Home | National Nuclear User Facility

The National Nuclear User Facility (NNUF) project is a Government investment in the UK’s nuclear future, providing state-of-the-art experimental facilities for research and development in nuclear science and technology. NNUF was established to support the Government Nuclear Industrial Strategy launched in March 2013, and had substantial additional funding awarded in 2019. There are currently 30 facilities housed in 12 universities, the UK Atomic Energy Authority, the National Nuclear Laboratory and Diamond Light Source, most of them available for external access to undertake work on nuclear materials.

As an exciting new development, the UK Government awarded in 2019 a further £80m to enhance national facilities for the study of radioactive materials; this is known as Phase 2 of the National Nuclear User Facility project.

NNUF(2) will run until March 2024, and supports 30 individual projects in UK universities and national laboratories, including a neutron source at Birmingham University, investment in facilities for nuclear robotics at Bristol, Manchester and UKAEA, and a new active Atom Probe Tomography facility in Oxford.

Information about the impact of NNUF can be viewed on the impact page of this website. According to Scopus, there are currently 95 publications acknowledging support from NNUF (which have been cited 534 times).

The £80m award also includes £6.5m to allow any UK-based university researcher (or employee of other organizations eligible to apply for UKRI funding) to apply to use these new facilities as they come online. (Applications from international academics may also be eligible: please see the rules of the scheme for further details).

The facilities are free at the point of access, and application rounds are run quarterly. (Applications for modest amounts of funding can be submitted at any time and will be evaluated swiftly). The 12th call (to cover access commencing primarily in the period July - September 2023) is now open, with a closing date of 31st May 2023.