risk research posts at the Sheffield centre

Dozens of jobs are to be axed at a flagship research center at the University of Sheffield.

Staff at the Advanced Nuclear Manufacturing Research Center (AMRC), which employs around 120 in Sheffield and another 30 in Derby and Warrington, were told of the possible cuts in a video call where they were told of the redundancies.

Only about 30 employees will be retained, and they will be absorbed into the larger, university-run Advanced Manufacturing Research Center, which has about 700 employees. Times Higher Education understand.

Nuclear AMRC is one of seven High Value Manufacturing Catapult centers brought together in 2011 by Innovate UK to support the commercialization of new products and processes.

The center is owned by the University of Sheffield but overseen by industrial partners such as Rolls-Royce, Sheffield Forgemasters and French energy giant EDF, which have made multi-million pound investments at its site on the Sheffield-Rotherham border.

The centre’s research has been seen as crucial to ensuring a new generation of small modular reactors (SMRs) are built in the UK, which could provide up to 40,000 manufacturing jobs in South Yorkshire.

Delays in the European SMR rollout – caused in part by concerns over the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident – ​​meant that anticipated reactor orders did not materialize as hoped. However, nuclear industry leaders insist that efforts to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050 will require the creation of these power stations, which have cost around £1.8bn each.

Richard Caborn, former MP for Sheffield, said he was “very concerned” about the proposed cuts to research jobs as the Nuclear AMRC “has been instrumental in working with the UK supply chain to ensure that when we start building these SMRs are built in the UK. “.

“We have seen in recent years that security of energy supply is as important as national security and nuclear power will be part of our energy security going forward,” said Mr Caborn, who was trade minister in the Blair government.

Given the centre’s strategic importance to nuclear power, there was a “strong case” for nuclear AMRC to be taken out of university control and nationalised, Mr Caborn added.

“Nuclear AMRC is of national importance to both industrial strategy and energy security – its future should not be decided by an individual institution, so it should be taken out of the hands of the university,” he said, noting that the manufacturer defense firm Sheffield Forgemasters was taken over by the government in 2021 because the parts it manufactured were vital for Royal Navy ships and submarines.

Koen Lamberts, Sheffield’s vice-chancellor, said the proposed redundancies and “changes to the current structure of AMRC Nuclear” would help “deliver our priorities around clean energy research and innovation”.

“The proposals have been shared with our Nuclear AMRC staff and there will be a 90-day consultation to review the proposals and explore future options. We are actively working to reduce the need for redundancies where possible and are supporting our staff throughout the change process,” Professor Lamberts said.

“The plans propose that Nuclear AMRC’s core manufacturing research and development activities will be retained by the University of Sheffield,” he added, stating that “the proposed changes reflect the university’s key strength in nuclear manufacturing research and development” and that ” our work to support SMR design and production will continue to grow and provide significant opportunities for the South Yorkshire region.”

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