Job Description

Company Description
By 2050, the planet could be using twice as much electricity compared to today. Are you interested in contributing and helping to shape the future of the world's energy? If so, read on.
Fusion, the process that powers the Sun and Stars, is one of the most promising options for generating the cleaner, carbon-free energy that our world badly needs.
UKAEA leads the way in realizing fusion energy, partnering with industry and research for groundbreaking advancements. Our goal is to bring fusion electricity to the grid, supported by tomorrow's power stations. In pursuit of our mission, UKAEA embraces core values: Innovative, Committed, Trusted, and Collaborative.
As an employee of UKAEA you will benefit from:

• Outstanding defined benefit pension scheme, details of which can be found at the end of this advert.
• Corporate bonus scheme up to 7% and a Relocation allowance (if eligible).
• Flexible working options including family friendly policies and the right to request flexible working from the start of your employment.
• Employee Assistance Programme and trained Mental Health First Aiders,
• Generous annual leave allowance starting with 25 days, plus 3 days Christmas closure and 2.5 privilege days, in addition to UK bank holidays
• Wide range of career development opportunities
• A vibrant culture committed to equality and being fully inclusive

What to expect in our recruitment process:
For a step-by-step overview of how we hire from application to offer please see our Recruitment Process page:

The salary for this role is 42,858 - 56,596 (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.
The Role
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 is to model/ document disruptions and 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 and 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.
• To 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 agree 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

Additional Information
A full list of our benefits can be found here
UKAEA's mission is clean energy for all, and we welcome talented people from all backgrounds who want to help us achieve our mission. We are under-represented from some groups and so want to encourage applications in particular from women in STEM, people from Black British Caribbean and African backgrounds and from Pakistani and Bangladeshi British backgrounds. Our Executive team, supported by our 'Head of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion' (EDI) and Wellbeing and our EDI Networks actively promote Inclusion and takes steps to increase diversity within our organization. We reinforce best practices in recruitment and selection and evaluate approaches to remove barriers to success.
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.

Skills Required