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: 

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.  

Cerberus Nuclear Welcomes Graduate Consultants

Cerberus Nuclear is delighted to announce that two more graduate consultants have started with the company this month! 

Prior to joining the company, Andrew Smith successfully completed the NTEC Nuclear Science and Technology Masters. As part of this, Andrew worked with Cerberus Nuclear on his master’s dissertation. His project focused on criticality calculations for a NWS transport package, for which some parameters were varied in order to examine the sensitivity of the multiplication factor. 

Tu Nguyen joins Cerberus Nuclear following the submission of his PhD thesis. Tu’s PhD thesis was on a Research project on Safety, Regulation and Digital Applications for Fusion Powerplants. Prior to his PhD, Tu also completed the PTNR masters course at the University of Birmingham, which has provided him with the background knowledge and nuclear physics and reactor technologies for application in his new role. 

Andrew and Tu have been working on an innovation project since starting with the company. Andrew is joining the criticality safety team, and Tu will be supporting both the shielding and criticality teams in the future. We would like to welcome them both to the company! 

Cerberus Criticality Assessors attend WPC ALARP Workshop

Cerberus Nuclear Criticality Team members, Sarah, Katrina and Haleema, recently engaged in a fantastic ALARP workshop from the Working Party for Criticality (WPC) Continued Professional Development (CPD) catalogue. This workshop was hosted at the Engine Rooms in Birchwood and provided a comprehensive dive into what ALARP means for criticality and how it can best be implemented in practice.

A diverse group of speakers gave their niche expertise, with the additional opportunity to talk through case studies in groups and problem solve issues. This was great in further equipping our team with the knowledge and tools to continue doing great work. A particular favourite was Dave Kirkwood (Sellafield Ltd) talk on “ALARP Considerations within Criticality Emergency Planning”.

We’re really grateful to the event organisers and speakers with additional thanks to the WPC and Deb Hill for organising and facilitating the CPD workshop, providing a collaborative learning environment. A big thank you for such an insightful session! We look forward to integrating the tools we have learnt going forward.

Sarah attends MCNP course at Los Alamos

Our criticality safety assessor Sarah recently went on a trip to Los Alamos, New Mexico. This was not inspired by the latest Oppenheimer film but rather to attend the MCNP Intermediate Training course run by Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL).

During the training, Sarah got to grips with using the MCNP 6 code, building advanced geometries and sources, understanding advanced outputs and was introduced to a selection of variance reduction techniques. She also came back with a few insights to the updates in the latest MCNP 6.3 release. The course was a mixture of lecture and practical content, taught by a variety of MCNP developers from LANL whose expertise and patient instruction was greatly appreciated.

There was also opportunity to discover more about the history of Los Alamos itself, from the Ancestral Pueblo peoples, through Spanish occupation (the name “Los Alamos” means “The Cottonwoods” in Spanish) and homesteaders leading to the eventual requisition of the land in support of the Manhattan Project and the later impact of the Cold War.

Now she’s back, Sarah is looking forward to implementing her learning in support of client projects.

International Conference on Nuclear Criticality Safety

Cerberus Nuclear recently attended the International Conference on Nuclear Criticality Safety (ICNC) in Sendai, Japan. Held every four years, ICNC is an opportunity to learn about new and novel things happening around the world in criticality safety and well as giving those in attendance an opportunity to discuss criticality concepts with their international colleagues. It was also a great opportunity to see some sights in Japan and spend time with our UK colleagues!

Cerberus nuclear were proud to participate in the conference presenting the following papers:

  • ‘Strategic Characterisation to Support the Development of Criticality Safety Assessments for Decommissioning’ by Tom Page and Barrie Greenhalgh.
  • ‘Implementation of CARTA into Criticality Training Programmes’ by Katrina Christaki, Toby Tyas and Stewart Hay.
  • ‘Cyclone – New Features for Criticality Safety Analyses’ by Stewart Hay, Carl Hughes and Peter Taylor.

As the conference was located in Japan, a number of papers were presented detailing the unique criticality challenges of decommissioning the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Cerberus Nuclear joined a technical tour to the former power plant, where decommissioning activities were taking place. We visited the Interim storage Facility for Removed Soil and Waste and the tour ended at the site of the accident with each reactor in a different state of decommissioning.

As well as arranging a variety of interesting paper tracks in the conference itself, the organisers arranged a banquet with authentic Japanese food and entertainment which was very well received!

Cerberus would like to thank the conference organisers on a very successful conference and look forward to the next ICNC that will be held a bit closer to home in Manchester, UK.

While in Japan, Stewart and Tom also attended the British embassy in Tokyo to meet the fantastic nuclear trade team there and discuss potential opportunities with a Japanese company. Subsequently, Cerberus Nuclear have been included in the Buyer's Guide to the UK Nuclear Industry, which has been developed for the Japanese Market by the UK Department for Business and Trade.

NTEC N13 Criticality Safety Management

Cerberus Nuclear recently supported the NTEC N13 Criticality Safety Management module, delivered by Stuart Christie at the University of Manchester. Stewart Hay provided a talk on criticality safety assessment with a focus on real-world experience of delivering criticality safety assessments across the UK.

For Stewart, it was a pleasure to be back involved with a module he undertook as a student back in 2005/6, and one that sparked his interest in criticality safety.

The Nuclear Technology Education Consortium (NTEC) was established in 2005 following extensive consultations with the UK nuclear sector, including industry, regulators, the Ministry of Defence, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, government departments and the Cogent Sector Skills Council. The seven UK universities and higher education institutions in the Consortium provide flexible postgraduate training for the nuclear sector with the breadth and format of the training designed to meet the UK’s projected nuclear skills requirements in decommissioning and clean-up, reactor technology and fusion. Read more about it here.

Photograph of the Schuster Building at the University of Manchester. Credit Mike Peel (www.mikepeel.net)

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. 

"This is harder than learning MCNP"

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! 

Katrina's completed pumpkin

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.