📖Program Curriculum
Project details
Within many industries, there is the need to process materials with hazardous properties, which would put regular machines and their operators at high risk. This four-year, fully funded PhD programme offers the candidate the opportunity to participate in critical research on the safe and effective use of lasers in nuclear decommissioning.
The project aspires to develop a new scientific and engineering understanding of the strategies for laser cutting and collecting the unique volatile materials present in this highly challenging application. This industrially sponsored PhD programme is a collaboration between Loughborough University and the National Nuclear Laboratory (NNL), where you will develop your research skills and knowledge alongside opportunities to attend academic conferences and apply your research in an industrial environment. You will be supported by a supervisory team from Loughborough University and the National Nuclear Laboratory.
Nuclear decommissioning is a vast international industry supporting clean energy production, and UK expertise is sought worldwide. It is expected to cost the UK £130bn and take 120 years to clean up our existing infrastructure, motivating the development of new technologies that will impact productivity and safety in this industry. Laser cutting was selected as one of the most suitable methods due to the fine detail of cutting and process control that can be achieved with a remotely controllable process.
Although laser cutting has been used in manufacturing for many years, its effects and the by-products of processing contaminated radioactive materials are relatively unknown. There are many challenges to performing laser by-product (fume/particulate) abatement in nuclear decommissioning (cutting and decontamination). The need is to reduce the current spread of contamination and the burden on building extract filters. The research aims to develop a novel engineering capability to capture, locally, the dust/fume generated when using lasers for cutting or decontamination by robots in nuclear decommissioning. The proposed research will identify the physical phenomena that can be used to handle and separate laser-generated fume for pre-filtering and use this new knowledge to develop solutions for localised separation and pre-filtering systems to enable laser cutting in radioactive environments.
The first year of the PhD will take place at Loughborough University to undertake initial research training and develop core engineering expertise in high-power laser processing. Years 2-4 of the PhD will be based at the Centre for Innovative Nuclear Decommissioning (CINDe) at the NNL facility in Workington, Cumbria, using the laser equipment within the National Nuclear User Facility: Hot Robotics Facility. While there, you will receive additional support and supervision from experienced nuclear scientists.
Show less
