United Kingdom National Nuclear Laboratory

UKNNL is the UK’s lead civil national laboratory for nuclear fission, delivering nuclear science to benefit society

We are leveraging the UK’s rich nuclear heritage to help solve global challenges in four strategic areas: Clean Energy, Environmental Restoration, Health and Nuclear Medicine and Security and Non-Proliferation.

At a time when society is waking up to acting on the environmental crisis our planet faces, it is impossible to overestimate the scale of the challenge ahead for the UK in reaching net zero by 2050. Without nuclear, the UK will not meet this target on time. And without UKNNL’s work, the UK nuclear sector cannot deliver what is required.

Whether it is accelerating the UK’s demonstration programme for Advanced Modular Reactors or delivering our first sustainable indigenous supply of medical radioisotopes since the 1960s, UKNNL will be at the forefront of game-changing advances that will help to transform the environment and people’s lives, now and into the future.

And it is our people here at UKNNL who will be driving this forward, supported by our customers and partners in government, academia and the private sector both in the UK and worldwide.

Royce facilities at UKNNL include a dedicated materials characterisation suite for the analysis of highly active materials including microscopy, Raman and sample preparation techniques. Instruments can be modified for remote handling and characterisation of highly active samples (e.g. irradiated fuel and cladding). These state-of-the-art facilities are dedicated to supporting the development of materials associated with, or originating in, high neutron flux environments.

UKNNL Website

Core Facilities

Royce facilities at UKNNL are split across the Central Laboratory and Windscale Facility at Sellafield

Central Laboratory

Our Central Laboratory is a £250 million state-of-the-art nuclear research facility. It is the most advanced nuclear facility in the world. Designed around flexibility and collaboration, it supports new reactor build and reactor operations as well as decommissioning, clean-up and fuel processing plants.

Windscale Facility

The Windscale Laboratory is used for non-destructive and destructive examination of reactor fuel and irradiated materials. The Laboratory also has facilities dedicated to the processing and management of radioactive waste and sealed sources.

Technology Platforms

Royce Technology Platforms are groupings of cutting-edge facilities and expertise. Each Platform has a Technology Platform Lead responsible for developing and enhancing the facilities and supporting related research activities which utilise Royce Equipment.

Irradiated Materials Fuels & Actinides Handling & Characterisation

This platform enables chemical, microstructural and mechanical property characterisation of highly active materials to further a mechanistic understanding of actinide chemistry and radiation effects on materials.

Nuclear Materials

The Nuclear Materials research area aims to help increase the UK’s existing economic strengths and competitive advantages in nuclear energy, and support its net-zero ambitions, by enabling innovation in research on radioactive materials.

Next generation fission and fusion power stations require development of more resilient materials due to the increased demands they place on materials, from corrosion to high radiation fields and severe thermal loads.

This research also enhances modelling across length and time scales to aid in the development of new codes and standards, which will positively benefit new nuclear build and potentially have impact across multiple sectors.

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Imaging & Characterisation

Metallurgy and metals processing is changing, driven by the need to rapidly transition to a low-carbon and more circular economy. Improved innovation and in-service performance is required, whilst addressing the socio-economic drivers of reducing process waste, and emissions, and development cycle  times.

Our focus on metals process innovation is the “missing gap” between small-scale laboratory metals processing and the industrial scale. Through a combination of small-scale experiments, materials characterisation, and modelling, our aim is to develop an integrated computational materials engineering approach to metals processing across the whole manufacturing process, accelerating manufacturing agility and efficiency.

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Our Equipment

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