Toshiba, in conjunction with Ibiden, has produced a new manufacturing technology for reactor core applications in nuclear power plants.

The technology reactor core material using silicon carbide (SiC) has been used by Toshiba and Ibiden to create a prototype fuel assembly cover.

The two companies have been working together with Nuclear Fuel Industries and Professor Yutaka Kagawa of the Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology (RCAST) of the University of Tokyo, and Professor Takashi Goto of the Institute for Materials Research of Tohoku University in Japan.

In addition to being applied to the production of fuel cladding tubes, the new manufacturing technology can also be used to create specially shaped items such as thin-wall, long cylinders.

Toshiba and Ibiden will test the new fuel assembly cover, for data collection and verification purposes, in 2016 in a research reactor.

The firms aim to put the cover to practical use by around 2025 as a replacement part for operating nuclear power plants, Toshiba said.