Do you want to help shape the future of the world’s energy?
There are a multitude of exciting career opportunities at UKAEA’s fusion research and technology programme at Culham Science Centre.
Why join us?
CCFE and its operator the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) lead the world in fusion research, with a wide range of programmes working on the key challenges of putting fusion power on the grid.
UKAEA operates the world’s largest fusion experiment, JET, on behalf of EU partners. JET plays a critical role in preparing for the next step international device ITER. In spite of Brexit, future funding prospects for JET look very positive; a contract for operation until the end of 2020 has been agreed, and negotiations between the UK and EU for funding well into the mid 2020s are well advanced.
In addition, UKAEA’s research and technology activities are growing rapidly with exciting new experiments and facilities operating or under construction.
These include:
The UK’s £50M compact fusion experiment MAST Upgrade, due to start operations in early 2020;
Ground-breaking work in our RACE robotics test facility for fusion, fission and other industries;
A thriving materials science programme centred on the new Materials Research Facility at Culham; £86M of funding secured for tritium and components testing facilities, to be constructed by 2021 at Culham and at a new centre in Rotherham, Yorkshire;
A hi-tech apprentice training centre, Oxfordshire Advanced Skills, which opened in September 2019.
A major new project – the Spherical Tokamak for Energy Production or ‘STEP’ – is building on all of this expertise and starting to design a UK compact fusion power plant.
UKAEA needs to recruit a very wide range of technical and support staff to ensure all of these activities fulfil their objectives – a great time to be joining the quest for fusion energy!