Cerberus Nuclear are delighted to announce that John has recently joined the company. John has two years’ experience working on the UKAEA STEP Programme. During this time, he has gained experience with CSG- and CAD-based neutronics calculations, and methods of automated data analysis using Python scripting. Alongside his neutronics experience, John has extensively contributed to software development and to the open-source Monte Carlo code OpenMC.
John is looking to build upon his fusion knowledge in radiation shielding. He is attending mentoring sessions with the other new starters, lead by experience team members, to build upon his current expertise. John is also using his Python skills to support our innovation projects.
Graduate Starters
Cerberus Nuclear are proud to announce that two graduate consultants have recently joined the company. Henry Faulkner and Jacob Westerman have recently completed the NTEC (Nuclear Technology and Education Consortium) Nuclear Science and Technology Masters. They completed their Summer Placements with Cerberus and have since started full time.
Henry gained extensive experience using MCNP to model fissile arrays of barrels containing separated plutonium waste with differing compositions during his summer project. He analysed results using machine learning methods in Python to predict the safest possible arrangement of units. Henry is looking to build upon his knowledge and academic experience in both the shielding and criticality safety teams. In addition to his consultancy work, he is attending shielding and criticality mentoring sessions lead by our experienced team members in line with industry standards.
Jacob’s summer project included criticality calculations on three distinct fissile systems including a random and uniform heterogeneous system with immiscible liquids. He developed software using Python to generate all MCNP input files. This allowed for quick changes to be made and a range of properties investigated such as enrichment, particulate size and material, volume fraction and moderator material. Jacob is also attending shielding mentoring sessions lead by experienced members of the shielding team in order to further his career as a shielding consultant.
Since starting with the company, both Jacob and Henry have attended the company First Aid training course with St John’s Ambulance, and PHITS training run by JAEA to further develop their shielding skills.
Emergency First Aid Training at Work
Cerberus Nuclear recently took part in ‘Emergency First Aid Training at Work’, delivered by St John Ambulance.
Julie (St John Ambulance) delivered an informative and engaging course with lots of interaction from team. The course is aimed at first aiders in small, low risk working environments, like ours, and teaches basic life saving first aid skills including CPR, bleeding, choking adults, use of defibrillators, and health & safety regulation.
In recognition of the flexible way in which we work, we decided it would be best for everyone to undertake the training so as not to be reliant on ‘nominated first aiders’. This was the first time (almost) all of the company were together since before the pandemic and provided an opportunity for the recent new starters to meet everyone (more news on this soon!). The fact that we were also able to go for a meal afterwards was a bonus.
Following on from the training, we have made improvements to our office first aid kit and fitted a defibrillator in our Birchwood Park office. The feedback from the course was very positive and we would recommend it to other organisations.
Cerberus Nuclear at the World Nuclear Exhibition in Paris
The WNE is the world's largest exhibition dedicated to nuclear energy, and the first platform dedicated to the global civil nuclear community. The three day event combines business meetings, guided tours, workshops, debates and panel discussions. This year's event theme is "the nuclear industry, a key partner for a low carbon society in a responsible future".
Our booth is in the Start Up Planet, a dedicated exhibition space for about 20 new companies in the nuclear field which has been specially designed to optimise product demonstrations, pitches, networking and new encounters. In addition to our exhibition booth, we have also been entered into the WNE Innovation Awards for the Radiation Protection Training Aid (RAPTA).
This year, the WNE Awards Ceremony will take place at 5pm on 30th November. There will be two prizes for each of the four innovation categories - Nuclear Safety, Operational Excellence, Products & Services, and Skills & Knowledge Management.
The end of September was dissertation deadline time for our three NTEC summer students. This was our busiest year to date, welcoming three students from the University of Manchester.
NTEC (Nuclear Technology Education Consortium) offer a postgraduate-level masters degree in Nuclear Science and Technology, which is delivered in both directly taught and distance learning formats. Students produce a dissertation over the summer, often involving support of industry partners like Cerberus Nuclear.
This year, students worked on projects involving modelling of arrays in criticality safety, analytical methods for radiation shielding and machine learning optimisation.
All of our students successfully completed their projects and we wait in anticipation for their results!
As part of the latest update to the Sellafield opportunities guidance, Cerberus Nuclear has been featured within its SME action plan. The SME action plan reaffirms Sellafield's commitment to increase opportunities for SMEs within the supply chain recognising the adaptability, innovation and value that SMEs bring to help Sellafield deliver its mission.
As a public contracting authority Sellafield Ltd are committed to delivering activities which increase the opportunities for SMEs (small to medium enterprises) to do business with the supply chain. Sellafield have a target to spend 32 - 33% of supply chain spend with SMEs in 2021/22.
To learn more about ANDI and our latest developments combining computer vision with 360 video go to ANDI360.
Nuclear Institute - Dynamic Dose Rates
As part of Cerberus Nuclear’s Radiation Protection Training Aid (RAPTA) continued development work has been performed regarding the visualisation of dynamic radiation systems.
A dynamic radiation system is where radiation sources can move or change properties in 3D space either during a task or a facility operation. Cerberus Nuclear have developed in-house software to process these complex systems and simulate dynamic radiation scenarios within reasonable timescales.
Sam Hilton will be presenting at the North West Nuclear Institute talking about the advantages of accurately modelling dynamic radiation systems and how this can improve the accuracy of dose uptake assessments. The event is on 16th June, is free to attend, registration can be found at:
As part of our ongoing commitment to cyber security, Cerberus Nuclear are pleased to announce the renewal of our Cyber Essentials Plus certification.
Cyber Essentials is a Government-backed and industry-supported scheme that helps businesses protect themselves against the growing threat of cyber attacks and provides a clear statement of the basic controls organisations should have in place to protect them.
The Cyber Essentials Plus certification involves a more rigorous test of a companies IT systems where cyber security experts carry out vulnerability and penetration tests to make sure an organisation is protected.
Our Cyber Essentials Plus certification provides additional confidence to all our clients regarding our approach to data security.
ANDI: 360 Tracking
This is our latest post regarding our software ANDI (Automated Nuclear Damage Inspection) and incorporating identification capability with 360 video data.
The 360 camera sector has advanced significantly over the past few years, camera resolution and image quality has improved greatly as well as advancements in software processing to provide multiple different ways of viewing the captured images and video. Cerberus Nuclear has been keeping up to date with latest developments with an aim of using this technology in the nuclear sector.
Cerberus recently developed ANDI (Automated Nuclear Damage Inspection) for Sellafield Ltd. The software automatically identifies key areas of damage from inspection videos and is currently being used by Sellafield to accelerate damage inspection tasks. The software is built into a user-friendly interface and supports the creation of reports and logging of key identified features.
Building upon our knowledge we are currently testing the use of 360 camera and video data with our custom computer vision algorithms, including ANDI. Some key advantages of using 360 data for automated damage inspection is that the orientation of the inspection camera is no longer a factor as images capture the full 360 degrees.
Similar technology is currently being used in autonomous vehicles for object identification and distance determination.
Footage obtained from a Cerberus Nuclear test car.
Our preliminary testing has proved to be very successful and we have overcome some of the challenges inherent in working directly with 360 data sets. The prototype software we have created demonstrates the capability of combining both 360 image technology with our bespoke computer vision algorithms.
Our goal is to continue the development of ANDI so this highly useful and innovative technology can be put to good use solving a wide range of challenges in the nuclear sector and beyond.
Look out for future updates, if you would like to learn more don't hesitate to get in touch at nuclear@cerberusnuclear.com.
STEM Ambassadors is a government-run scheme that brings together a range of people from a range of disciplines and backgrounds, including engineers, designers, architects, scientists and technicians. They help bring a new and inspiring perspective to STEM lessons and career opportunities.
STEM Ambassadors is a government-run scheme that brings together a range of people from a range of disciplines and backgrounds, including engineers, designers, architects, scientists and technicians. They help bring a new and inspiring perspective to STEM lessons and career opportunities.
It is a flexible programme where teachers can get in touch with STEM ambassadors for their own individual needs.
I signed up to become a STEM ambassador with support from Cerberus with the goal to inspire more young people from all backgrounds to engage with STEM subjects.
Becoming a STEM ambassador during the COVID-19 pandemic has been a unique challenge as going into schools physically has not been an option. Everything has been done virtually which has given me the opportunity to engage with schools further afield, no longer having the travel considerations.
Instead of going to schools, I have had many meaningful conversations with teachers about my career path and how to inspire children to engage with their classes. I have been discussing what I do day-to-day so they can feed it back to their students and put some of the lessons into perspective. As a student at secondary school, I learnt about nuclear power plants but had no idea of the associated jobs and whether I would be interested in doing the activities day-to-day. In such an uncertain time, having context surrounding students’ virtual lessons has been key to their engagement.
As things begin to open up again, I look forward to doing more in-person volunteering and running my own events. I would especially like to help run an after-school science club with exciting experiments that there is no time for within the curriculum and attend in-person career fairs.
"We're delighted that Katrina has identified such a worthwhile role, it sits really well alongside our structured criticality training programme. She makes a great role model for students and the company fully supports her continued participation."
