SRP Founders Prize 1997
Authors: Kendall G M 
Published: April 2005

Siân Beaty

Siân Beaty graduated from York University in 1988 with a BSc (Hons) in Physics. Siân
joined BNFL that year as a graduate trainee, and since that time has worked chiefly
in the area of Operational Health Physics at Sellafield. She is currently the
Radiation Protection Adviser and Operations Health Physics Manager for the Sellafield
Mixed Oxide Fuel Fabrication Plant, which has currently commenced inactive
commissioning and is preparing for active commissioning.

 

Siân Beaty

During her employment at Sellafield Siân has made a notable contribution to ensure
high operational radiological protection standards in several key areas on the
Sellafield Site including the Thermal Oxide Reprocessing Plant (THORP) The Waste
Encapsulation Plant (WEP) and Magnox Reprocessing Plants. Work in these areas
presented a very broad range of radiological issues.

Within these areas her radiological protection skills have spanned from design input
to new plant commissioning (active and non-active) and full active operations on a
wide range of radiological issues including occupation dose management, environmental
discharge assessment and emergency response assessment and coordination.

Siân has written over 30 Radiological Technical Assessment/Radiological Policy
papers which have been peer-reviewed and endorsed as part of the Sellafield
Radiological Management System. These papers cover a wide range of topics including
theoretical and practical measurements of plant-specific Annual Limits on Intake,
arrangements for installation alarm setting and routine testing of activity in air
and area gamma monitors, maintenance/calibration arrangements for portable
instruments; assessment and control of exposure to radon; stack sampling/alarm
setting philosophy for major discharge points and arrangements for Health Physics
action following building emergency evacuation. Siân is a member of the Sellafield
Emergency Response team and has assisted in the development of the role of
environmental assessor and environmental coordinator.

In developing her management skills Siân successfully gained Membership for the
Institute of Management and Institute of Supervisory Management and is currently
studying for an MBA part-time at Lancaster University Business School. In practice
Siân has had direct line management responsibility for a Health Physics operations
team since 1991 when she was the team leader responsible for commissioning the
radiological protection systems in the Sellafield Waste Encapsulation Plant. The
plant as a whole was successfully commissioned ahead of schedule.

Combining her radiological and business experience Siân has presented a number of
papers externally to BNFL including 'The Environmental Impact of THORP' presented at
the UK annual/industrial/regulator forum - the STAR seminar in 1994; 'THORP An
Overview' published in Energy and the Environment in 1995, and
'Electricity Generation Risks - Do we buy now to pay later?' presented at the World
Energy Congress, Tokyo, Japan in 1995.

As one of 12 UK representatives at the World Energy Congress Siân was initially
selected as a representative from BNFL from approximately 60 applicants. The congress
was formally opened by His Imperial Highness, the Crown Prince of Japan, and was
attended by over 5000 delegates from over 60 countries. Debate held at the Congress
covered technical, economic, political and moral issues associated with the
development of national and international energy strategies.

Joining the SRP as an Associate member in 1989, Siân has been a member of the
Editorial Board for the Journal of Radiological Protection since
early 1996 and has recently been invited to join the SRP Finance Committee with
responsibilities for monitoring the journal's accounts.

Outside of her busy professional schedule Siân is president of her local (West
Lakeland) ladies' branch of Rotary; she owns a trail bike which she and her husband
Mike use on their farm for rounding up 100 ducks, has helped to raise over £2000 for
charity by taking part in the 1996 Three Peaks challenge and is an accomplished
skier.

When searching for high performance younger people particularly look for role models
in their own field. Siân is an excellent role model for the Society and a worthy
candidate for the 1997 Founders Prize.

David Billing

Alan Phipps

Alan Phipps was educated at Gowerton School in Swansea and at St John's College
Cambridge, where he took a degree in Natural Sciences. As well as his academic
achievements he was a notable athlete, playing rugby for the Cambridge First XV and
winning the Welsh 60 m indoor championships. After University he spent a few years
working in Oman on developments in the processing and display of seismic data.

 

Alan Phipps

He joined NRPB in 1988 and became Group Leader of the Internal Dosimetry Team in
1994. The Group's work is aimed at calculating radiation doses to tissues from
incorporated radionuclides, and the associated quantitites required, for example, for
bioassay. It involves the biokinetic modelling of the transport of material and the
physical modelling of the patterns of energy deposition. The problems are of
formidable complexity, some of them requiring hours or days of processing time on a
fast mainframe computer.

Since Alan Phipps' involvement the work of the Group has increased in international
importance to the point that it plays a key part in developments by the International
Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) in this area. Alan is a member of the
ICRP Task Group on Dose Calculations and his team made the leading contribution to
the comprehensive set of dose coefficients published as ICRP Publications 71 and 72.
These dose coefficients were adopted by the European Union and by the International
Atomic Energy Agency. They were reproduced in the European Basic Safety Standards and
in the Basic Safety Standards published by a group of International Organisations led
by IAEA. Alan also played a central role in the revision of ICRP Publication 54,
which provides assistance in the application of ICRP advice to the practical control
of exposures to internal emitters. This work is not just of academic importance; it
will contribute directly to radiation protection in the workplace. His Group
continues to make a key contribution to, for example, ICRP work on doses to the
embryo and fetus.

He has represented NRPB at a number of international meetings where he can be relied
upon to show his typical blend of technical expertise and common sense. Perhaps the
most notable such involvement was an invitation to spend a month as a visiting
scientist at the Institut für Strahlenhygiene of the Bundesamt für Strahlenschutz,
Munich. I have no hesitation in nominating him for the SRP Founders Prize.