The five-year program, funded by UK Research and Innovation and industry partners, seeks to strengthen the UK's energy security and support its net-zero goals by recycling irradiated graphite and engineering new, high-performance materials for nuclear power plants.
The University of Manchester has been awarded a substantial £13 million funding package to lead a groundbreaking five-year program, named ENLIGHT, which promises to revolutionize the role of nuclear graphite in the UK’s energy landscape. This initiative is a critical step towards deploying next-generation advanced modular reactors (AMRs) and securing a sustainable, domestic supply chain for a material essential to nuclear power.
The program, spearheaded by a team at The University of Manchester, is funded by an £8.2 million grant from UK Research and Innovation’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), with an additional £5 million contributed by industry partners and other higher education institutions. ENLIGHT’s primary objective is to address two pressing challenges: the UK's complete reliance on overseas suppliers for high-grade nuclear graphite and the growing stockpile of irradiated graphite waste from existing reactors.
Professor Abbie Jones, Chair in Nuclear Graphite at The University of Manchester and the Principal Investigator for the project, underscored the urgency and significance of the initiative. "Nuclear graphite plays a vital role in the safety and efficiency of advanced reactors, yet the UK currently relies on overseas suppliers for this material," she stated. "ENLIGHT will lay the foundation to re-establish the UK-based graphite supply chain while developing sustainable solutions to recycle and reuse irradiated graphite—transforming a growing waste stream into a valuable resource."
Graphite is a key component in many AMR designs, including high-temperature gas-cooled reactors and molten salt reactors. It acts as a moderator, a crucial element that helps to sustain nuclear reactions efficiently and safely. This material can constitute up to one-third of a reactor’s construction costs. With the nation's existing fleet of advanced gas-cooled reactors (AGRs) set to be retired by 2028 and over 100,000 tonnes of irradiated graphite already in storage, the need for sustainable, sovereign solutions has become paramount.
The ENLIGHT program will tackle these challenges through a three-pronged approach: developing sustainable graphite solutions, engineering new high-performance materials, and studying their behavior under extreme conditions to maximize lifespan and efficiency. The project’s research streams will focus on methods to safely decontaminate, recycle, and repurpose irradiated graphite for reuse, as well as designing new materials capable of withstanding the demanding environments inside next-generation reactors. These advancements are projected to save the UK an estimated £2 billion in long-term waste management costs.
