Last updated at 20:31, Thursday, 05 July 2012

Melanie Brownridge, head of research and development for the NDA.

Cumbrian businesses are being urged to bid for a share of a £15m fund set up by Government organisations including the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) to develop Britain’s nuclear supply chain.

The fund, called Developing the Civil Nuclear Power Supply Chain, will help finance feasibility projects, R&D schemes and Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTP) designed to stimulate innovation in Britain’s civil nuclear power sector.

The aim is to develop a network of UK companies that can seize the huge opportunities offered by the expanding UK and global nuclear industries over the coming decades.

The NDA will invest money from its R&D budget into the fund, along with contributions from the Technology Strategy Board, the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC).

The worldwide market for new civil nuclear power plants could be worth as much as £600 billion over the next 20 years, it is estimated, and the decommissioning, waste treatment and disposal industries could be worth £250 billion.

British firms are already capable of providing an estimated 70 per cent of the components needed to build a civil nuclear power plant, a study by the Nuclear Industries Association has found.

But for the UK to fully realise that potential, companies must work more closely together to transfer skills and technologies between different industries, the research found.

This new fund is designed to help foster that collaborative spirit.

Melanie Brownridge, the NDA’s head of R&D, said: “The NDA is committed to encouraging innovation as it progresses the safe decommissioning of the UK’s firstgeneration of nuclear facilities.

“We see investment in R&D as a key element in this long-term mission and are particularly keen for Cumbrian businesses, especially SMEs, to take part.

“We held a brokering event at Rheged, Penrith, in May for potential collaborators on decommissioning projects where we saw a fantastic turnout from companies already engaged in the industry and those from other sectors such as oil and gas keen to apply their technologies to the nuclear market.

“We have such a strong and diverse SME community in Cumbria and we believe this new fund can provide an excellent opportunity for those firms to work together to bring innovative approaches to the decommissioning challenge.”

Up to £12 million is available for collaborative R&D projects.

Schemes must be business-led and successful projects would receive 50 per cent of funding from the public sector. Schemes are expected to be worth a total of between £500,000 and £2m, though projects over that threshold will be considered.

The competition opened on 2 July 2012 and the deadline for registrations is 29 August 2012.

Up to £2 million is available for feasibility studies, which must be led by a small or medium-sized enterprise (SME) and be collaborative.

Successful projects would receive 75 per cent of their funding from the public sector, with grants not exceeding £75,000.

The competition opened on 2 July 2012. The deadline for registrations is 29 August 2012 and the deadline for applications is September 5 2012.

Bids are being invited from businesses in the following sectors: advanced manufacturing, construction and maintenance; condition monitoring, instrumentation and control; materials and modelling; and decommissioning and waste management.

An open category has also been created for highly innovative technologies not covered by the other categories.

In a separate competition, up to £1 million is available to support KTPs - schemes that support the transfer of skills and technologies between academia and industry.

The KTP competition opens on 2 July. The deadline for applications is 4 October 2012.

A competition briefing event will be held on 10 July by the Technology Strategy Board.

For further information and to register for the competition, visit www.innovateuk.org, email support@innovateuk.org or call 0300 321 4357

First published at 13:19, Thursday, 05 July 2012
Published by http://www.in-cumbria.com