Jellyfish and Seaweed Surveillance (JASS), is designed to address the acute problem of the partner (EDF energy) regarding jellyfish and seaweed debris ingress into the water intakes of coastal nuclear power plants. These events have the potential to overload the water intake systems' capacity to filter out debris potentially leading to a temporary shut-down of the affected power plant. JaSS aims to deliver an early warning system based on two approaches. For the ingression of jellyfish we will develop a habitat model, a model that defines the type of environment conditions preferred by an organism, which can be combined with satellite monitoring to detect conditions conducive to jellyfish blooms. For seaweed ingression we will make use of novel, high resolution satellite products (Sentinel program) to detect and track clouds of seaweed detritus in the water surrounding the power plant. The outputs will be used by EDF energy to monitor the water and put preventive measures in place when the risk of marine debris ingress is high. This will reduce the need to shut-down a power plant, saving the company money and ensuring stable energy delivery across the UK power grid. It also has potential to be applied to other sectors of industry that are at risk from these kinds of events such as offshore energy, tourism, and desalination.

Have you noticed that ever more wind turbines appear in the countryside? And more and more solar panels are installed on the houses on your route from work to home? All these are signs of the increasing uptake of micro-generation, whereby individuals or organisations install their own small-scale, renewables-based energy generators to produce and use energy. Presently, in the UK, they must sell the excess of their production back to the grid at a set price. Perhaps you yourself have installed some PV panels and have to sell the excess of your energy production back to the grid at a set price? And perhaps you would much rather contribute your excess generation free of charge to the nearby homeless shelter instead? Or sell it to someone else at a better price? Such free trade between micro-generators could become possible through a peer-to-peer (P2P) energy market. Similar 'sharing' platforms are already in place in other markets, e.g., via Airbnb in the hotel industry, or Uber in taxi hire (though both of these still impose substantial intermediation charges). But what would such a market democratisation entail for the energy sector? Is the infrastructure for P2P energy trading technically feasible? Who would provide it? What will be the role of the current major power producers (like British Gas and EDF Energy) in such a market? Could supply continuity be ensured under the fluctuating generation imposed by the nature of these energy sources? What factors will encourage households/groups to join this market? What regulatory changes are necessary for this market to function? These are the questions that the HoSEM project sets out to address. The key aim of this project is to research the feasibility of such democratised P2P energy market. To enable such a P2P energy market, this project will: 1. Develop a novel technical platform to support P2P household-level energy trading. Here all market participants must have read and write access to the records for the production, sale, and purchase of energy at low cost per transaction; each transaction must be accurately recorded, verifiable, and encryption-secured to guarantee accurate assignment of rights and responsibilities for trades and billing, allowing equal access to all interested participants. The distributed ledger technology uniquely meets all these domain requirements, providing an ideal technical tool for such a platform. The ledgers will also be available to 3rd party businesses that wish to provide new value added services for the energy market. 2. Establish a scientific basis for factors that would foster trust in households and organisations to participate in this market. Since prospective market participants will be acting as individuals or groups (e.g., likeminded "greens" or "profit seekers"), factors for both kinds of such participants will be researched. For instance, individuals may act upon trust in information and its sources, while a group member may follow what other members trust. 3. Research various possible configurations of such a P2P trading (e.g., where a few large groups are formed and influence the energy price, or each individual trades independently) along with algorithms for trade optimisation under each configuration (e.g., how to optimise own income and cut emissions as an individual, or minimising external energy dependency when trading as a community group). 4. Study the social, and economic implications of such a market: what will such a change imply for the current market participants, its impact on the energy supply chain, and how would this market affect everyday individual/community life? The DLT-enabled P2P energy trading has a strong disruptive potential, which could enable new business models and processes in energy sector. This project will help the businesses, regulators, and households gain an understanding of this potential, and get ready to transition into and engage with this changing market.

Nuclear power reactors contain large steel pressure vessels and high-pressure pipework which must be carefully designed and regularly inspected when they are service to guarantee safety. When a reactor is operating, these systems are loaded not just by internal pressure, but also by thermal stresses which arise from temperature gradients, and by residual stresses which are 'locked-in' during construction. Thermal and residual stresses are often termed 'secondary' stresses and they are generally more difficult to measure and predict than the stresses which result from directly applied forces. Often, this means that parts which are in fact safe are pre-emptively taken out of service due to secondary stress concerns, incurring large costs in addition to plant downtime. In this project, new techniques will be developed to accurately predict how complex and multi-axial secondary stresses in components behave as they are further stressed in-service. This will require the development of a generalised mathematical framework to describe multi-axial stress relaxation, along with new computational methods to enable the analysis of complicated real-world structures. The predictive accuracy of the new analysis techniques will be tested in a series of experiments using neutron and synchrotron diffraction to observe how residual stresses deep inside metallic components change as they are subjected to changing external loads. The analysis techniques developed during this project will be integrated with existing structural integrity assessment procedures, allowing them to be readily used in industry, and leading to cheaper and more reliable power plants.

This project contributes substantially to enhancing the UK's resilience to climate variability and change through working with key stakeholders to ensure research is fit for purpose. This advance will be achieved by embedding a high qualified researcher in EDF to apply new modelling techniques that examine the vulnerability of their power stations to flooding and erosion from extreme rainfall. Embedded researchers play an important role in connecting businesses and environmental managers to current state-of-the-art in research approaches and techniques. By being embedded in EDF, the researcher will establish a good understanding of day-to-day working, drivers, decision-making contexts, and knowledge and information needs as well as the regulatory requirements for implementation. The researcher will establish an excellent understanding of both operational and planning requirements of flood risk assessment, and vulnerability thresholds for the associated hazard of erosion from surface water flows. The researcher will also identify the organizational mechanisms whereby this improved assessment is put into practice through planning, management and the implementation of the necessary mitigation measures. The researcher will, therefore, develop an intrinsic understanding of the problems due to flooding and erosion from extreme rainfall events, and then bring appropriate knowledge and innovative tools to bear on how these climate-related hazards are best predicted and communicated. Working with both EDF colleagues and University of Liverpool academics, the researcher will undertake assessments of flood and erosion risk that provide useful and usable information, "working collaboratively to generate new knowledge, synthesize and communicate findings to promote learning across relevant science and business domains." The risk modelling comprises models of flood and erosion hazard (probability of impact and extent) and damage (economic loss), the product of which are probability maps of buildings and structures at risk. A hydro-erosion model will be used to produce these maps, allowing the risk to nuclear power generation and decommissioning from extreme rainfall events to be assessed. This model predicts how much rainfall becomes runoff, how runoff is routed according to slope and relief, and how the resulting flows are then able to erode, transport and deposit sediment. Model outputs are fine scale maps of flooding, erosion and deposition, updated slope and relief, and runoff through time. To provide an assessment of erosion hazard from changing event intensity and frequency, UK Climate Change Projections will be used to generate rainfall depth duration frequency curves and river discharge time series for the next 60 years. To quantify the business impact of extreme rainfall and the vulnerability of assets, the project will forecast the economic loss caused by physical damage, judging the cost of mitigation measures against the associated economic benefits. Project outputs will be disseminated to energy sector stakeholders through workshops, conferences and webinars, showcasing how decision-relevant risk data can optimise the deployment of resources and reduce operational costs. This dissemination provides an opportunity to deliver a 'common language' for the communication of storm-related risk, and set an example of best practice in using risk-based analysis to inform operational decision-making. The outputs will include: - Scientific insights into the changing flood and erosion risk to nuclear power stations as a result of climate projections - How erosion hazards influence the vulnerability and resilience of these safety-critical assets to a changing climate - An integrated quantitative predictive modelling framework and decision-support tool that provides the much needed strong evidence base for sustainable, resilient decision making - Deepened engagement between scientists and stakeholders in the energy sector

Volcanic ash is the most widespread and frequent hazardous volcanic phenomenon, being produced in over 90% of all eruptions. The 2010 eruption of Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland and the resulting closure of Northern European airspace has focused attention on the international reach of ash even from relatively small volcanic eruptions. It is now important to rigorously assess potential impacts on nuclear power facilities in the UK from volcanoes in neighbouring regions. Thick volcanic ash accumulation might render a site temporarily inoperable but even minimal (a few mm) ash deposition in the vicinity of a nuclear facility has the potential to disrupt normal operations. This proposal will result in a robust, transparent and broadly-applicable methodology for evaluating the likelihood of volcanic ash threatening UK nuclear facilities. This will be based on state-of-the-art probabilistic hazard assessment methodologies developed through NERC-funded science at the University of Bristol, with new knowledge exchange mechanisms and collaborative research strands to adapt to the special circumstances of low probability events relevant to the UK nuclear industry. The hazard assessment will be directly linked to a case study of site management changes to mitigate this hazard, and the methodology will be intentionally transparent and generic to allow application to other volcanic regions hosting nuclear or other sensitive high-tech sites. This project has been developed through ongoing discussions with EDF Energy, and the skills, tools and outputs acquired through the project will be transferable to, and of benefit for, a wider range of the volcanic hazard assessment stakeholder community. The project builds on NERC science outputs from the consortium projects STREVA,CREDIBLE and VANAHEIM and also the Global Volcano Model (GVM) network, and consists of five components: 1. characterisation of eruption source parameters at regional volcanoes with potential to disperse ash over the UK, and the meteorological conditions affecting ash transport from eruption source to specific location; 2. a workshop with experts from EDF Energy and from academia to create the essential framework for relating volcanic activity probabilities and likelihood of site impacts to nuclear industry procedures, standards and regulatory requirements; 3. a probabilistic framework for modelling airborne and ground-based regional ash hazard arising from multiple volcanoes, and visualisation of ash hazard at UK nuclear facilities; 4. a new set of protocols for nuclear site preparedness and management in the event of volcanic activity; preliminary estimation of implementation costs, business disruption and supply chain issues; 5. generation and dissemination of reports and a scientific paper presenting the hazard assessment methodology for low probability volcanic activity. The project will provide a quantified volcanic ash hazard assessment for UK sites. The main benefit is improved understanding of credible, though extreme (1 in 10,000 year), volcanic ash hazard on the operation of nuclear power plants in the UK. The far-reaching impacts of volcanic ash means that preparedness and mitigation strategies developed on the basis of findings from this project will protect against unforeseen nuclear safety consequences and help ensure the reliability of electricity supply to the population of the UK. The impact of the exchanged knowledge will range from the development of new informed decision-making concerning the volcanic ash hazard management to the potential design of mitigation measures and procedures if required. EDF Energy Generation is committed to characterising the hazard due to volcanic ash for its nuclear sites. This project forms the first part of understanding this problem and may identify further research and Knowledge Exchange needs.