This four-year PhD project aims to support the UK Atomic Energy Authority’s (UKAEA) mission to advance sustainable fusion energy and maximize its scientific and economic benefits. Future fusion reactors will harness the reaction between deuterium and tritium to produce significant amounts of low-carbon energy. Since tritium is a scarce resource, it must be generated in-situ through the transmutation of lithium, necessitating the design of a sophisticated breeder blanket that surrounds the plasma chamber. The breeder blanket operates under extreme environmental conditions, including high temperatures and intense neutron irradiation. These conditions span multiple time and length scales and involve various interdependent physical phenomena, making accurate prediction and design challenging. Consequently, developing breeder blankets requires multiphysics models that account for neutron and thermal transport, stress and strain, and fluid mechanics. UKAEA’s current multiphysics models include a basic framework for tritium transport through materials. However, this existing model lacks the capability to account for complex phenomena such as radiation-driven diffusion. Therefore, the primary goal of this project is to develop advanced tritium diffusion models for fusion reactors and integrate them into UKAEA’s multiphysics modelling framework. These models will be further parameterized using atomistic simulation techniques, including classical Molecular Dynamics (cMD) and Density Functional Theory (DFT). Once fully implemented and parameterised the multiphysics model will be employed to develop advanced breeder blankets for reactors, such as the UK Government’s Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production (STEP).
This project is offered through the SATURN CDT (Skills And Training Underpinning a Renaissance in Nuclear Centre for Doctoral Training): https://www.saturn-nuclear-cdt.manchester.ac.uk/
For informal enquiries, please contact Dr Samuel Murphy (samuel.murphy@lancaster.ac.uk).
Candidates interested in applying should first send an email expressing interest to saturn@manchester.ac.uk as soon as possible and by the closing date: 31st May 2025.
For further information: https://www.saturn-nuclear-cdt.manchester.ac.uk/
For further information: https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/engineering/
SATURN_Nuclear_CDT
