Digital techniques will be used to achieve advances in reactor design under the £2.9m contract from the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy (BEIS).
The company will set up and run a UK digital reactor design partnership that will use virtual engineering and high-performance computing to enhance the techniques used to design reactors and optimise their performance.
“We see the Digital Reactor Design programme as the first stage in transforming the way that the UK nuclear industry will design and build new facilities and strengthen capabilities across the sector for the future,” said Clive White, president of Amec Foster Wheeler’s Clean Energy business.
“I’m very pleased to have awarded virtual engineering, structural materials and nuclear design codes and standards contracts to Amec Foster Wheeler,” said Richard Harrington, energy minister at BEIS. “Partnering with leading UK organisations in the nuclear industry will have a big part to play in helping deliver on our department’s big initiatives, including the Clean Growth Plan and the Industrial Strategy.”
Amec Foster Wheeler is supported by partners and sub-contractors from industry, academia and science, including the University of Liverpool’s Virtual Engineering Centre, the Hartree Centre, National Nuclear Laboratory, Rolls-Royce, EDF Energy, the University of Cambridge and Imperial College London.
The project is part of a broader effort to put UK industry at the forefront of developing Generation IV and small modular reactors, which could play a key role in meeting the UK’s future energy needs.
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