Forgemasters set for UK development of modular nuclear reactor manufacture

The two companies have announced that Forgemasters is to make a trial reactor vessel head for NuScale’s SMR design by the end of 2017, as part of a £4million project funded by Innovate UK.

NuScale, part of the giant engineering construction company Fluor, announced its intention to introduce SMR technology into the UK last year. Its technology is based around 50MW reactors (around 5 per cent of the generating capacity of a typical civil reactor) that are intended to be deployed singly or in clusters of up to 12 units. The advantage of this technology is that the reactors are designed to be made on production lines in factories, more cheaply and efficiently than the huge facilities required for conventional reactors.

The reactor head component is a forging about 2.75m in diameter and weighing around 9.5tonnes. None of the NuScale SMR reactors have yet been made, although the company says that it is pursuing the development of a first plant in Idaho; and NuScale is working closely with Forgemasters on the geometries that the reactor head, which houses the system that operate the control rods that moderate the nuclear reaction and the outlets for the steam generators, will require.