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.
2021 Summer Projects
The end of September was dissertation deadline time for our three NTEC summer students. This was our busiest year to date, welcoming three students from the University of Manchester.
NTEC (Nuclear Technology Education Consortium) offer a postgraduate-level masters degree in Nuclear Science and Technology, which is delivered in both directly taught and distance learning formats. Students produce a dissertation over the summer, often involving support of industry partners like Cerberus Nuclear.
This year, students worked on projects involving modelling of arrays in criticality safety, analytical methods for radiation shielding and machine learning optimisation.
All of our students successfully completed their projects and we wait in anticipation for their results!
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.
New Starter - Katrina Christaki
We're pleased to announce that Katrina has recently joined Cerberus Nuclear as a graduate criticality safety assessor. She is looking to build on her academic experience from the University of Birmingham’s Physics and Technology of Nuclear Reactors (PTNR) course and student placement with EDF Energy’s Fuel Route Systems Team. Through these university courses, Katrina has experience using both MONK and MCNP.
Alongside her consultancy roles, Katrina is undertaking structured training sessions in-line with the Working Party on Criticality (WPC) Competency Framework delivered by experienced criticality safety assessors within Cerberus Nuclear.
EMI Scheme for Cerberus Nuclear
We are delighted to announce that, as an addition to our industry leading remuneration package, we have offered our staff share options in the company. This means that over the next few years we will welcome our talented team into the fold as shareholders.
"An EMI scheme allows us to recognise and reward the vital role our team has played in the company's early success, whilst ensuring continuity as the company continues to grow"
Stewart Hay (Director)
The scheme itself is an Enterprise Management Incentive (EMI) and has been administered by Jerry and Kirsty at the Mill Consultancy who have done a fantastic job in walking us through the process; they are highly recommended!
(Photos from the last time the whole company was together - December 2019!)
New Starter - Kimberley Bird
Kimberley has joined Cerberus Nuclear after working with us on a project to use deep learning and computer vision to identify defects on the surface of waste containers. Kimberley is a developer specialising in data science and she holds a Master’s degree in Advanced Computer Science. Kimberley has contributed to several successful machine learning and computer vision projects, both in her academic career and in industry. Her experience includes machine learning, medical imaging and bioinformatics, as well as natural language processing and front-end development.
Graduate Recruitment
Cerberus Nuclear are an small, dynamic consultancy specialising in the following areas:
Criticality Safety
Radiation Shielding
Nuclear Characterisation
Founded in 2016, we aim to do things differently to other consultancies. We offer industry leading services in our core areas, putting innovation and creativity at the heart of our work. We value employee satisfaction, offer genuine progression and investment in our team, and provide a friendly environment in which to learn and develop.
We are looking for technically minded individuals to train and develop across all of our areas of work.
We offer a competitive remuneration package, which includes:
A company bonus scheme up to 10% of base salary.
A company pension contribution of 10% of base salary.
25 days holiday increasing year on year to up to 30 days per year.
A growing range of benefits, including subscriptions to Perkbox and salary sacrifice schemes for bicycles and tech.
In addition, we offer the flexibility and autonomy that comes with working for a small, dynamic company. We offer our graduates early responsibility and the chance to learn and develop alongside a talented team of specialists.
If you would like to apply, or find out more, please send a CV and cover letter to nuclear@cerberusnuclear.com. We intend to offer roles to start from Autumn 2020.
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
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.
