About the NSERC-UNENE Chair

The Industrial Research Chair program started at the University of Waterloo in 2004 with the support of NSERC and UNENE, an alliance of nuclear utilities and universities.

The key goal of the program is to advance probabilistic methods for risk assessment and risk-informed decision making with the purpose of improving life cycle management of engineering infrastructure systems found in nuclear power plants and elsewhere.

The program entered its third five-year phase in April 2015 under the backdrop of decisions to refurbish the Darlington and Bruce nuclear stations, which has generated exciting prospects of economic development as well as new research challenges. This phase of the program is intended to support the nuclear industry’s need in risk and reliability research driven by two main concerns:

  • Design enhancements in light of the lessons learned from the Fukushima nuclear accident, and
  • Aging management in the pre- and post-refurbishment life of the current fleet of reactors.

More information and details can be found on our research program page.

Research capabilities

The Chair and the research staff have extensive experience in risk and reliability analysis and probabilistic computation. Specific areas of strength and focus include:

  • Statistical data analysis and modelling
  • Probabilistic modelling
  • Numerical modelling and simulation
  • Visualization of system and component inspection data
  • Safety and reliability analysis
  • Modelling of aging degradation
  • Extreme value analysis
  • Bayesian analysis and modelling
  • Engineering risk assessment
  • Life cycle management (LCM) and cost analysis
  • Seismic and structural analysis

Many example applications of these methods and others can be found on our research program page.