Lancaster Uni lends cyber support to nuclear decommissioning body
Cyber consultants on the University of Lancaster have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to work alongside the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) because it goes about conducting its important work of cleansing up and winding down the UK’s ageing civil nuclear property.
Working alongside cyber providers consultancy Templar Executives – which already helps lots of the college’s different cyber-related initiatives resembling its not too long ago launched cyber MBA course – the college will align with the NDA on a lot of key work areas with implications for the longer term safety, progress and financial wellbeing of the UK.
Among different issues, the MoU will support and increase Lancaster’s current cyber safety and safety sciences capability and funding, and the present enlargement in its Schools of Computing and Communications and Engineering. It additionally recognises the complementary abilities and expertise of all three events, and can supposedly assist them improve cyber cooperation throughout the civil nuclear sector.
It can even contribute to the college’s experience in nuclear engineering, together with pursuits in decommissioning, robotics, nuclear gasoline cycles and waste administration, geological disposal, security and regulation, environmental forensics, and safeguards and safety.
“Lancaster is committed to working in partnership to develop the research and evidence base which underpins the security of critical national infrastructure [CNI] in the UK. By joining with organisations such as the NDA and Templar Executives we are bringing the full strength of our research and teaching excellence to the table, to foster knowledge exchange at the highest level and ultimately, together, effect operational change,” stated Lancaster University vice-chancellor Andy Schofield.
NDA CEO David Peattie added: “We’re delighted to be furthering our relationship with Lancaster University and Templar Executives within the subject of cyber house and cyber safety.
“This MoU demonstrates our dedication to share understanding and experience, recognising the complementary abilities and expertise of our organisations relating to cyber and the broader civil nuclear trade.
“Our work with all academic institutions is hugely important in progressing our mission and helping to create the subject matter experts we will need in the future to clean up our sites.”
A non-departmental public body sitting throughout the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority was established in 2004 having advanced out of the Coal and Nuclear Liabilities Board inside what was then the Department for Trade and Industry.
The 250-strong body holds duty for decommissioning, cleansing up and making secure the UK’s 17 oldest nuclear websites, together with nuclear energy stations, analysis centres and fuel-related services, a few of which now date again virtually 80 years to the late Nineteen Forties.
Its websites are scattered across the UK at Berkeley, Oldbury, Hinkley Point and Winfrith within the West of England; Harwell in Oxfordshire; Dungeness in Kent; Bradwell and Sizewell in East Anglia; Trawsfynydd and Wylfa in Wales; Capenhurst in Cheshire; Springfields in Lancashire; and Chapelcross, Dounreay and Hunterston in Scotland.
Its most complicated and harmful work takes place at its 16th and 17th websites in Cumbria, Sellafield, the scene of the UK’s worst nuclear accident in 1957, and the Low Level Waste (LLW) Repository at close by Drigg.
The authority’s mission will span many lifetimes, and it’s estimated that its core objective of nuclear clean-up and waste administration is anticipated to take no less than a century, with the last word objective to obtain a so-called “end state” in any respect its websites by the yr 2333 – 310 years from in the present day.
By means of comparability, 310 years in the past, in 1713, the Treaty of Utrecht was signed, ceding Gibraltar to Great Britain, and Charles Babbage’s Difference Engine was nonetheless 109 years sooner or later.
Adjacent to the cyber realm, NDA not too long ago hosted an illustration day for expertise designed to monitor and safe its 17 websites within the bodily world.
Some of the options on present on the occasion hosted by the Satellite Applications Catapult – all developed by a £750,000 competitors included a cell, autonomous AI digicam system that may be customised with particular algorithms to establish trespassers or autos; an unmanned aerial car (UAV) or drone that learns its surroundings because it flies round, gathering information from ground-based sensors monitoring components resembling temperature, humidity, noise and movement; and Theia, an aerial robotic ‘Swiss Army knife’ that may deploy sensors and cameras at delicate, inaccessible or harmful (i.e. radioactive) places.
