UKAEA Fusion - STEP Reactor Shielding Design

Cerberus Nuclear and Assystem have been selected to deliver the STEP Reactor In-board Shield Design as part of the STEP Engineering Framework.

Cerberus’s neutronics and radiation transport expertise will play a key role working alongside Assystem’s well-established fusion experience in thermal and mechanical analysis.

The project concerns the extreme environment within the central column of the STEP fusion reactor where temperatures can range from over 100 million of degrees Celsius within the plasma to less than -200 degrees within just a few metres.

Tokamak Reactor MCNP® Geometry, produced using Cyclone™ Viewer by Orthrus Software.
Example Plasma Source & Neutron Interaction Cross Section used in Neutronics Calculations.

Cerberus Nuclear and Assystem are working closely with the STEP research team at UKAEA to develop radiation shielding and cooling strategies within the in-board shield section of the central column. The overall aim is to protect the sensitive toroidal magnets within the central column that work to contain the high temperature plasma. Cerberus role involves optimisation of the shielding to maximise the operational lifetime of these crucial reactor components. Using our knowledge and expertise in neutronics transport as well as interaction cross sections will be simulating a wide variety of arrangements to support continued development.

The delivery of this project is key in advancing the STEP fusion reactor design to the next phase, moving us closer to achieving a commercially viable fusion power plant.

“We are pleased to be working alongside Cerberus Nuclear on this key aspect of STEP. Collectively we will pool the engineering and design expertise, and specialist knowledge needed to ensure success in this project.

“Assystem is a well-established fusion engineering company working on multiple international projects, and we are invested in the UK’s ambition to accelerate progress in the development of this game-changing technology.”

Gary Reed, Transitional Energy Business Manager, Assystem

In its 13 countries of operation, Assystem’s 6,000+ experts are supporting energy transition. To achieve an affordable low-carbon energy supply, Assystem is committed to the development of decarbonised electricity (nuclear, renewables and electricity grids) and clean hydrogen. The Group is also helping drive the use of decarbonised electricity in industrial sectors such as transportation. Assystem is currently ranked as the second nuclear engineering group in the world.

"Cerberus is very proud to be contributing to such a noteworthy project with worldwide importance.

“The skills and experience we have in-house regarding radiation shielding is uniquely suited to support the project. Working closely with our colleagues at Assystem we look forward to the challenge of what will be a highly significant and exciting project.”

Daniel Cork, Director, Cerberus Nuclear

Cerberus Nuclear is an SME dedicated to radiation shielding, criticality safety and nuclear characterisation. Founded in 2016 we have grown rapidly to establish ourselves as an industry leader with a reputation for innovation and promoting good practice.

Our team has supported a wide range of projects within the civil nuclear, fusion, medical, research and defence sectors. Our mission is to “to provide high quality technical solutions with an emphasis on creativity and innovation. We achieve this by being an exemplary employer of talented individuals”

Featured image of STEP courtesy of UKAEA. Example tokamak reactor was based upon ITER Project Paper (2020) and Paramak ITER 2020 reactor model.

University of Birmingham Industry Lecture

Cerberus Nuclear has recently provided support to the University of Birmingham’s nuclear post-graduate masters courses. Geoff Hall and Katrina Christaki presented a lecture to students of the PTNR (Physics and Technology of Nuclear Reactors) and NDWM (Nuclear Decommissioning and Waste Management) courses as part of an ongoing industry lecture series. 

They gave an introduction to radiation shielding and criticality safety assessment in industry which was supported by case studies on the innovative projects that have been carried out by the Cerberus team over the past 12 months.

In particular, dynamic source movement assessment techniques were described and the benefits for use in radiation transport assessment were of focus, as well as a worked example of a dynamic waste package loading and transfer process within a facility with changing dose rate contours displayed live as package movements take place.

Worked Example of Dynamic Box Loading and Transfer

Cerberus's criticality training aid, CARTA, was also presented. CARTA is a brand new innovative tool that uses machine learning to calculate k-eff in real time for the purposes of operator training. CARTA is currently in development supported by NNL, AWE and Sellafield Ltd as part of the Alpha Resilience Capability. An early desktop version of CARTA was demonstrated to students providing an insight into the fundamental principles of criticality safety.

CARTA: Glovebox in VR, Tōkai-mura criticality simulation 

The lecture was well received by the students and provided an excellent demonstration of the unique and innovative work that individuals joining the team can look forward to getting involved with.

Cerberus supports summer placements from the NTEC (Nuclear Technology Education Consortium) postgraduate-level masters degree course, and we look forward to doing the same for the University of Birmingham later this year.

OpenMC Fusion Technology Course

Cerberus Nuclear recently provided OpenMC support to the Fusion CDT course at the University of York. As part of the course the students attend a week-long fusion technology module to learn about all aspects fusion including reactor technology, plasma physics and neutronics modelling. The week concluded with a workshop on the open-source neutronics transport code OpenMC. 

The OpenMC workshop was run by John Billingsley (Cerberus Nuclear) and Jon Shimwell (Firstlight Fusion). Together they presented a course on OpenMC teaching fusion neutronic transport analysis as well as providing the students with valuable insights from their industry experience. 

The students covered the use of Paramak for fusion reactor parametric geometry creation.

The workshop was aimed at beginners covering a wide range of topics including transport theory, running neutronic simulations, understanding material cross-sections, creating simulation geometries, scoring tallies, source definitions plus many more. 

The course was very well attended with students from master's to PhD level looking to gain industry experience and knowledge related to the exciting and rapidly developing field of nuclear fusion.

"After delivering the workshop remotely in 2021, it was great to be back at University of York. The workshop was a great success, with students developing from having little or no neutronics knowledge at all, to having a fundamental understanding of neutronics and its application, and being able to perform a variety of studies using OpenMC.

Many thanks to Prof. Bruce Lipschultz for inviting us back."

John Billingsley, Cerberus Nuclear

To find out more check out the links to OpenMC and University of York Fusion CDT.

Images: docs.openmc.org & paramak.readthedocs.io

Shielding School

Cerberus Nuclear have recruited a number of graduate and early career staff over the last three years, including three new members of the radiation shielding team in September and October last year.

In order to train and maintain SQEP shielding assessors, our very own Peter Evans has been running "Shielding School", which consists of structured training and mentoring sessions to support advanced and early career members of the team along side their project work.

"It is essential that shielding assessors have the background knowledge to put their work into context, and are aware of the strengths and weaknesses of each of the tools available to them." - Peter Evans, Principal Shielding Consultant

The sessions are a mixture of lectures and demonstrations, and the attendees are encouraged to interact presenting challenges and lessons learnt each week. Each part of the Shielding Design Process is covered in detail, highlighting the input, calculations and output requirements for each step.  "Homework" tasks for the attendees are set so that everyone has a chance to put the training into practice. This mix of theory and practical training is developing our graduate recruits into well rounded shielding assessors.

"Cerberus's shielding training is ace! It provides a wealth of insight into shielding techniques and best practises all within a friendly and interesting course." - Sam Hilton, attendee

"The feedback we have received within the company has been extremely positive. Having dedicated time within the business for the shielding team to come together, share knowledge and good practice is essential in achieving high standards for our clients. The time and effort put into the course is recognised by all the directors, well done Pete.” - Daniel Cork, Director  

NTEC Shielding Design Process Lecture

The UK Shielding Forum (TSF) provides support for the Radiation Shielding Module of the University of Liverpool’s NTEC course, providing an industry focused knowledge input to the module.

Several TSF member organisations provide lectures on a wide range of subjects, from Monte Carlo and deterministic codes to practical radiation shielding applications.

As a key member of TSF, Cerberus Nuclear provides a student lecture on the Shielding Design Process. Our talk focuses on how this high-level process is used in industry to supporting facility design.

Due to ongoing COVID-19 restrictions, our own Geoff Hall pre-recorded the lecture for the second year running, which was shown to students and very well received. Geoff then followed up the lecture with a live Q&A session where students were tasked to think about the practicalities of defining a shielding design basis and performing shielding calculations based on that design basis for a realistic scenario. They were then given the chance to ask general questions about the subjects covered in the lecture.

"The Radiation Shielding course has greatly benefited from input provided by professional experts from the shielding community. Geoff Hall recorded a lecture on the shielding design process and provided a follow up live structured Question and Answer session. These sessions were extremely well received by the students and provide an excellent insight into the professional skills required for shielding design." - Andy Boston, Course Lead.

The live session was well attended by students, who engaged with the exercise and asked a variety of pertinent questions both about the exercise and the lecture itself.

"Cerberus Nuclear has a long association supporting the NTEC course. It's great to see new people passionate about working in the industry and we hope that our involvement further encourages the students to take up a career in the nuclear sector." - Daniel Cork, Director

UK Working Party on Criticality, November 2021

Cerberus Nuclear attended the second Working Party on Criticality (WPC) meeting of the year, taking place as a web-conference.

Stewart Hay attended as our representative with graduate, Katrina Christaki, attending as an observer for the first time. As the meeting was held online, it was a good opportunity for Katrina to progress her professional development gaining insight to the range of issues considered by the WPC and its sub-groups as well as how they interact with licenced sites.

There were discussions surrounding criticality resources and training with and improvements that could be made in the future. We also gave an update on our Alpha Resilience Capability (ARC) Programme funded project, CARTA.

The next WPC will be the 100th meeting, expected to take place around May 2022. It is hoped that this may take place in-person once again.

ISO Accreditation

We have been working hard to implement our Business Management System (BMS). The system provides the policies, processes, procedures and records of forms/templates for consistent management of the business, projects and personnel with regards to Quality, Environment and Health and Safety. At the heart of this system are our Quality, Environmental and Occupational Health and Safety Policies.

The impact of the BMS can already be seen. The entire company was recently first aid trained, and we have been using Microsoft Forms for recording communication and training sessions, such as the mentoring sessions lead by experienced assessors for our new starters.

In August our BMS was audited by the British Assessment Bureau. We are excited to announce that, as a result of this external audit, we are now UKAS accredited for ISO Standards 9001 (Quality Management), 14001 (Environmental Management) and 45001 (Occupational Health and Safety)!

You can verify the validity of our ISO certificates by entering our certificate numbers (229161, 230299, 230300) via this link: www.british-assessment.co.uk/verify

New Starter - John Billingsley

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.