The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills has awarded £37.1 million to the University of Sheffield’s Nuclear Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre (Nuclear AMRC), which is working in partnership with Rolls-Royce as the lead company for the UK Nuclear supply chain. The Nuclear AMRC has been awarded the funds — subject to the usual due diligence — to support its large-scale programme of supplier development and manufacturing research in partnership with key industrial members. The programme focuses on the Civil Nuclear new-build industry, but could be applied across the ‘nuclear value chain’, as well as other industries in the energy sector.

The director of the Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre, Professor Keith Ridgway, said: “The programme we are operating at the Nuclear AMRC is ambitious and high-impact when compared to other supplier development initiatives, providing strong support for UK suppliers that want to be involved with the global civil nuclear industry, and creating process technology and intellectual property that will enable export-led growth and long-term competitive advantage for UK supply chains. It is believed that this market could be worth more than £500 billion over the next 10 years.”

The news came as Britain’s nuclear expansion plans were boosted after Japan’s Hitachi signed a £700 million deal that will enable it to start building the next generation of power plants. These facilities, which could be feeding electricity into the national grid in the first half of the 2020s, are expected to generate enough electricity to power 14 million homes over 60 years.