New nuclear programme to address UK’s capability gap
29 Mar 2012
A joint project between the Universities of Manchester and Sheffield for a New Nuclear Build and Manufacturing (NNUMAN) programme has been awarded £4m funding by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) to research innovative manufacturing for the future of the UK’s nuclear power supply.
A recent House of Lords’ Science and Technology Committee report – Nuclear Research and Development Capabilities – identified insufficient research and development capacity as a potential threat to the UK’s ability to produce power from nuclear energy.
The proposal from Manchester and Sheffield addressed this concern by promoting research and development to evolve a robust civil nuclear power supply to meet UK and global energy needs well into the future with significant work on the fundamentals of manufacturing for new nuclear new build and the next generation of power stations.
By acting as the research engine for nuclear manufacturing, NNUMAN will drive progress and step-change technologies up the Technology Readiness Scale. The most improved manufacturing processes developed in NNUMAN will be taken forward to prototype in the Nuclear Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (Nuclear AMRC) in Rotherham and the National Nuclear Laboratory (NNL) to enable UK manufacturing companies to learn the benefits of the new methods and use them in the future.
Through a programme of multi-disciplinary research at Manchester and Sheffield, the next generation of nuclear manufacturing scientists and engineers will be trained with the highest level of academic and technical support, using world-class facilities and with strong links to industry. They will develop high level skills in readiness to fill new high-quality jobs throughout the supply chain created through the growth in the manufacturing sector linked with nuclear build.
Professor Dave Delpy, EPSRC’s Chief Executive, said: “Several years ago EPSRC recognised the importance of maintaining an expertise in nuclear engineering in the UK, and made a strategic investment in postgraduate training through its Keeping the Nuclear Option Open (KNOO) initiative and subsequent funding programmes.
"The New Nuclear Build and Manufacturing programme builds on these earlier investments and will play a key role in helping develop new manufacturing techniques that will lead to materials that can function more effectively in the hostile operating environments of a nuclear reactor.
"Having a cutting edge capability in these fields will mean we have a stronger foothold in the manufacturing sector and are able to attract the best students and researchers to the UK.”
Professor Andrew Sherry, Director of the Dalton Nuclear Institute at The University of Manchester, said: “Innovation in manufacturing technology for new nuclear build offers the UK a real growth opportunity. We are delighted that NNUMAN will now be the research engine that drives this forward.”
Professor Keith Ridgway, programme director of the Nuclear AMRC and Executive Dean of the University of Sheffield Advanced Manufacturing Institute, said: “This funding will help us to look at the longer term manufacturing research needs of the nuclear industry. The work we will do in the NNUMAN project will feed directly into the applications-directed work of the Nuclear AMRC.”
Mike Burke, Director of Research & Technology, Nuclear AMRC and Programme Director, based at the Dalton Nuclear Institute’s Manufacturing Technology Research Laboratory at The University of Manchester, said: “This programme grant is a foresighted investment that will enable the pursuit of new and more efficient manufacturing technologies while maintaining the standards of reliability and safety that are expected in the nuclear industry.
“It also represents an exciting opportunity for our next generation of scientists and engineers to develop state-of-the-art understanding of new processes and product performance.”