The Henry Royce Institute in collaboration with the Dalton Nuclear Institute hosted an advanced materials workshop in Manchester on 27 February 2020 to generate community-led proposals that can deliver real and tangible impact to UK Plc.
The workshop was timely given recent government announcements for focused spending programmes on Small Modular Reactors (SMR), the Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production (STEP) programme and the Nuclear Innovation Programme Phase 2b.
With over 100 attendees representing industry (Rolls Royce, Wood Group, EDF, Sellafield), academia, catapults, NDA and BEIS; each contributor brought a different perspective to the workshop.
Throughout the morning Royce partners presented the open and accessible capability available to UK academia and industry including the National Nuclear Laboratory, UKAEA and the universities of Oxford, Manchester and Sheffield. Click here to view the full programme.
Working groups were formed with representation from each sector to harness the unique expertise each can bring to strategic programmes thus ensuring broad input into each proposal’s design, structure and deliverables.
The working groups successfully delivered a number of outline programmes covering the broad space in advanced materials for nuclear applications.
From Additive Manufacturing and how the development of standards would impact deployment into the nuclear sector; to new advanced materials in non-irradiated environments. The proposals generated at the workshop will be shared with all participants and wider the community to continue to develop the outlines generated into fully considered programmes of work.
Royce will discuss the proposals created with BEIS, funding councils, NDA and ONR among others to capitalise further on the ideas put forward by the community and to support and enable a coherent nuclear strategy across nuclear materials.
Working with industry to understand our mutual goals is a key function of the Royce; this workshop was important to come together and roadmap the future for nuclear materials in the UK and the impact on UK plc. We’re looking forward to building on the outcomes of this event with our partners going forward
| Prof Francis Livens | Director of the Dalton Nuclear Institute and Royce Core Area Champion for Nuclear Materials
