Westinghouse Electric Company said Thursday that its nuclear fuel processing facility in Britain had reached a milestone in Small Modular Reactor (SMR) technology. From the small town of Chorley, England, northwest of Manchester, the company said that its Springfields facility had reached the requirements necessary to manufacture Westinghouse SMR fuel.
This is a first for Britain, Westinghouse said, adding that the readiness milestone “is an important part of Westinghouse's proposed partnership with the U.K. Government to deploy SMR technology.”
Westinghouse envisions the United Kingdom as advancing to the point it becomes a global provider for advanced SMR technology. A critical benefit to that development would be highly skilled, highly paid jobs, “something that no other SMR technology provider currently offers … in the U.K.,” said Westinghouse Springfields Managing Director Mick Gornall in a statement.
The milestone in SMR fuel processing was achieved following a readiness assessment based upon fabrication data for two proprietary SMR fuel assemblies manufactured at Westinghouse's Columbia Fuel Fabrication Facility in Columbia, S.C.