to and at the campsite, an enormous BBQ ensued. Well done to Tom, Stew and Oscar for feeding us all, and to Stevie, Cora, Elsie and Seven for resisting the sausages until all the humans had finished eating! The team had a few drinks, played games and chatted late into the night until a thunderstorm encouraged most of them back into their tents.

Thank you to everyone for making it a wonderful weekend!

New Starter: Lisa Shenton

Cerberus Nuclear are delighted to announce that Lisa Shenton has joined the team as a Business Administrator. Her duties include supporting company marketing, finance and bid management arrangements, invoicing, and our Business Management System. As she is undertaking invoicing for the company, clients can expect to see emails from her going forward.

Lisa started with the company in April and is already making a massive difference to the team. We would like to wish her a very belated but warm welcome!