We are delighted to welcome Elliot Hughes to the Cerberus Nuclear team!
Elliot has joined us after over four years working in consultancy in the nuclear industry. He began his career working on projects to support EDF UK stations maintain and optimise their systems. Desiring to put his physics degree to use he moved internally with his previous employer where he gained experience in transient analysis, fault studies, and the MONK criticality code – with which he authored a criticality safety assessment for the transport of spent nuclear fuel.
Elliot is looking forward to deepening his criticality experience and developing with Cerberus Nuclear. Welcome to the team Elliot!
How Far Is it from Chicago to Boston?
Well... That Depends How You Measure It
“What on earth is a Smoot?” was the question John and I found ourselves pondering in Boston, standing on Harvard bridge on our way to MIT.
This unit of measure became the perfect metaphor for the distance travelled on our epic journey across America promoting Cyclone Sage - our new AI assistant integrated into Cyclone (Orthrus Software) designed to support nuclear engineering and fusion workflows. It was a trip full of amazing experiences, with some serious science folded in too.
One Smoot, as it turns out, is precisely the length of MIT student Oliver Smoot (5 ft 7 inches), who repeatedly lay down end-to-end across the Harvard Bridge in 1958, creating one of academia’s most eccentric units. The bridge is exactly 364.4 Smoots long, plus or minus one ear.
ANS Conference – Cyclone Sage and Deep-Dish Pizza
Distance Travelled: 17.5 miles / 18,480 Smoots (O’Hare Airport to downtown Chicago)
We began our journey in Chicago at the American Nuclear Society (ANS) conference where we caught up with lots of familiar faces. Here, we introduced our AI assistant, Cyclone Sage, designed to streamline the creation of input decks for MCNP. Sage garnered significant interest and thoughtful discussion, and it was great to see enthusiasm for an AI solution carefully tailored to meet the needs of the nuclear sector.
Aside from the conference, Chicago itself was a brilliant city. We marvelled at the city’s skyline, took in views along the iconic Chicago River, and tackled the legendary deep-dish pizza. Let’s just say we hit a delicious but formidable “cheese wall” at Labriola restaurant, a battle both John and I lost.
Argonne National Lab – High Energy Research and Reactor History
Distance Travelled: 24.5 miles / 25,872 Smoots (Chicago to Argonne)
Upon leaving Chicago, we toured Argonne National Laboratory, an epicentre of nuclear history and cutting-edge research. Here, we glimpsed the remarkable Advanced Photon Source - an immense high-energy X-ray facility where researchers worldwide collaborate on groundbreaking science.
A highlight of the tour was the chance to touch a graphite block from the historic Chicago Pile 1 - the world’s first nuclear reactor. Additionally, we learned a great deal about Argonne’s pioneering work in science, including sodium-cooled reactor technology and exascale computing.
Road Trip Begins – The Open Road
Distance Travelled: 210 miles / 221,760 Smoots (Argonne to Holiday City)
Check out the decals...and always get the damage waiver!
For the next stage of our journey, our trusty GMC Sierra V8 pickup truck carried us eastward on the I90. Despite being absolutely massive, it was surprising easy to drive and powered us comfortably along, towering above almost everything in sight. Arriving late at a rather quirky hotel, we had a brief but memorable pitstop, with our sights set firmly on reaching the stunning spectacle of Niagara Falls the next day.
Cleveland to Niagara – Rock & Roll, Harleys, and brief trip to Canada
Distance Travelled: 359 miles / 379,104 Smoots (Holiday City to Buffalo via Cleveland & Niagara)
Our next stop brought us to Cleveland’s Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, which pays tribute to iconic bands like The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and even… Def Leppard. With eardrums still intact, we found a playlist with 100s of hall of fame hits which got us through the many miles of driving. As we continued our journey, we visited a very cool Harley-Davidson dealership, where we had to resist swapping the trusty pickup for two hogs.
Arriving at Niagara Falls was amazing, especially after hearing enthusiastic reviews from people we’d chatted with at ANS. They suggested we cross the Rainbow Bridge into Canada for the best views, and they weren’t wrong. Fortunately, the border officials let us back into the States after buying quite a lot of maple syrup.
Finger Lakes to Springfield – Nature, Baseball and Some American Culture
Distance Travelled: 240 miles / 253,440 Smoots (Buffalo, NY to Springfield, NY, via Montezuma, Skaneateles, and Cooperstown)
Leaving the interstate we drove through the tranquil Finger Lakes region, stopping at Montezuma Wildlife Refuge where a huge eagle statue stands on the roadside. Birdwatching with binoculars from Nuclear Talent Scout exhibiting at ANS was great - thanks for freebie, they were put to good use!
Continuing our drive, we made a memorable stop in the lakeside town of Skaneateles, enjoying much needed coffee and pastries. The locals found it quite amusing when we said “cheers” after receiving our coffees as apparently this doesn’t quite translate in the USA (along with other phrases like: “we need to get a wriggle on” and: “that’ll take donkeys years”). The town was distinctly upmarket with lots of American flags, the same with all the towns we drove through. It was quite a sight.
Cooperstown guided us through the history of baseball, revealing how it united communities across the states. We unfortunately missed attending a ball game in Chicago due to heavy rain, but there’s always next time! Springfield offered us some excellent German cuisine from a local recommendation, reminding us how cultural influences are very broad across America.
The Last Leg–Battleship Cove and on to Boston
Distance Travelled: 154 miles / 162,624 Smoots (Springfield, MA, to Boston via Battleship Cove in Fall River)
Battleship Cove near Boston gave us a look into maritime history, exploring the USS Massachusetts and USS Swordfish, a humbling reminder of the bravery of people during WW2. Experiencing the confined spaces and harsh conditions onboard made us appreciate just how tough life must have been for the people who spent months at sea. We then departed to Boston. After 4 days of travelling, we were both tired but there was no time to waste! We were straight into the SOFE conference the very next day.
Symposium on Fusion Engineering (SOFE)2025
In Boston, our focus turned to fusion energy at the Symposium on Fusion Engineering (SOFE), where we were warmly welcomed by familiar faces. All of the fusion industry leaders were present, UK Industrial Fusion Solutions (UKIFS), Commonwealth Fusion Systems, Tokamak Energy, and Proxima Fusion, just to name a few. A highlight was a bespoke tour given by Rémi Delaporte-Mathurin (MIT) who showed us around the cutting-edge LIBRA tritium breeding experiment. We expressed our thanks with a limited-edition Cerberus Nuclear mug and Yorkshire Tea, essential provisions for any fusion scientist.
Our poster session promoting Cyclone and Cyclone Sage for fusion neutronics analysis was very well attended. The level of engagement was fantastic; both John and I nearly lost our voices from the sheer number of people we spoke to.
Visiting Commonwealth Fusion Systems’s SPARC was genuinely impressive. The rapid progress made has only heightened our excitement for fusion energy’s potential. Lookout from them in 2027 when its due to be turned on.
Thank you CFSProvided by CFS (Commonwealth Fusion Systems)
It's a long way from Chicago to Boston
Of course, we couldn’t leave Boston without visiting where Smoot’s story began, it turns out I’m slightly taller than one Smoot! Most visitors who walk across the Harvard bridge rarely notice the marks that are repainted every year, making it a fascinating hidden piece of MIT knowledge.
So how far is it from Chicago to Boston? Well, it's about 1005 miles, or 1,061,280 smoots +- 1 ear, and probably quite a bit more if you include how many steps we did! With that, our journey across the USA came to a close.
After all this it’s easy to forget that this whole adventure was about Cyclone and Cyclone Sage. So if you’re curious what Orthrus Software are up to, drop them an email (support@orthrussoftware.com) or check out orthrussoftware.com.
Cerberus Attend SRP Annual Conference 2025
Cerberus Nuclear had a fantastic time attending the Society for Radiological Protection (SRP) Annual Conference 2025! The event was hosted over three days at Connexin Live, Hull and was a great success!
This was our first year exhibiting at the event so we brought reinforcements! Andrew, Haleema, Hannah, Sam, and Zac all attended the event so we had plenty of opportunities to attend all of the presentations we wanted to while still having enough people to man our stand.
The exhibition space was a great opportunity to demo Cyclone and CARTA! Providing attendees with a hands on experience of our MCNP visualisation suite and our criticality safety training tools.
There were some great presentations at this years conference, including a short but sweet affiliated organisation presentation from Zac on behalf of the company! It was especially rewarding to hear praise about work Cerberus has done from the perspective of our clients in various presentations across the conference.
The highlight of the SRP Annual Conference 2025 was the annual dinner. It was an amazing opportunity to celebrate all of the work done across the SRP and to build excitement for the 7th European IRPA Congress in Liverpool next year!
In celebration of the 7th European IRPA Congress in Liverpool, the SRP ran a competition for the best affiliate organisation link to Liverpool, which we won!
Our connection to Liverpool is the Jacob Billington Trust (JBT), a charity based in Merseyside for which one of our shielding assessors acts as the treasurer. Last year, two members of our team completed a charity bike ride, where they pedalled over 200 miles from Southport to Hornsea to raise money for the JBT!
A big thank you goes out to the organisers of the SRP Annual Conference 2025! It was an amazing time and we can't wait to attend more SRP events in the future!
Workshop on the Role of Innovation in the Nuclear Back-End
Cerberus Nuclear had the opportunity to attend the Workshop on the Role of Innovation in the Nuclear Back-End, jointly organised by the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) and Sellafield Ltd. Thomas Scone and Tom Page sat in on the various talks that ranged from the current accomplishments of robotics within nuclear environments around the world to the emerging potential of artificial intelligence to support various ongoing decommissioning challenges.
With representatives from across Europe and further afield, including China, South Korea, Canada and the US, the workshop showed the benefits of learning from the global nuclear industry. Looking forwards, Cerberus Nuclear is keen to keep an eye on further innovative work in different countries and will continue to seek new opportunities for our own expertise and technologies to find use wherever it may be best used.
John Billingsley Elected Secretary of The Shielding Forum
Cerberus Nuclear has been a regular participant in The Shielding Forum (TSF), which brings together radiation shielding professionals from the UK and internationally to share ideas, discuss developments, and support best practice in the field.
TSF plays a key role in promoting good practice in radiation shielding and supporting the UK’s continued development as a centre of excellence in radiation protection. It provides a platform for discussing shielding-related matters, shaping industry best practices, and encouraging collaboration across organisations. TSF also helps address regulatory developments collectively, promotes consistent shielding design approaches, and supports the next generation of professionals through training, engagement, and knowledge sharing.
Cerberus Nuclear has been actively involved in TSF for several years. At recent meetings, we have presented work on the development of Cyclone Sage, a cutting-edge AI assistant for generating MCNP input files; advancements in Cyclone, developed in collaboration with Orthrus Software; as well as development work into the accurate modelling of criticality sources for a variety of applications.
At the most recent TSF meeting, members voted to elect a new committee, and we’re pleased to share that John Billingsley, from our radiation shielding team, was elected as the new Secretary. He will be working alongside Liz Holland as Chair, Joe Scott as Vice Chair, and Craig Williams as Treasurer. We’re proud to see John taking on this role and look forward to continuing our support for TSF and its work within the shielding community.
OpenMC Internal Training
Last week, John Billingsley from our Radiation Shielding team ran a full-day internal training session on OpenMC - a Monte Carlo particle transport code used for simulating neutron and photon transport.
OpenMC is a community-developed, open-source code that has gained popularity for its flexibility, active development, and integration with Python. It is widely adopted in the fusion energy sector, where its ability to perform high-fidelity simulations makes it a valuable tool for design and analysis. Increasingly, OpenMC is also being adopted in other areas of the nuclear industry as interest in modern, open-source tools continues to grow.
The training was well attended by members of both the shielding and criticality teams and was structured as a mix of short lectures and hands-on exercises. John introduced the main concepts of building models with OpenMC, including using its Python API to define geometries and materials, set up source terms, and run transport simulations. Attendees had the chance to follow along with practical examples and try building their own models themselves throughout the day.
The informal workshop format encouraged plenty of discussion, and it was a great opportunity for colleagues to explore how OpenMC might be applied in future projects. It was also a valuable chance for Cerberus to build upon our existing experience and expand our capabilities in the use of modern Monte Carlo transport codes.
Thanks to John for putting together such an informative and engaging session and for helping more of the team get familiar with OpenMC.
OSSFE Conference 2025
Last week, our shielding consultant, John Billingsley, had the opportunity to attend the Open Source Software for Fusion Energy (OSSFE) Conference – a first-of-its-kind event dedicated to advancing the development of open-source tools within the fusion energy community. The conference brought together researchers, developers, and enthusiasts from around the world to share exciting open source developments designed to accelerate progress in one of the most complex scientific challenges of all time.
Throughout the day, there was a wide range of engaging sessions and discussions, including technical talks, poster presentations, software demos, Q&A panel sessions, and informal meetups. Researchers presented on a broad range of topics including plasma physics, neutronics, tritium transport, and materials science, and showcased new tools in practical software tutorials.
The event was hosted through Gather in fully customized virtual platform which had been designed to replicate a real-world conference space. This wasn’t something we’d used before and was an interesting new environment to explore. You could navigate the space just like a real conference – dropping into rooms where presentations where happening or using proximity chat to strike up conversations with other attendees as you “walked” past. It brought a surprisingly authentic feel to an online event.
A huge thank you to the organising committee - Rémi Delaporte-Mathurin, James Dark, Jonathan Shimwell, Nick Murphy, Patrick Shriwise, Samuele Meschini, Ethan Peterson, and Julien Hillairet – for putting together such a well-organised and engaging event. We are looking forward to attending again in 2026.
Cerberus Nuclear returned to the University of Birmingham to deliver an industrial lecture for the Physics and Technology of Nuclear Reactors (PTNR) masters course. Katrina, Toby, and Zac are all alumni of the PTNR course and were excited to return to campus for this presentation.
Katrina opened the presentation, introducing the students to Cerberus Nuclear and the work we do in radiation shielding, criticality safety, as well as nuclear characterisation and innovation.
Zac then discussed radiation shielding in more detail, talking to the students about the different areas of the shielding design process, the importance of these areas, and examples of how an assessment is carried out for each of these areas. The radiation shielding section of the presentation was capped off with a discussion of shielding verification techniques.
Toby delivered the criticality safety section of the lecture, engaging the students with quickfire questions about the factors affecting criticality. He also discussed his experience working as a criticality safety assessor, and introduced the students to criticality safety training resources including CARTA, Cerberus Nuclear's VR criticality training tool.
Katrina closed the presentation with a discussion of career opportunities in the nuclear industry, shining a spotlight on the Working Party on Criticality (WPC) and The Shielding Forum (TSF). It was a fantastic day and was great to catch up with Professor Paul Norman and meet the new cohort of PTNR students.
We would like to thank Paul for inviting us back and wish the current PTNR cohort the best of luck in the future!
HAWTT Team wins NDA Collaboration Award
Following on from the recent NDA supply chain event, we are proud to share that the Higher Activity Waste Thermal Treatment Team (HAWTT) were announced as the winners of the award for 'best example of delivering excellence through collaboration'! Cerberus Nuclear alongside NTS and NWS colleagues have been providing criticality expertise to the programme as part of a wider team composed of RED Engineering, Sellafield Ltd, Cavendish Nuclear, Tetronics, NNL and AtkinsRéalis.
Our congratulations to everyone on the project whose hard work has been recognised in this achievement!
We would like to recognise Sarah, Dan and Tom for their ongoing support on this project for Cerberus Nuclear (with extra thanks for Tom for kindly taking time away from a busy and successful supply chain event to represent Cerberus Nuclear at the receipt of the award).
Cerberus Nuclear at Ignite Space
Last week Cerberus Nuclear attended the Ignite Space event for the first time with an eye to better understanding the vast array of work that goes into the UK Space sector and what opportunities that provides. Thomas Scone, one of our recent consultant hires, visited on the Thursday of the event and had the opportunity to sit in on many interesting talks including a keynote from Prof Suzie Imber and a panel discussion on cross sector collaboration.
Cerberus Nuclear is developing innovative approaches to nuclear safety which work in tandem and take best advantage of well-established shielding and criticality methodologies. As the space industry continues to grow, so to will the necessity of cross sector collaboration. As Thomas heard mentioned more than once at the event, everything we do here on Earth will one day need to be done in space if we are to live there. With the potential use of nuclear power sources and engines, as well as the dangers of solar radiation to long term space exploration, there will certainly be a role for nuclear safety.
In addition to looking into what services Cerberus may be able to provide, there was discussion of what capabilities the space sector may provide in turn. Earth Observation satellites provide massive amount of data about the world we live in and are used for everything from identifying leaks in water networks to identifying unnamed mountains in South America (an interesting side project of the previously mentioned Suzi Imber who is also a keen mountaineer!). With Cerberus’ capabilities in processing and applying ML method to large data sets, we look forward to seeing where our next innovation projects may lead.
