About

Nuclear Science and Technology Applied Research (N-STAR) forms a hub of research that is distributed across a number of schools across the University of Liverpool.

There is a rich history of nuclear research at the University of Liverpool. This includes work by two Nobel Prize winners: Sir James Chadwick for Physics in 1935 and Joseph Rotblatt for Peace in 1995.

Today, there is significant nuclear research activity taking place in Computer Science (Autonomous Systems); Electrical Engineering (plasma-material interactions); Engineering (colloidal dispersion and computational model validation); Environmental Sciences (climate change impacts); Physics (gamma-ray vision systems and neutrino detection systems) and the Institute for Risk and Uncertainty (safety analysis and probabilistic risk assessments).

In addition to the research taking place here, we have a number of collaborations that enable access to facilities and expertise across the UK and beyond, including:

National Nuclear Laboratory

Our Strategic Partnership Agreement (SPA) with the National Nuclear Laboratory (NNL) provides access to NNL’s Central Laboratory at Sellafield, where staff and students can perform experiments on radioactive material.

A number of visiting and joint appointments have been made under the SPA, including Dr Bruno Merk as the NNL/Royal Academy Research Professor in Computational Modelling for Nuclear Engineering.

Dalton Cumbria Facility

We also have an agreement with The University of Manchester that provides access for Liverpool staff and students to the Dalton Cumbria Facility, which includes an accelerator and Cobalt source.

National Tsing Hua University

We have established a dual PhD programme with National Tsing Hua University (NTHU) in Taiwan. As part of the programme, students have access to the THOR research reactor on the NTHU campus.