Central England Branch Christmas Lecture: making virtual a reality

摘要

On 18 December 2018, Dr Trevor Chambers (Head of Reactor Centre at Imperial College London) and Ben Nash (Atomic Weapons Establishment Aldermaston and part-time PhD student at Imperial College London) delivered Central England Branch's Christmas Lecture. In a well-attended and fascinating event, the lecture explored the potential for using virtual reality (VR) in the nuclear industry. Attempts have been made over a number of years to explore VR in a range of nuclear applications, with varying degrees of success. One key issue which appears to have had a detrimental effect to the use of VR for nuclear applications is the complexity and expense of the VR systems available. Over the past four years, a PhD research project has been carried out at Imperial College London to explore this potential, based specifically on the use of computer game technology and utilising the ongoing decommissioning programme at the Imperial College Reactor Centre as a test bed for the VR technology.