New Starter – Barrie Greenhalgh
We are delighted to welcome Dr Barrie Greenhalgh to Cerberus Nuclear! Barrie is a Radiometric and Nuclear Physicist joining us with 18 years experience in the nuclear industry. He is a MCNP radiation transport specialist, with experience in support of radiometric characterisation, calibration, feasibility and design studies. Until recently, Barrie delivered technical characterisation tasks for a range of Sellafield Ltd customers, including POCO, remediation and plant support operations.
Barrie will be key to the development of our growing Nuclear Characterisation capability, and he will also be building on his expertise by supporting Criticality Safety.
Welcome to the team Barrie!
Cerberus Welcomes Employee Shareholders
January saw the first anniversary of our company EMI share option scheme, which is a government approved way of rewarding employees with share options. We are delighted that some of the team have exercised their options, becoming full shareholders of the company.
“We’re always looking into ways to genuinely recognise and reward our growing team. Sharing ownership of the company seems like a unique benefit that we can offer, and we’re really pleased that so many of the team are invested in the long-term success of the company” – Stewart Hay, Director.
“Personally I’ve always loved the benefits of working for a small technical consultancy. Among these is the financial transparency with company progress and project forecasts. Cerberus Nuclear’s EMI share scheme has taken these benefits to new heights by providing the opportunity for me to invest in the company directly and become a shareholder. The prospect of a nice pay out in future is definitely exciting!” – Sam Hilton, Consultant and Shareholder of Cerberus Nuclear.
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
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.
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!)
