Sheffield, Derby and Warrington are often regarded as the UK’s nuclear triangle because of the number of advanced engineering companies located in or between them, also including Rolls Royce’s Derby plant.
Koen Lamberts, Sheffield’s vice-chancellor, said the proposed redundancies and “changes to the current structure of the Nuclear AMRC” would help to “deliver our priorities around clean energy research and innovation”.
He said: “Our work to support the design and production of SMRs will continue to grow and offer significant opportunities for the South Yorkshire region.”
Nuclear AMRC is one of seven High Value Manufacturing Catapult centres that were brought together in 2011 by Innovate UK to support commercialisation of new products and processes.
Mr Lamberts said: “The proposals have been shared with our Nuclear AMRC staff and there will be a 90-day consultation to consider the proposals and explore future options. We are actively working to reduce the need for redundancies.
“The plans propose that the Nuclear AMRC’s core manufacturing research and development activities will be retained by the University of Sheffield. We continue to work with the nuclear sector and funders to look at options for some of the Nuclear AMRC’s wider work – including supply chain development, policy work and business development.”
Its core facility is an 8,000 sq metres custom-built research factory containing more than £35m of state-of-the-art manufacturing equipment tailored for nuclear industry applications.
The building acts as a research factory for innovative and optimised processes in machining, welding and other key areas of large-scale manufacturing technology.
Another custom-built facility at Infinity Park, Derby, focuses on engineering research for the nuclear supply chain. It includes a massive workshop with 50 tonne cranes to build large fabrications, plus a range of 3D printing and other prototyping.
The overhaul comes as Great British Nuclear (GBN), a government arms-length body created to drive forward delivery of new nuclear-generating capacity in the UK, runs a competition to select two designs of SMR to take forward for development.