Senior Tokamak Disruption Physicist in England

The salary for this role is 42858 - 56596 (inclusive of a Specialist Allowance). Onsite working is expected for 3 days each week; however, we actively support requests for flexible working. This role can be based at any of the following sites: Culham, Oxfordshire.

This role requires employees to complete an online Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS) including The Disclosure & Barring Service (DBS) checks for criminal convictions and possibly a search of open source data.

Are you looking for an exciting opportunity to make a difference? Join our team and contribute to the future of fusion energy. As Senior Tokamak Disruption Physicist, you will play a pivotal role in modelling/documenting disruptions, disruption mitigation and avoidance, and disruption forecasting in tokamaks. Understanding disruptions and how to avoid and mitigate them is an important step in the route to commercial fusion power. Various opportunities are available for this job holder including documenting and modelling disruptions on MAST-U, investigating disruptions in other EUROfusion machines including JET data, and understanding disruptions in future power plants such as STEP.

Additional Responsibilities:

• Propose, lead and carry out disruption experiments on MAST-U and develop the strategy for investigating disruptions and their mitigation on MAST-U.
• Use the database of MAST/MAST-U disruptions to improve the understanding of disruptions in spherical tokamaks.
• Model aspects of disruptions and their mitigation: tools may include MHD equilibrium and stability codes and nonlinear MHD codes including models of the conducting structures around the plasma and collaborate internationally on this work.
• Lead work with diagnosticians to document disruptions and mitigated disruptions.
• Participate in the WPTE EUROfusion programmes as appropriate, potentially also act as Scientific Coordinator for one of these experiments.
• Oversee PhD students from external universities and postdoctoral researchers, supervising project work and providing recommendations and direction to build on competence and capability.
• Manage research projects on disruption physics for over annual timescales e.g. for WPTE.
• Lead work on understanding the likely types of disruption on STEP and their consequences and develop mitigation and avoidance strategies.
• Write refereed journal articles and attend international conferences on magnetic fusion as agreed with management.
• Responsible for building a strong network of external collaborations.

Qualifications:

Essential Requirements:

• PhD in Physics or related field.
• Extensive knowledge of fusion plasma physics, radiation physics, and tokamak disruptions.
• Experience with modelling tools for tokamak disruptions and/or experimental disruption mitigation.
• Strong publication record in a closely related field.
• Demonstrated ability to consider safety in work planning.

Desirable Requirements:

• Experience leading experiments and supervising students or researchers.

UK Atomic Energy Authority is committed to being accessible. Please email if you have any questions or require help or adjustments to compete on a fair basis for example changes to the way we interview or share information.

Please note that vacancies are generally advertised for 4 weeks but may close earlier if we receive a large number of applications.

Remote Work: No

Employment Type: Full-time