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:
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."
Stewart Hay, Director
Cerberus Receives ARC Funding to Develop Criticality Safety VR Training Software
Cerberus Nuclear is a hub for innovation in criticality safety and radiation shielding and we are pleased to announce that we have made a successful application for funding from the UK’s Alpha Resilience and Capability (ARC) programme. ARC was created by BEIS (Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy) to ensure that the UK retains its world-leading alpha capabilities: from operations and maintenance, to high-end R&D and design. This cross-industry consortium includes the National Nuclear Laboratory, Sellafield Limited, AWE and ONR.
Over the last two years Cerberus Nuclear has developed CARTA, a concept for criticality safety VR (Virtual Reality) training software, which we successfully presented at ICNC2019. Uniquely, CARTA uses a machine learning algorithm to predict k-effective 'on the fly' for a given system, such as an alpha facility glovebox. When coupled to a VR headset, CARTA gives users an immersive experience of the facility environment and the effect of their actions on the system’s reactivity.
The ARC funding will support the next phase of development, to refine the concept into a software package for members of the ARC consortium to use. CARTA will deliver tangible benefits directly to operators on plant, criticality safety specialists and other stakeholders in criticality safety. The software package will use a variety of scenarios in desktop and VR environments, to provide intuitive user interfaces. The underpinning data will be based on accurate modelling of the neutron physics, providing a realistic environment for trainees to improve their understanding of the complexities associated with criticality safety.
The specifics of the training scenarios will be guided by a Technical Steering Committee, comprising stakeholders from the various ARC member organisations. This will ensure that the training scenarios are relevant and can be effectively integrated into their existing training programmes.
We are now actively seeking organisations that would benefit from bespoke criticality safety training scenarios. If you would like to discuss your idea, please get in touch using nuclear@cerberusnuclear.com.
University of Liverpool – NTEC Shielding Design Process Lecture
The UK Shielding Forum (TSF) has provided support for the Radiation Shielding Module of the University of Liverpool’s NTEC course for many years, providing an industry focused knowledge input to the radiation shielding module.
Several TSF member organisations provide lectures on a wide range of subjects, from Monte Carlo and deterministic codes to practical radiation shielding applications.
Cerberus Nuclear is key member of TSF and 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.
This year, due to the restrictions of Covid-19, our own Geoff Hall pre-recorded the lecture, which was shown to students and very well received. This was then followed up the next day by 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 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. Indeed, the session proved so popular that it ran an additional 30 minutes until the start of the next session!
WPC Meeting - November 2020
Cerberus Nuclear attended the second Working Party on Criticality (WPC) meeting of the year, and the second to take place as a web-conference.
This was the first meeting since Toby Tyas was confirmed as our new representative, alongside Stewart Hay. We presented Eddy, our new open source HTML output generator for MCNP and SCALE. Toby discussed our recent funding application to the Alpha Resilience Capability (ARC) Programme, in support of the development of CARTA, and continued his contribution to the ‘Handbooks’ sub-group.
We’re looking forward to a point in time when the meetings can take place in person again, but thank you to Springfields Fuels Limited (Westinghouse Electric Company) for hosting the virtual event.
47th Shielding Forum Meeting
Cerberus Nuclear hosted the 47th Shielding Forum meeting online this week. It had been hoped that the meeting would be held as part of the ANSWERS Seminar as usual; however, due to ongoing restrictions associated with COVID19 an online format was once again chosen, with the experience of hosting the previous meeting online making for a smoother and more involved process.
Attendees from Cerberus Nuclear, ARC, Atkins, Aurora, BAE Systems, Cavendish Nuclear, Davis & Musgrove, EDF, Edvance UK, INS, Jacobs, Magnox Ltd, Mott MacDonald, NNL, ONR, Orano, PHE, Rolls-Royce, RPS, Sellafield Ltd, SRP, STFC, Tokamak Energy, TUV SUD and UKAEA were there and the meeting was very well received by all participants.
Learning from the previous meeting was taken onboard and the opportunity was taken to break participants out into smaller groups to discuss topics of interest. Answers from these groups were obtained and collated using the online collaboration tool Menti, which allowed word clouds to be generated of the results. This was considered to be a very successful exercise by all concerned.
“Once again, a big thank you to all attendees of TSF47, online engagement from members was up even from the last meeting, which itself far exceeded expectations. Therefore, we would like to thank everyone for their contributions during the meeting, particularly during the breakout sessions and to those who provided technical presentations for the meeting.”
Daniel Cork (TSF Chair)
One of the best received technical presentations was given by Cerberus’ own Peter Evans. The presentation was on Eddy, a program (freely available on GitHub either as an EXE or as source code) that Pete has written that takes MCNP outputs and processes them into a much more user-friendly HTML format. Significant interest was shown in the program from participants who use MCNP as their primary or cross-check shielding code and Pete fielded numerous questions on the current and planned capabilities of the program.
The next TSF members meeting (TSF48) is currently due to be held in May 2021 at the ANSWERS Seminar, COVID19 allowing. Further details will be found closer to the event at https://www.shieldingforum.com/.
Three of the Cerberus Nuclear team have an MSc in Nuclear Science and Technology from NTEC; the course offers an ideal introduction to the nuclear industry and so it is great to be able to keep ties with the University.
NTEC (back in 2006!)
The project itself is intended to support an expanded number of scenarios for our criticality training aid (CARTA). Work is being conducted 100% remotely due to the current COVID related working arrangements, which has been challenging, but the project is off to a promising start.
CARTA
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/
University of Liverpool - Shielding Design Process Lecture
The Shielding Forum (TSF) has provided support for the Radiation Shielding Module of the NTEC course for many years providing an industry-focused knowledge input to the radiation shielding module.
Several TSF member organisations provide lectures on a wide range of subjects from Monte Carlo and deterministic codes as well as practical radiation shielding applications.
Cerberus Nuclear is a key member of TSF and provides a student lecture on the Shielding Design Process our talk focuses on how this high-level process is used in industry to support facility design.
Cerberus Nuclear's Geoff Hall recently presented at the 24th MCNEG meeting held at the Culham Conference Centre, Oxfordshire.
MCNEG provides a forum for new and experienced users of Monte Carlo software for radiation transport.
Geoff's presentation was based on the assessment of transient dose rates from transport packages and gamma monitor normalisation. The talk was received really well with some very good follow-up questions.
It was a well attended event and there were some really good talks, the tour of the JET reactor on day 2 was excellent!
Geoff Hall
Cerberus Nuclear would like to thank AWE and UKAEA for supporting the event.
