Advanced Nuclear Reactor Design 2023

Philip Rogers: Director, Equilibrion

Omar Afify: Senior Safety Case Engineer, UK Atomic Energy Authority

Omar is a degree qualified Chemical and Process Engineer, and has spent the last 10 years in various safety engineering and consultancy roles in the Oil & Gas and Nuclear Fusion industries. He is experienced in safety case authorship, technical safety, hazard and risk management, and has carried out projects for a variety of major hazard facilities both in the UK and internationally. His portfolio of skills also includes undertaking HAZOP/HAZID studies, safety audits, qualitative and quantitative risk assessments, safety inspections and applying other formal safety assessment techniques. He joined UKAEA in 2020, where he is responsible for managing the delivery of complex safety case programmes for the Joint European Torus (JET), STEP and other high hazard facilities at Culham.

Sean Perry: Lead Design Engineer, Nuclear Transport Solutions

Sean is a Chartered Mechanical Engineer with 10 years’ experience working in the nuclear industry. Sean has a Master’s degree in Automotive Engineering from the University of Leeds and a post graduate certificate in Nuclear Technology from the University of Manchester. He is a Lead Design Engineer working for Nuclear Transport Solutions, specialising in transport package design and safety case production.

Mike Waite: Director, Mike Waite Nuclear Consulting Ltd.

Mr. Waite is, the Managing Director and founder of Mike Waite Nuclear Consulting Ltd. He can leverage years of international nuclear newbuild market experience and contacts, to provide consultancy services to vendors, stakeholders and government organisations. After over 13 years in New Plant Market Development with Westinghouse Mr. Waite developed a deep knowledge of international newbuild markets, trends, procurement and delivery models, technologies and customers, that is likely second-to-none in the industry. He is using this experience to provide market intelligence, introductions, support to clients in new markets, expert commentary/analysis/benchmarking, and offer a constructive challenge to processes and programme structures. His markets of interest over the years have spanned South East Asia (particularly Vietnam), the Middle East (particularly Saudi Arabia and Egypt), Sub-Sahara Africa and Europe with a focus on the dynamic Central and Eastern European markets of Poland, Czech Republic and Slovenia. The last two and a half years has also seen his significant participation in the UK, where Mr. Waite has passionately engaged with central government and national stakeholders to advocate for a new nuclear power plant project at the Wylfa site. It is hoped that the emergence of GB Nuclear will strengthen the standing of Wylfa as a new nuclear site and the development of new projects there will maintain his fervent support and interest. Prior to Westinghouse, Mr. Waite enjoyed 10 years in senior management positions in companies designing and manufacturing products for the global nuclear industry. He has spent his career working for major multinational corporations and has been based on 3 different continents. Mr. Waite received his BEng Honours Degree in Mechanical Engineering in 1989 from Bath University.

John Bowmer: Test Rig Design Engineer, Rolls-Royce SMR

John is a Chartered Mechanical Engineer with the IMechE and a member of the Nuclear Institute working within the Test Rig Capability Team in Rolls-Royce SMR. He has over 11 years of experience working in the nuclear industry as a Mechanical Design Engineer, starting in Rolls-Royce Submarines then Civil Nuclear before joining the test rig team for Rolls-Royce SMR in March 2022. His key responsibilities include designing physical test rigs in order to verify and validate a number of different phenomena that occur during reactor plant transients.

Jeremy Owston: Mechanical Engineer, BAE Systems

Jeremy is a chartered mechanical engineer with a varied career in the marine and nuclear industries including UK submarine programmes, and previously in design and delivery of automated mooring solutions. Jeremy has more recently been engaged as part of PhD programme in the development of a novel direct cycle HTGR solutions for marine propulsion and civil power applications, with potential to offer significant cost and complexity reductions and greater efficiencies for turning nuclear heat to mechanical power. To this extent Jeremy has published three academic papers on the use of nitrogen coolants for direct cycle gas HTGRs to enable the utilisation of extant turbomachinery designs whilst authoring a number of patents in this area to develop a set IP covering HTGR solutions.

Stephen Coates: Operational Support Lead, X-energy

David Landon: Chief Executive Officer, MoltexFlex

David Landon is Chief Executive Officer of MoltexFLEX. He has 20 years of experience as a director in the nuclear industry, having built and led engineering teams focused on spent fuel management, decommissioning and transport of nuclear materials. He has worked for Sellafield Ltd, the NDA’s subsidiary International Nuclear Services, and a variety of other companies, including 13 years at Siemens before joining the nuclear industry. He is a Chartered Engineer and a member of the Institute of Engineering and Technology.

Simon Bowen: Director, Great British Nuclear; Department for Energy Security and Net Zero

Simon started his career as an engineering officer in the Royal Navy serving on submarines. He has extensive experience in the petrochemicals, renewables, civil nuclear and defence nuclear sectors.

Simon played a key role in the development of the Nuclear Sector Deal as part of the government’s Industrial Strategy.

Simon joined Babcock International in 2015 where he was Chief Executive for nuclear. He was responsible for the Cavendish Nuclear business and the defence nuclear portfolio providing naval base services and submarine maintenance at Devonport, Clyde and Rosyth. He retired from Babcock in December 2021.

Simon led the scoping phase of GBN from May to September 2022, setting out the strategy and the key steps to rebuild the UK’s generating nuclear capacity. This included extensive engagement across government, with vendors, the supply chain, academia and others in the international nuclear sector. In September, Simon delivered the scoping report to the then-PM and the Secretary of State of the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ) with his recommendations.

He continues as the Chair of Devonport Royal Dockyard and sits on the Council of the RNLI. Simon joined the board of Rolls Royce Submarines as a Non-Executive Director in December 2021 and resigned in March 2023 following his appointment as GBN Interim Chair.

Michael Drury: Managing Director, UK Atomics

Michael is the Managing Director of UK Atomics developing the Thorium Waste Burner to help decarbonise the hard to abate industries and provide low cost energy. Previously Michael held roles as MD of reactor vendors and has represented the UK on Advanced Nuclear Technologies for both SMR and AMR on behalf of UK government at the IAEA. He led the Newbuild, SMR and AMR teams as account director for the UKs National Nuclear Laboratory working across multiple reactor technologies and has held senior positions within industry such as the chair of the UK Molten Salt Technology Platform. He has worked on major projects such as Chernobyl NSC, ITER Fusion programme, Magnox decommissioning programmes and the existing fleet of UK AGR reactors and PWR reactor at Sizewell B. Having started his career in automotive at Jaguar Landrover delivering 6-sigma investigations and volume production, he is now focussed on advanced modular reactors; a Thorium molten salt reactor, providing thermal heat and power for deployment in the UK.

Stephen Flood: Senior Engineer, Ultra Safe Nuclear

Steve Flood is a chartered engineer and member of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, with 18 years of experience working in the process industries in both technical and commercial roles. He has experience in the design, maintenance and operation of pressure and rotating equipment in the oil and gas industry. Steve is leading the design of the Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation (USNC) Micro Modular Reactor (MMR) primary circuit and auxiliary systems. Steve is closely involved in the design and development of the fuel handling equipment and performance validation test rigs. Prior to joining USNC Steve was the lead engineer on the U-Battery High Temperature Gas Reactor (HTGR) refuelling systems and the drive to minimise onsite construction by maximising the offsite factory fabrication, outfitting and testing of modules. Steve is responsible for the management and supervision of a number of nuclear engineering and science graduates who elected to work on the HTGR program as part of their post graduate training programs.

Ross Haddow: Senior Consultant, Advanced Nuclear Technologies Group, Frazer-Nash Consultancy

Ross is a Qualified Project Manager (Full Member of APM holding APM PMQ) and Chartered Engineer (Member of IMechE) experienced in managing and delivering high value, highly regulated projects to the nuclear and oil and gas industry.

He has over 15 years of conventional and nuclear engineering experience and has held leadership, management, and technical roles across all stages of the project lifecycle and in design, manufacturing, and quality functions.  

Ross worked for an EU Notified Body and UK Approved Body for ~9.5 years during which time he undertook conformity assessment activities for conventional pressure equipment and led Independent Third-Party Inspection Agency (ITPIA) activities for Hinkley Point C.  He has practical experience of regulatory conformity assessment requirements and activities including; design appraisal, manufacturing surveillance and supply chain audits.  He also has an in-depth knowledge of the UKCA marking requirements for PE(S)R, CE marking requirements for PED and nuclear pressure equipment requirements aligned to ONR TAG 77.  

Debbie Kempton: Engineering Director, UK Atomic Energy Authority

Debbie Kempton has recently joined the UK Atomic Energy Authority as STEP (Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production) Director of Engineering Programme, responsible for the overall engineering programme in addition to developing links with industry to support STEP’s concept design. She previously worked at BAE Systems as Group Engineering Director. Debbie is a Chartered Engineer and Certified Programme Manager with 30 years’ experience in aerospace engineering, applied research, technology demonstration and major programme delivery, having held roles in the US and UK.

Dafni Sifnioti: Senior Manager of Natural Hazards and Environment, EDF

Dafni is the Senior Manager of the Natural Hazards and Environment Research and Development team in EDF UK. She is responsible for key assessments for EDF on external hazards and climate change. Over the last 3 years, Dafni has grown the team’s capabilities and opportunities relevant to nuclear (AMRs, current, new build fleet and decommissioned) and renewables. Dafni’s background is on coastal oceanography and marine climatology, previously working as a senior coastal scientist for CEFAS and as a project manager for coastal monitoring programmes (in the UK and Greece). Dafni is a Fellow and a Chartered Meteorologist of the Royal Meteorological Society, with 10+years of experience in the field.