Nuclear energy: Imperial staff and students forge new collaborations

As the UK gears up for a new wave of nuclear energy infrastructure, Imperial is consolidating its expertise in research, training and consultancy.

In September, the UK Government gave the green light to build a new nuclear power plant at Hinkley Point in Somerset. It will be the first such nuclear plant in the UK for 20 years and will be built by French energy company EDF, with investment from China General Nuclear.

With all the controversy surrounding that decision, it’s easy to forget that the UK was a trailblazer in the early days of civil nuclear technology – the Calder Hall power plant in Cumbria was the world’s first commercial nuclear power station, connecting to the national grid on 27 August 1956.

Imperial too played its role in the nascent industry, hosting one of only a few small-scale research reactors in the UK at the Silwood Park Campus, using it to prepare undergraduates for work in the sector and also to carry out research. Completed in 1963, the reactor shut down in 2012 and is currently being decommissioned – making it one of longest running research reactors in the world.

Imperial's Reactor Centre at Silwood Park

With global commitments to curb climate change, nuclear is back in the spotlight as a low-carbon, base-load power source, and Imperial is once again aiming to play a key supporting role – this time through the cross-departmental, cross-faculty Centre for Nuclear Engineering (CNE).

New wave

Formed in 2008, the CNE coordinates nuclear research from all areas of the College; administers undergraduate and postgraduate degrees; creates dialogue with industry; and even gets involved in outreach and online learning initiatives.

“The really exciting thing about nuclear is that it’s such a huge field, such a collection of activities, and there’s something for everyone,” says CNE Director Dr Mike Bluck (left).

“It’s about bringing people in; as nuclear grows, there’ll be more and more opportunities for those who’d never thought of doing it. I honestly believe there’s not a single area of the College that couldn’t contribute in some way. I recently had a conversation with Rolls Royce about their plans for making civil reactors and it cropped up that they need to do seismic assessments. Well we have people who do that at Imperial – using satellites for example. That’s a new connection that’s been made. In other areas it might involve using synthetic microorganisms to extract waste.”

Research at the CNE looks at five principal areas covering the entire end-to-end nuclear cycle: the manufacturing of the fuel itself; designing, operating and maintaining nuclear reactors; managing spent fuel and waste; investigating long-term repositories for the most toxic waste; and finally nuclear policy, security and regulation.

The Centre For Nuclear Engineering

Some of that research is fundamental, exploratory science, as Imperial has been doing in this area for more than 50 years – while other research is reactive to the contemporary needs of industry in this fast changing field. “It’s an exciting time right now,” says Mike. “For many years the work has been focused on maintaining and extending the life of current reactors – crucial, interesting work, but perhaps not always so aspirational and inspiring. But we’re now in a position where new build is actually happening. There’s tremendous opportunity to work on future designs.”

Collaboration

The College, alongside Bangor University, this month signed a memorandum of understanding with Hitachi-GE to collaborate on research into Advanced Boiling Water Reactors. The Japanese-US conglomerate is planning to build new nuclear power plants in Anglesey, North Wales and Oldbury in Gloucestershire.

Looking further to the future, Mike is particularly enthused at the possibility of working with long-term Imperial partner Rolls Royce on its plans to build small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs). These are essentially miniature versions of full scale reactors like Hinkley, but crucially they can be built almost entirely in factories, then transported by road or rail to site – making them more cost effective.

“The intention is to build reactors on a production line; it’s what’s known as an investable model,” Mike explains. “You need around £20 billion to build a full-scale, one-off reactor and it’s difficult to persuade investors, as Hinkley has shown. But people are more willing to invest a one or two billion [pounds] for the design and production infrastructure for a fleet of small modular reactors. That’s routine. It’s the same risk and outlay as is if you decide to build a new jet engine design.”

The small modular reactor concept also plays into ambitions for a more distributed ‘smart-grid’ that is responsive to the needs of communities.

A Festival visitor tries out robotic-assisted nuclear decommissioning

But clearly if we are ever going to see mini nuclear reactors in our towns and cities, there will need to be a collective journey with the public in terms of understanding and acceptance – something Mike and the whole CNE team are only too aware of.

“We do a lot of outreach work, for example at Imperial Festival, Cambridge Science Festival and public lectures to create discussion and we’re trying to grow that even more. History has shown that if you’re going to pursue nuclear, you have to open about it.”

PhD student Dimitri Pletser (right) and Professor Bill Lee (centre) visited Fukushima last year to see the clean-up operations. Dimitri’s project focuses on developing glass composite material wasteforms from Fukushima.