Amec Foster Wheeler appointed to lead nuclear power research programme
Amec Foster Wheeler has been awarded £2.9m by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) to establish and manage the UK Digital Reactor Design partnership.
The partnership will use virtual engineering and high-performance computing to enhance the techniques used to design reactors and optimise their performance.
The project is part of a broader effort to put UK industry at the forefront of developing Generation IV and small modular reactors. The aim is to achieve a step change in the way that nuclear design, development and construction programmes are delivered.
Partners on the project include Liverpool University’s Virtual Engineering Centre, the Hartree Centre, National Nuclear Laboratory, Rolls-Royce, EDF Energy, Cambridge University, and Imperial College London.
This contract follows the recent award by Innovate UK to carry out research into manufacturing and materials technologies for the civil nuclear sector. The company will be working closely with Manchester University and Nuclear Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre on themes relating to nuclear structural materials and design codes and standards.
Prof Eann Patterson, from Liverpool University, who is lead academic for the project, said: “We see the Digital Reactor Design programme as the first stage in transforming the way that the UK Nuclear industry will design and build new facilities and strengthen capabilities across the sector for the future.”
In March 2017, Aberdeen-based Wood Group announced that it was to merge with AMEC Foster Wheeler in a deal worth £5bn. The combined entity would provide services to the oil and gas, other energy, chemicals, and mining industries.
Professor Paul Howarth, CEO of the National Nuclear Laboratory [NNL] thinks it’s a done-deal to decarbonise our energy use by 2080, with a boost of the National Grid from the 80 GW now up to 320 GW, with 75 GW [or even 100 GW] of nuclear, 100 GW of renewables and 100 GW of fossil fuel with carbon sequestration. Speaking at the Advanced Nuclear Summit and Showcase in Washington, DC, earlier this year, he said:
“…Nuclear represents that nice, warm comfort-blanket that the Government is going to need in a Post–Brexit world, of a long-term, sustainable, engineering, science and technology-based industry sector….”
This is well worth 1 anybody’s time to take on board the way the Government might have to accept at least 100 GW of nuclear and if fossil fuel with carbon sequestration proves to be a non-starter, maybe double that. More here:
http://prismsuk.blogspot.co.uk/2017/07/we-uk-are-going-back-to-top-table-as.html
Why has EDF been allowed to infiltrate this project? The British government is using British taxpayers’ money to hellp a French company (controlled by the French government, to boot). Our treacherous politicians are now directly helping our foreign rivals! Absolute madness.
As I understand it EDF have put up 66% of the money for Sizewell C and CGN have put up the remainder. The British government lack the intestinal fortitude to commit to any project lasting longer than 4 years. So unfortunately the options are outsource the work for construction or stick with fossil fuels.
There’s a shadow over this deal, as Amec Foster Wheeler is being investigated by the Serious Fraud Office over its dealings with Unaoil over possible bribery and corruption through payments to middlemen. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2017/07/11/serious-fraud-office-launches-probe-amec-foster-wheeler/