Overview
The position will be allocated within the iMAGINE project of the RAEng Chair in emerging technologies, delivering computational modules for improved modelling and simulation of highly innovative nuclear reactor systems with strongly improved sustainability and proliferation resistance to deliver the nuclear technologies of the 21st century.
About this opportunity
Molten Salt Reactors (MSRs) are a next-generation nuclear reactor technology outlined by Generation IV International Forum, fulfilling sustainability, economics, safety, and proliferation resistance goals. The interest in MSRs, especially the attention from industry and research communities, has significantly increased in recent years due to the numerous sustainability, safety, and operational benefits. MSRs have the potential to close the nuclear fuel cycle, significantly reduce the amount of nuclear waste produced, and even operate on spent nuclear fuel from existing nuclear reactors, while opening the opportunity for significantly reducing the fuel cycle and the production cost of energy.
In the frame of developing an innovative reactor system, the design of experiment and the related modelling and simulation tools is the first important step, which, if successful, a stepping stone into a considerably large and complex programme. In addition, both approaches are often seen as a low-cost and low-risk opportunity to study a novel reactor system. Among other things, the experiments will provide valuable data for validation and verification of nuclear codes, create an improved understanding of the developing system and prove its safety to the regulator, while the modelling and simulation tools are essential for designing the experiments as well as creating deeper system understanding. Both approaches will educate the UK in designing, licensing, constructing, commissioning, and operating a new kind of innovative reactor.
The candidate will typically focus on one of the approaches and learn how the work will integrate into the wider picture of an innovative nuclear system development for the 21st century.
The work is sponsored by the RAEng Chair in Emerging Technologies.