Staff Scientist - Plasma Material Interaction

 

The plasma facing components (PFCs) in SPARC and ARC are the hardware interface between high performance burning plasmas and the entire tokamak.  Due to the extreme plasma conditions needed for fusion, the PFCs will see heat and particle loads that far exceed most other domains of science and engineering.  The Scientist - Plasma Material Interaction (PMI) provides a critical interface between plasma physics, materials science, and nuclear engineering.  The Scientist will be organizationally based in the Plasma Physics Department with designated technical contacts in the Materials Science and Nuclear Engineering Departments.  By connecting computational plasma physics models, engineering models, neutronics models, and material models, the Scientist will enable predictive modeling of the coupled evolution of PFC materials and the plasma, across timescales ranging from seconds to years.  The ultimate objective of these coupled workflows is to inform the design and operation of the plasma facing components for ARC, a 400MWe fusion power plant to be delivered in the early 2030s.  In order to validate and verify the workflows, the Scientist will oversee test campaigns at experimental facilities around the world, exploring PMI and neutron loading.  Additionally, the Scientist will have access to Deuterium-Tritium experimental data from the SPARC tokamak, and the predictive workflows will be benchmarked using this CFS data.  It is expected that through the aforementioned efforts the Scientist will develop a deep understanding of the material degradation associated with plasma loading and fusion neutron irradiation, and will represent CFS as a world expert in this domain.