Friday 30 September 2022

The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA) is requesting applications to its PhD bursary scheme, to support its mission to deliver safe, sustainable and publicly acceptable solutions to the challenge of decommissioning and clean-up of the UK’s civil nuclear legacy. The NDA’s goals for the scheme are to:

• Maintain and develop the key technical skills that will be required to help us carry out the mission over the coming decades
• Provide fundamental understanding of technologies and processes across the NDA estate
• Develop early stage technologies (TRL 1 – 3)
• Encourage two-way knowledge transfer between the academic and industrial communities working on nuclear decommissioning

What is not covered under the scheme is R&D focused on site-specific challenges such as improving the efficiency of an existing plant or process or on training resource in a specific capability. Those research areas are the responsibility of the individual subsidiaries and Site Licence Companies (SLCs).

This year, up to £750,000 is available from the NDA PhD bursary to support projects that will lead to the award of a PhD. Universities and Research Institutes are invited to make proposals up to a value of £145,000 per project. NDA recognises that cost of living increases have impacted postgraduate researchers. In line with the recent UKRI announcement, we expect students funded through the NDA PhD Bursary call to receive a stipend that is at least equivalent to those paid by UKRI, ie £17,668 FTE outside of London, or £19,668 FTE in London.

• For a description of the call research topics please click on this link
• For a description of the assessment process, please click on this link
• For additional background information to help define a successful proposal, please click on this link
• For a copy of the draft studentship agreement, please click on this link

Proposals must be submitted online by 15:00 on Thursday 1^st December 2022.

Further information on the scheme, the assessment criteria and selection process is also available by contacting the administrator, Dr Mark Bankhead directly at the following email address (mark.bankhead@uknnl.com) and within the documents posted on the NNL website.