Revolutionising 3D Dose Rate Visualisation

Radiation Safety and Efficient Delivery

The nuclear industry is faced with the challenge of ensuring radiation safety and efficient delivery while dealing with the complexities of designing and operating nuclear facilities. In this context, dose rate visualisation plays a vital role in evaluating and visualising radiation sources and their impact on the surrounding environment. This information is crucial in making informed decisions to maintain a safe working environment for the workforce and the general public.

However, traditional methods for dose rate visualisation often result in bottlenecks and inefficiencies in the workflow. To address these issues, Cerberus Nuclear is committed to revolutionising the field by developing cutting-edge tools that simplify the production of 3D dose rate contour visualisation. This approach will allow our radiation shielding assessors to perform accurate assessments quickly and effectively, leading to better outcomes for our clients.

At Cerberus Nuclear, we understand the importance of dose rate visualisation and are dedicated to providing innovative solutions that address the challenges faced by our clients. Our goal is to streamline the process and make it easier to visualise dose rates in real-world applications, thereby improving the overall safety and efficiency of delivery.

Cyclone: Streamline your Radiation and Criticality Workflows

Orthrus Software, a subsidiary of Cerberus Nuclear, introduces Cyclone ^TM, a modern and intuitive web-based software suite aimed at simplifying Monte Carlo workflows. This powerful tool is specifically designed for radiation and criticality problems and offers a range of features to help you visualise and analyse your data with ease.

Interactive 3D Renders of MCNP Geometry: Cyclone allows you to visualise your model geometries in 3D, giving you a clear understanding of your data.
In-built Text Editor with Syntax Highlighting: The text editor in Cyclone includes syntax highlighting to make it easier to read and write your code.
Customisable Visualisation of Cell and Material Assignments: Visualise cell and material assignments in Cyclone with customisable colours, making it easy to differentiate between different elements of your model.
Custom Geometry Slicing and Cell Toggling: Cyclone allows you to slice your geometry and toggle cells, giving you the flexibility to focus on specific parts of your model.
Powerful Dose Visualisation Capabilities: In addition to its advanced geometry visualisation features, Cyclone also offers powerful integrated dose visualisation capabilities from FMESH tally results files, including 2D slice contour visualisation, 3D iso-surface visualisation, and 3D contour extrapolation to surfaces.

Cyclone has already been deployed across a wide range of dose-uptake assessments and has revolutionised the workflows of our in-house radiation assessors. With Cyclone, you can combine 3D MCNP geometry and dose rate contours with ease, enhancing your capabilities and improving your outcomes. For more information and instant sign up check out orthrussoftware.com.

Dynamic Radiation Assessments using Dose Time

Dose Time ^TM focuses on revolutionising dose visualisation in the nuclear industry. It uses novel interpolation methods for the calculation and visualisation of dynamic 2D and 3D dose rate contour maps, providing an effective tool for visualising and calculating dose uptake in a variety of radiation scenarios.

Tackle Moving Source Challenges: The need to tackle the significant challenge of assessing moving sources, where the computational demands of modelling such scenarios can be extremely high. With efficient mesh tally interpolation methods, Dose Time enables the rapid calculation of 3D dose fields, eliminating the need for additional simulations.
Efficient Survey of Design Spaces: With its rapid approximation of dose rate contours, Dose Time allows shielding assessors to efficiently survey entire design spaces and identify regions of interest without the need for numerous Monte-Carlo calculations.
Live Dose Target Tracking: Dose Time is looking to enhance its capabilities via the integration of live dose target tracking, enabling the calculation of cumulative dose uptake in dynamic radiation environments.
VR Technology for Live Dose Rate Visualisation: In the future, Dose Time plans to leverage virtual reality (VR) technology for live dose rate contour visualisation. This will provide a more interactive experience, allowing for the simulation of real-world scenarios and providing valuable insights to assessors, operators and other key stakeholders.

Let us transform how radiation assessments are performed with Dose Time and experience the benefits of efficient and effective dose rate visualisation.

If you're interested in learning more about 3D dose rate visualisation, or if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to get in touch at nuclear@cerberusnuclear.com. Our team is always ready to assist and provide the right solution for your needs.

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

ANDI: Sellafield Success Story

Cerberus Nuclear's ANDI (Automated Nuclear Damage Inspection) has been featured as a Sellafield Ltd success story.

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 find out more about how to do business with Sellafield go to https://www.gov.uk/guidance/how-to-do-business-with-sellafield-ltd

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:

NWNI Webinar Register - https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_YhBFB8E6QHO267kLetdNhA

Cyber Essentials Plus

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.

New Starter - Emily McManus

We’re pleased to announce that Emily has recently joined Cerberus Nuclear as an experienced shielding assessor. As part of her role she will also be involved in business development and management tasks for the company to support our expanding team.

Emily has 6 years’ experience in radiation shielding and dose assessments. Until recently she was a SQEP 3 assessor for Sellafield Ltd and has worked on a range of decommissioning and new build projects supporting safety, engineering and design teams. Highly proficient in radiation transport codes such as MCNP, MCBEND and RANKERN, she and has produced key documents in line with the Shielding Design Process including Shielding Design Basis, Classification of Areas, Bulk Shielding, Detailed Design as well as CID Placement Assessments.

Hobbies and interests wise she is big a fan of Fleetwood Mac and loves dogs, she has a Working Cocker Spaniel called "Stevie" named after Stevie Nicks.

Return to the Office

We have rearranged our office to be in-line with social distancing guidelines.

With most of the team still working from home we decided to re-purpose the space into a fully featured virtual reality suite. This enables us to take a big leap forward in our capability and we should have some exciting news on this front in the coming weeks!

The picture shows Sam getting to grips with an analogue of a JCS gamma dose rate monitor.

A big thank you to John Caunt Scientific for allowing us to use the monitor.

46th Shielding Forum Meeting

Cerberus Nuclear hosted the 46th Shielding Forum meeting online this week. An online format was chosen due to the recent travel and meeting restrictions due to the COVID19 outbreak.

Attendees from EDF Energy, Edvance, BAES, Cavendish Nuclear, Orano Projects, Kinectrics, UKAEA, Rolls Royce, Jacobs, SRP and ONR were there and the meeting spanned several different countries including United States, Canada and France.

Daniel Cork (TSF Chair)

A big thank you to all attendees of TSF46, online engagement from members far exceeded expectations and we would just like to thank everyone for their contributions during the meeting."

One of the key topic discussed was the proposed 2021 Shielding Awareness Course in which Cerberus Nuclear will be playing a key role. The course will be a collaboration between TSF and the Society of Radiological Protection (SRP).

The next TSF members meeting is currently due to be held in November 2020 at the ANSWERS Seminar. Further details will be found closer to the event at https://www.shieldingforum.com/