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.

Toshiba and GDF Suez completed a deal that will give Toshiba a majority stake in a consortium and help to push new builds at the Moorside nuclear power plant in England.

Toshiba completed the purchase of an additional 10 percent share in NuGeneration Ltd. (NuGen) from GDF Suez, bringing its total ownership stake to 60 percent. GDF Suez will retain a 40 percent stake in NuGen, the company that is building three Westinghouse AP1000 reactors at the nuclear plant in West Cumbria. Each reactor is expected to take four years to build and the plant is scheduled for completion by 2024 with a generating capacity of 3.4-GW. A deal has also been completed with the UK’s Nuclear Decommissioning Authority for the extension of a land option agreement for Moorside.

NuGen will begin taking a range of preparatory works, including regulatory, permitting and commercial activities before the final investment decision sometime around 2018.

Westinghouse said it will use its Springfields facility in the UK to manufacture the fuel for the AP1000 reactors. The facility currently manufactures fuel for the entire UK fleet of advanced gas-cooled reactors, and pressurized water reactor fuel for export.