MSc Nuclear Science and Technology

For entry in the academic year beginning September 2027, the tuition fees are as follows:

• MSc (full-time)
  UK students (per annum): £14,900
  International, including EU, students (per annum): £37,000
• MSc (part-time)
  UK students (per annum): £11,700
  International, including EU, students (per annum): £11,700
• MSc (part-time distance learning)
  UK students (per annum): £7,800
  International, including EU, students (per annum): £7,800
• PGDip (full-time)
  UK students (per annum): £19,300
  International, including EU, students (per annum): £19,300
• PGDip (part-time)
  UK students (per annum): £9,650
  International, including EU, students (per annum): £9,650
• PGCert (full-time)
  UK students (per annum): £11,600
  International, including EU, students (per annum): £11,600
• PGCert (part-time)
  UK students (per annum): £5,800
  International, including EU, students (per annum): £5,800

The fees quoted above are fully inclusive of tuition, administration and computational costs.

Fees for entry are subject to yearly review. The University reserves the right to increase your tuition fee by up to 7% each year for courses lasting more than one year, including to reflect rising costs associated with delivering our educational and wider student experience. Postgraduate fees information .

Always contact the admissions team if you are unsure which fee applies to your qualification award and method of attendance.

International student CAS deposit

Self-funded international applicants are required to pay a deposit of £2500 towards their tuition fees before a confirmation of acceptance for studies (CAS) is issued. Some applicants will be required to pay a higher deposit. More information on tuition fee deposits .

All students should normally be able to complete their programme of study without incurring additional study costs over and above the tuition fee for that programme. Any unavoidable additional compulsory costs totalling more than 1% of the annual home undergraduate fee per annum, regardless of whether the programme in question is undergraduate or postgraduate taught, will be made clear to you at the point of application. Further information can be found in the University's Policy on additional costs incurred by students on undergraduate and postgraduate taught programmes (PDF document, 91KB).

We offer a number of postgraduate taught scholarships and awards to outstanding UK and international students each year.

The University of Manchester is committed to widening participation in master's study, and allocates £300,000 in funding each year. Our Manchester Master's Bursaries are aimed at widening access to master's courses by removing barriers to postgraduate education for students from underrepresented groups.

We also welcome the best and brightest international students each year and reward excellence with a number of merit-based scholarships. See our range of master’s scholarships for international students .

And, if you have completed an undergraduate degree at The University of Manchester, or are currently in your final year of an undergraduate degree with us, you may be eligible for a discount of 10% on tuition fees if you choose to study on a taught postgraduate course here. Find out if you're eligible and how to apply .

For more information on master's tuition fees and studying costs, visit the University of Manchester funding for master's courses website to help you plan your finances.

This course unit offers an introduction to nuclear severe accidents for light water reactors. The course begins by introducing basic safety principles and the history of severe accidents before providing a grounding in thermal-hydraulics and thermodynamics that will be relevant to understanding severe accident phenomenology. The physics and chemistry of a typical severe accident transient is then covered in detail following a chronological order, which extends from a core uncovery event, clad oxidation, core melt down to the breach of the Reactor Pressure Vessel. Ex-vessel severe accident phenomena are also covered in the course, which extends to environmental consequences. The course unit will also include an overview of some of the tools and codes available and widely used within the nuclear sector and will enable the student to join industry with a solid background in severe accident phenomenology and safety approach. 

The unit aims to:

•    Contextualise severe accidents in the basic principles of a safety case and provide a history of how the field developed from the early Chicago Pile experiments.  

•    Establish a grounding in aspects of thermal-hydraulics, thermodynamics and material science that are relevant to severe accidents.

•    Introduce the fields of fission product release mechanics, chemistry and aerosol physics.

•    Provide an overview of the environmental consequences of a nuclear severe accident.

•    Introduce some of the methods used in industrial analyses of severe accident transients.

•    Provide an appreciation of the inherent uncertainties of a severe accident. 

ILO 1

Describe and explain the physics and chemistry phenomena that are expected to occur in the nuclear power plant if sustainable cooling of the core cannot be re-established.

ILO 2

Assess the positive and negative aspects of some severe accident phenomena in terms of the different risks outcomes.

ILO 3

Solve practical problems through calculation and / or deduction in order to estimate or bound plant responses or consequences.

ILO 4

Interpret phase diagrams in order to provide insight into material behaviours in a degraded core environment.

ILO 5

Compare and contrast prospective severe accident outcomes through an understanding of the phenomenology and apply deduction based on different initial conditions.

A. Knowledge and Understanding 
Students are taught via directed reading (pre-course) and directly in appropriately equipped rooms at the institution delivering the module. Learning is consolidated in tutorial and review sessions.

•    Pre-course directed reading                            
•    Direct Teaching
•    Tutorial sessions

B. Intellectual Skills
Students are able to exercise their intellectual skills through in-class discussion, tutorial sessions, and the completion of the assigned post-module criticality safety assessment.

•    In-class discussion
•    Post-course assignment

C. Practical Skills
Students are able to exercise their practical skills through tutorial sessions and completion of the assigned post-module criticality safety assessment.

•    Tutorial sessions
•    Post-course assignment

D. Transferable Skills and Personal Qualities
Students are able to enhance their transferable skills through in-class discussion, tutorial sessions, and the completion of the assigned post-module criticality safety assessment.

•    In-class discussion
•    Tutorial sessions
•    Assignment exercise
•    Post-course assignment

Feedback provided on strong, weak or missing aspects of the assignment. Score provided for examination.

The principal text for the course is “Nuclear Safety in Light Water Reactors”, Bal Raj Seghal.

This course is designed to be self-contained, but the student may benefit from some background reading. The content of any pre-course reading that also appears in the lecture series can be assessed.

Texts that are intended to provide background support for the study of severe accidents but not directly related to the field are as follows:  

Thermal Physics: C.B.P Finn, A. Rex (3rd Edition).

Fundamentals of Heat and Mass Transfer (6th Edition), De Witt et al.

Material Science and Engineering (10th Edition), W. Callister & G Rethwisch.