Helping to protect against radiation

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Monday 4 May 2020 13:26 PM

Helping to protect against radiation

My name is Jess Heaps and I’m a Health Physicist at Rolls-Royce Submarines in Derby. Did you know Rolls-Royce designs and manufactures nuclear reactors that power the UK’s Royal Navy submarines? This is often news to a lot of people! Health Physics is also very niche – it’s part of a specialist area of physics called radiation protection.

Basically, I have to ensure that the people making the reactors don’t get exposed to too much radiation. I joined the company directly after finishing university almost five years ago. My degree was in nuclear physics but you can join the radiation protection profession at a number of levels – you don’t necessarily need a degree.

I wanted to become a STEM Ambassador as I’m already an active member of the Society for Radiological Protection (SRP) www.srp-uk.org** and do a fair bit of public outreach through them. I enjoy talking to people about radiation as I genuinely love my job!

Jess Heaps, Health Physicist, Defence

I think educating the public is important as there’s a lot of misinformation and fearmongering out there. Inspiring the next generation of scientists is also extremely important to me as I want young people to know about all the career choices open to them (in my experience hardly anyone has heard of Health Physics!).

My STEM Ambassador role has really helped with my communication skills as I am having to inspire and educate people of all backgrounds, ages and learning abilities. This in turn has helped me to become better at delivering radiation protection training at work – another area I am passionate about. I think good communication skills are essential to being a successful STEM Ambassador.

**Find out more about the SRP’s public outreach work: https://srp-uk.org/public-and-schools/srp-outreach-programme

In 2019 I volunteered to run a radiation protection stand for the Ministry of Defence Family Day at Abbey Wood in Bristol along with other members of the Submarines enterprise (Babcock, Submarines Delivery Agency, etc) hosted stands too and the event was attended by employees and their families.

My main goal was to educate and inform attendees about radiation and careers in radiation protection. I did this through a combination of a practical demonstration and providing resources on careers (including explaining my own journey). My practical demonstration was called “Everyday Radioactive Objects”* and involved getting attendees to arrange eight or so common(ish) objects into the order of what they thought would be least radioactive to most. I then got them to test their predictions using a radiation detector. Some people had very accurate predictions and some were very surprised – either way it was great to see the smiles on everyone’s faces when the instrument started making lots of noise!

I think the overall impact was very positive – radiation protection is not a well-known field so it was great to have an opportunity to promote this profession and also educate attendees on radiation. As a female physicist I hope it was a positive experience for the other young women and girls present to see someone like them working in STEM. Finally, I think it was a great opportunity for attendees to ask questions about radiation in a relaxed and informal environment. There’s no such thing as a stupid question!

Resources

*This is a tried-and-tested SRP demo! Lesson plans for this demonstration along with educational posters can be found here (all for free):

https://srp-uk.org/public-and-schools/resources-for-schools

SRP also have lots of useful information available on their website, including an FAQs section and glossary of terms (so you can translate what all those nerdy scientists are saying):

https://srp-uk.org/public-and-schools/radiation-protection-faqs

Information on careers

https://srp-uk.org/careers/overview