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/.

Eddy - MCNP & SCALE Html Generator

Cerberus Nuclear has created Eddy, an open-source Html output generator for MCNP and SCALE. The function of Eddy is to parse MCNP and SCALE output files into an easy-to-read and user-friendly format. Eddy has been written to work for both radiation transport and criticality calculations.

Eddy collates key information from an output file so that it can be quickly reviewed. Normalisation factors can also be specified to simplify interpretation of tally outputs.

Eddy Html outputs include:
Normalised Tally Results with Error
Highlighted Statistical Checks
K-effective and Error
Comments and Warnings
Cell Mass and Volumes
Particle Populations
Full MCNP Input

Eddy is simple to use from the command line or via its built-in interface. Hyperlinks within the Html enable the user to navigate to the required part of the output with ease.

The Html output from Eddy assists in the preparation of technical reports supports QA processes and improves workflow efficiency. The contained nature of the Html output and its small file size also facilitates the sharing of calculation outputs for independent review purposes.

Eddy is freely available and can be downloaded as an executable from here

If you would like to provide any feedback or would like to request additional features please get in touch by emailing nuclear@cerberusnuclear.com

RWM Criticality Safety Framework

We are really pleased to announce that Cerberus Nuclear and Galson Sciences Limited have teamed up to support Radioactive Waste Management (RWM) on their Criticality Safety Framework. We believe our combined criticality teams offer RWM a really strong capability, with a blend of operational criticality safety experience and unique repository operational expertise. We are looking forward to working on a wide range of tasks during this exciting time for GDF development in the UK.

Illustrative Geological Disposal Facility used under Open Government Licence v3.0.

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/

Cyber Essentials Plus Certification

As part of our ongoing commitment to cyber security, Cerberus Nuclear are pleased to announce that following a successful audit we have been awarded the 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 marks another step of continuous improvement for the company and provides additional confidence to all our clients regarding our approach to data security.

Surgical Mask Ear Saver - 3D Printing

Our 3D printer has been put to good use over the past week in the creation of ear savers for surgical masks worn by NHS staff at St Mary's Children's Hospital in Manchester.

An ear saver is worn at the back of the head and provides pressure relief for the surgical mask wearers' ears; elastic can often rub if worn for long periods causing discomfort and requiring constant adjustment. The use of the ear saver also aims to improve mask fitting.

We created a custom lightweight ergonomic design that can be easily 3D printed in large numbers, and so far we have supplied over 150.

We hope our very small contribution helps and we would like to share our appreciation for everyone working for the NHS at this challenging time.

If you have 3D printing capacity and would like to use our latest design then please get in touch.

Object Recognition - Computer Vision

We have developed a custom computer vision object identification algorithm. As a demonstration, we trained a neural network to identify cars and lorries on a motorway using R-CNN object detection.

The algorithm identifies a number of objects, object type (car/lorry etc.), object colour, object speed and confidence in match. In addition, a report is generated that summarises the information gathered over time.

Cerberus Nuclear has access to the necessary computing power for near real-time, high-accuracy identification. The example was produced to demonstrate validity for stopped car identification as well as traffic monitoring.

In addition to this example, computer vision has a number of nuclear applications that we will be looking to build upon in the coming weeks.

If you would like to know more or if you have a specific challenge, which you think computer vision may solve, don't hesitate to get in touch.

The Generator - Point Cloud

For many years companies and networking groups have used this facility for seminars and lectures to facilitate networking, knowledge sharing and collaboration opportunities.

Cerberus Nuclear were delighted to offer our services to Birchwood Park, which then allows them to showcase this valued facility in a unique manner.

The original point cloud consisted of over 100 million points of data created from multiple 3D scans. Our scans produced a high-density point cloud with accuracy of 1mm.

The interactive model shown above has been downscaled to ~2 million points to cater for optimised dynamic viewing.

A big thank you goes to Birchwood Park for allowing us to access The Generator, for more information check out:

https://www.engineroomsatbirchwoodpark.co.uk/

https://skfb.ly/6QOXp

Northern Nuclear Alliance & BECBC: Defence and Infrastructure

Cerberus Nuclear attended the Defence Infrastructure Event at Birchwood Park Engine Rooms.

There were some very interesting talks from Gary Shuttleworth (Morgan Sindall), Mark Robinson (Babcock) & Paul Kelly (Volker Stevin).

Thank you to Northern Nuclear Alliance @Nuclearuknorth & Britain's Energy Coast Business Cluster @BECBC for organising the event.