Sunday 25 May 2014
NNL Publishes 2012 Technical Review
NNL has published its 2012 Technical Review. This publication presents our technical activities and achievements over the year or so. We’ve had some great highlights and we have made significant progress in establishing NNL as a fully operational National Laboratory.
An important part of a fully functioning National Laboratory is its interactions with other key stakeholders and organisations. A ‘Hub and Node’ model (see page 28 of the Review) sees NNL helping to bring a range of stakeholders together for the benefit of the industry and ultimately for UK plc. Our research and development programme generates Intellectual Property, develops capabilities and supports collaborations across the entire nuclear fuel cycle.
Although we are fully funded through our own commercial work, NNL’s breadth goes beyond this to include independent and authoritative advice to the UK Government. We have played an integral role in offering technical advice to the government and the nuclear regulator in support of determining the UK position on nuclear following the unfortunate events in Japan last year. Some 40 of our people have been involved one way or another, ranging from the Managing Director advising Mike Weightman (the Chief Inspector) to a secondee in the British Embassy in Tokyo.
NNL has published a number of position papers in the past year, providing a clear, high level view on specific technical and policy issues. Our position papers on Thorium and UK Nuclear Horizons can be downloaded from www.nnl.co.uk/positionpapers
But these are the tip of the iceberg. This Technical Review covers a wide range of our activities ranging from modelling work, to characterisation, plant support and European programmes.
