Henry Royce Institute & UK Atomic Energy Authority

About us

The Henry Royce Institute is the UK's national institute for advanced materials research and innovation.
Royce supports world-recognised excellence in UK materials research, accelerating commercial exploitation of innovations and delivering positive economic and societal impact for the UK:
• Enabling national materials research foresighting, collaboration and strategy
• Providing access to the latest facilities and capability
• Catalysing industrial collaboration and exploitation of materials research
• Fostering materials science skills development, innovation training and outreach
Royce is involved in a growing number of major collaborations programmes with the aim of leveraging the UK’s infrastructure to tackle global challenges. Many of these programmes create links between leading businesses, SMEs, Research and Technology Organisations (RTOs), local authorities and central government with goal of supporting the translation of research into new materials and technologies. This collaborative model encourages a joined up ecosystem in materials innovation, providing a clear pipeline for the translation from fundamental research to technologies which can be scaled-up and integrated by industry.

UKAEA’s Materials Research Facility (MRF) prepares and examines samples of radioactive materials to assess their performance in nuclear reactors. It is part of the UK Government’s National Nuclear User Facility and the Henry Royce Institute for Advanced Materials.

The Nuclear Materials Research Area seeks to enable innovation in radioactive/irradiated materials research to facilitate advancements in all nuclear sectors: civil, space, defence and security, legacy waste and decommissioning, and medical isotopes. Driving improvements in cross cutting themes including nuclear specific skills and training, sustainability and life cycle assessment, Materials 4.0, and Equality-Diversity-Inclusion. The Nuclear Materials Research Area is resourced by four Henry Royce Institute partners, namely University of Manchester (Royce Hub & Dalton Cumbria Facility), the University of Sheffield, UKAEA and UKNNL. This enables research to be conducted across a wide range of radioactivity levels. The Nuclear Materials programme is structured around four flagship research topics: 1) Plutonium Lifecycle, 2) Materials Degradation, 3) High Temperature Systems and 4) Advanced Nuclear Fuels; these research topics are designed to investigate materials selection, manufacturing, and data challenges. The Nuclear Materials Research Area investigates radioactive materials, whereas the Materials Systems for Demanding Environments and Advanced Metals Processing Research Areas address the research needs of non-radioactive materials and applications not subjected to irradiated operating conditions.