Program Overview

Nuclear engineers design, build and operate equipment and processes that benefit humanity. Our Master's programme focuses on creativity and ingenuity to develop your design and implementation skills to an advanced level, and prepare you for your chosen career.

Nuclear applications cover a broad range of sectors from healthcare and cancer treatment through to power generation, national security and decommissioning activity. The industry is set to expand over the next ten years. With an estimated international spend of around £930 billion for building new reactors and £250 billion for decommissioning those coming offline, there is potential for the generation of 40,000 jobs in the UK nuclear sector alone.

Your degree will begin with a common first year, where you will be taught a series of modules that are taken by all first-year engineering students. We will introduce you to many of the key features of engineering, equipping you with a well-rounded understanding and skill set. Following the first year, you will have the opportunity to consider and plan your academic progression. At this stage, you may choose to begin your Nuclear Engineering study, or move onto any of our other specialist programmes.

Your second year will then be spent studying at a partner university in Europe, the United States of America or Australia. This year abroad allows you to broaden your horizons, grow as a person and adds a new insight and perspective on not only the discipline of engineering, but also on the methods and structure within higher education. The marks you gain during your international year will be converted to grades at Lancaster and will count towards your final degree classification.

On return to Lancaster in year three, you will join your specialist programme of study, taking modules in your specific discipline and continuing to develop your core skills as an engineer.

On this programme, you may decide to spend a year in industry, gaining valuable experience and enhancing your employability. We have extensive links built through our leadership in research and have students undergoing placements with multinational corporate companies through to smaller specialist SMEs. Our degree programme is flexible as to when this occurs, but we would recommend the best opportunity is once you have gained a reasonable amount of engineering knowledge. Therefore, most appropriate time would be at the end of second or third year.

Your third year enables you to apply your skills in an individual project, during which you will learn to use professional software and develop your research and design skills further. You will also gain specialist knowledge, develop an interdisciplinary approach, and apply engineering principles to analyse key processes. This experience will allow you to grow and enhance your professional and discipline-specific skills, and you will gain relevant real-world experience.

The MEng programme is accredited by the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) on behalf of the Engineering Council for the purposes of fully meeting the academic requirement for registration as a Chartered Engineer. The degree is also professionally accredited by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE).

In the fourth year, you will be guided by our research excellence in nuclear instrumentation; nuclear decommissioning; and chemical processes; as well as our partnerships with Sellafield Ltd, Westinghouse Springfield Fuels Ltd and other specialist companies. You will undertake a group project that will allow you to experience a prolonged, live project that requires a multidisciplinary approach. Working in collaboration with an industry partner, or as part of one of our research activities, you will develop the ability to critically analyse and evaluate a project brief, gain experience in project management and learn to input your specialism into a wider context. This experience will be essential in preparing you for a graduate career.