PhD student in Nuclear Disarmament Verification

PhD student in Nuclear Disarmament Verification

Do you want to an expert in applied nuclear physics and work with the support of competent and friendly colleagues in an international environment? Welcome to apply for a PhD position at Uppsala University.

The Alva Myrdal Centre for Nuclear Disarmament (AMC) conducts research, teaching, and public outreach on the topic of nuclear disarmament. This PhD position is in a technical working group of AMC, placed at the division of Applied Nuclear Physics, department of Physics and Astronomy. The division has a broad research scope covering several topics related to nuclear fission and fusion.

Duties
You will carry out research within the technical verification of nuclear disarmament. Existing or future agreements may regulate various activities within the nuclear weapons program, such as the production and use of fissile material, the limitation or reduction of nuclear warheads, or the testing of nuclear weapons. In AMC's working group within technical verification, work is ongoing within several projects related to disarmament verification. Your work will be mainly focused on research within one or a couple of the projects in the list below. Please describe in your application which directions (A-C) you find most attractive, given your personal expertise, experience and preferences:

1. To verify dismantlement of nuclear warheads, nuclear measurements can play an essential role. Measuring instruments that we will consider are preferably gamma or neutron detectors. Your work will be focused on the development of instruments and analysis methods that both meet the objectives of the verification and also have low intrusiveness so that they can be acceptable to the nuclear weapon state. Measurement methods considered are passive measurement methods for gamma and neutrons, and also active methods involving the use of neutron sources. A neutron generator lab is under preparation in the department and Monte Carlo simulation tools are expected to be used for studying measurement techniques. The objective is to propose techniques that are robust and useful in future verification of nuclear disarmament.
2. After a successful negotiation for the disarmament of a state's nuclear weapons program, the state is likely to announce the extent of its stockpile of fissile material, and place the stockpile under international nuclear control. To verify that the declarations are complete, and no secret stock has been withheld, nuclear archeology appears as an important tool. Fissile materials are produced in unique facilities such as nuclear reactors or enrichment facilities that can be examined by inspectors, and archived data on their use history can be requested by an international verification body to verify the historical production of fissile materials. Your task may be to develop and evaluate methods to allow such verification. This may include testing methods on decommissioned reactors, and to the extent of access, performing measurements of isotopic ratios and nuclide concentrations on materials and residual products in nuclear fuel cycles, to study the potential of nuclear archeology in future verification of disarmament agreements.
3. Agreements banning nuclear weapons tests are important to prevent the qualitative build-up of nuclear arsenals. Verification relies heavily on remote monitoring, of which sensitive measurements of radionuclides in the atmosphere are an important component. The working group is evaluating new detector technology that uses coincidence detection for this purpose. The objective is to determine whether this method has the potential to improve the ability to detect releases to the atmosphere of signature nuclides for nuclear weapons tests. In this project, the design, optimization and evaluation of new detector systems for the purpose are carried out. This is a project that includes experimental work in spectrometry and modeling with Monte Carlo codes.

Requirements
To meet the entry requirements for doctoral studies, you must

• hold a Master’s (second-cycle) degree in Physics, Engineering or equivalent, or
• have completed at least 240 credits in higher education, with at least 60 credits at Master’s level including an independent project worth at least 15 credits, or
• have acquired substantially equivalent knowledge in some other way.

Additional qualifications
The qualifications listed below are meant to help the applicant to point out any relevant experience and expertise. We encourage the submission of an application even if your experience does not match all the listed qualifications.

• Experience with radiation detectors
• Experience in transport simulation with codes such as Geant4 and MCNP
• Experience relevant to topics A-C.
• Interest in nuclear disarmament or non-proliferation.

Rules governing PhD students are set out in the Higher Education Ordinance chapter 5, §§ 1-7 and in Uppsala University's rules and guidelines.

About the employment
The employment is a temporary position according to the Higher Education Ordinance chapter 5 § 7. Scope of employment 100 %. Starting date December 2024 or as agreed. Placement: Uppsala

For further information about the position, please contact: Peter Andersson, +46702256963, peter.andersson@physics.uu.se

Please submit your application by 21 October 2024, UFV-PA 2024/3323

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