On 18th July 2023 DESNZ Secretary of State Grant Shapps announced the launch of new UK nuclear body Great British Nuclear. GBN is tasked with helping deliver the government’s commitment to provide a quarter of the UK’s electricity from nuclear energy by 2050. In addition grant funding was announced to support several Advanced Nuclear technology (ANT) projects.
- Companies can register their interest with GBN to participate in a competition to secure funding support to develop their Small Modular Reactor (SMR) technology.
- Up to £53.5 million funding to support 2 high temperature gas reactor (HTGR) reactor designs and to develop sovereign coated particle fuel capability, a type of robust advanced fuel which is suitable for high temperature reactors. The reactor programme will fund Front End Engineering Design and supporting activities until March 2025, to help enable an AMR demonstration by the early 2030s as part of the AMR Research Development and Demonstration (RD&D) Phase B. Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation (USNC) UK will build on USNC’s existing micro modular reactor (MMR®) design to develop a modified MMR3 design that is best suited to UK industry’s current and projected future process heat demands. National Nuclear Laboratory (NNL) in partnership with its Japanese counterpart the Japanese Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA) will progress the design of an HTGR based on the decades of HTGR R&D in Japan. The UK Coated Particle Fuel programme is led by NNL working with support from JAEA and will continue a vital programme to develop and produce coated particle fuel.
- Separately DESNZ has awarded up to £4 million funding to Ove Arup and Partners Limited who are leading a consortium with partners NNL and Bangor University for the AMR Knowledge Capture project, as a complementary project to the AMR RD&D programme. The project seeks to facilitate knowledge capture and sharing to reduce the time, risk, and cost of AMR RD&D programme delivery, and provide UK organisations with valuable knowledge to leverage against international funding.