Loughborough University is a top-ten rated university in England for research intensity (REF2014) and an outstanding 66% of the work of Loughborough’s academic staff who were eligible to be submitted to the REF was judged as ‘world-leading’ or ‘internationally excellent’, compared to a national average figure of 43%. In choosing Loughborough for your research, you’ll work alongside academics who are leaders in their field. You will benefit from comprehensive support and guidance from our Doctoral College, including tailored careers advice, to help you succeed in your research and future career. This project offers the chance to increase our understanding of nuclear graphite, which can have many implications including: improving nuclear reactor designs, and improving clean-up of irradiated graphite. This project is also a good opportunity to develop skills in computer programming, the use of high performance computers facilities, and data analysis techniques. Graphite is a material that has widespread application in nuclear reactors, both with the old AGR reactors that are currently used by the UK and also in next generation power plants. After many years of exposure, irradiated graphite first contracts and then expands as defect damage builds up. In addition, the Wigner effect can also occur where concerted motion of groups of defects can cause severe heating as happened at Windscale in the 1950’s. Future reactor designs will rely upon a good understanding of the properties of nuclear graphite under high temperature and high irradiation. The motion of atoms over such long-time scales cannot be investigated by molecular dynamics, but information can be obtained by accelerated time scale techniques or adaptive kinetic Monte Carlo methods. The project will build upon previous work at Loughborough developing such techniques, and apply the methodology to the problem of radiation damage in nuclear graphite. The industrial partner is EDF.