Project to jump start nuclear manufacturing in the UK

The New Nuclear Build and Manufacturing (NNUMAN) initiative will be delivered by the universities of Manchester and Sheffield with £4m of funding from EPSRC to research innovative manufacturing technologies.

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.

It even warned of the UK losing its status as an ‘informed customer’ in buying and implementing nuclear technology from other countries.

‘Since the heyday of nuclear build in the 1970s, the industry has been stalled; it hasn’t been able to invest in new manufacturing methods and the world has moved on obviously,’ said Mike Burke, director of research and technology, at the Nuclear Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (Nuclear AMRC).

‘What we’re trying to do is a jump start on nuclear manufacturing [that will] allow us to have methods that can be used more effectively and more efficiently that can be sold to the plant operators at lower price — and do that in the UK.’