With nuclear power back on the government’s energy agenda, the University of Manchester is working hard to meet the demands of the industry. David Casey finds out more.
Only a few years ago the idea that the UK would see a wave of nuclear activity looked the stuff of fantasy. A slump in energy prices meant British Energy had to be bailed out by the government to the tune of £3bn, while the industry was under attack from environmentalists for being allegedly unsafe, uneconomical and a danger to the planet.Ministers were undecided about the UK’s future energy needs. How to balance the issues of climate change and energy security had become a reoccurring dilemma as North Sea supplies of oil and gas dwindled, with the first-generation nuclear power stations came to the end of their useful life.
Although it was assumed a mix of traditional supply and renewable energy would lead the way, the Energy Review in 2005 proposed a reappraisal of the UK’s nuclear energy policy, overturning a report in 2003 that said nuclear power was “an unattractive option”.
Two years later and the sea change in nuclear thinking was complete. The Energy White Paper published in May 2007 ended a 20-year standstill, giving the go-ahead to a new generation of reactors. Bullish statements from John Hutton, secretary of state for business, enterprise and regulatory reform, in March 2008, also removed any lingering doubt about the government’s conversion to a new build programme.
French group EDF is now committed to building four nuclear reactors in the UK after its £12.5bn takeover of British Energy in September 2008. It expects to generate electricity to meet more than 13 per cent of forecasted energy demand by the early 2020s, a step towards increasing nuclear power output to 30 per cent over the next few decades, as Hutton envisaged.
But with new reactors, plus the task of decommissioning the UK’s inventory of eight stations and 15 reactors by 2035, comes the challenge of having the necessary skills to cope. It’s clear there will be significant demand in the future for nuclear engineers and scientists, meaning it’s essential there are quality research programmes and facilities to underpin work being carried out.
Universities are being tasked with providing the bodies to meet this demand and address years of underinvestment. At the forefront of this is the University of Manchester.
“Following the merger of the old Victoria University of Manchester and UMIST (University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology) in 2004, the university looked at what areas were going to allow it to become a world-leading institution,” says Dr Paul Howarth, director of research at the Dalton Nuclear Institute.
“Energy policy was still against nuclear at this time, but it was decided nuclear was one of those key areas. There was an enormous amount of nuclear capability across the university; it just needed to be harnessed to meet the demands of the industry.”
Plans were put in place to create a centre that would act as a focal point to drive forward its ambitions, and ranked within the top 25 universities worldwide. In July 2005 the Dalton Nuclear Institute was launched to address shortfalls in expertise, particularly decommissioning.
The work of the institute was designed to encompass a range of research, from radiochemistry and nuclear medicine to materials performance and regulation.
Howarth says: “We have an excellent relationship with BNFL in areas such as radiochemistry and materials performance, and we’re helping to develop new capability and support the clean-up programme with the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA).”
One particular area relevant to the nuclear renaissance is reactor technology and the university plans to extend further with the proposed establishment of the Centre for Nuclear Energy Technology (C-NET).
The investment in C-NET over the next five years is £25m in appointments, experimental facilities, IT hardware and software and access to overseas infrastructure. The university is raising £16m for the first phase, while the North West Science Council has endorsed a £4.2m investment and the university is negotiating the Northwest Regional Development Agency (NWDA) to secure the rest.
“We are proposing to invest in bringing the right people to Manchester and the right research facilities and supporting structure to conduct research, train people and provide education in reactor-related areas,” says Howarth.
The first major recruit is Professor Tim Abram who was named the new chair in nuclear fuel technology, coming from a senior fellowship with Nexia Solutions, the research and development arm of BNFL. The chair is funded by Westinghouse, the nuclear technology group owned by Toshiba, whose UK fuels business is based at Springfields in Preston. Westinghouse is also one of two companies having its reactor system assessed by the UK authorities.
Adrian Bull, stakeholder relations manager for Westinghouse UK, says establishing such links are essential. “We need to know we’ve got a gene pool coming out of academia,” he says.
“In the short term, courses give people an entry point into the industry. They can pick up a lot of the skills that will be needed in the future by companies such as Westinghouse. The research Manchester is doing in nuclear fuel and nuclear reactor technology is also important in the long term to determine where the next generation of reactor will come from.”
C-NET will be a distributed centre across the academic schools at Manchester, but link in with other academic institutions, the UK National Nuclear Laboratory, customers and funding agencies. The concept has been developed on assessment of the skills profile and R&D required to support new nuclear build.