The Tremaine group attended the annual University Network of Excellence in Nuclear Engineering (UNENE) R&D Workshop in Mississauga from Dec 8-10, 2025. The workshop is one of our major highlights of the year, bringing together students, researchers, and industry stakeholders from across Canada to collaborate, share knowledge, and plan future developments.
This year, UNENE welcomed two new industry members Saskatchewan Power and New Brunswick Power, two new university members UCalgary and UOttawa, and its first college member Saskatchewan Polytechnic. In his opening remarks, UNENE president Jerry Hopwood praised the additions and emphasized the importance of UNENE becoming a truly cross-Canadian collaboration.
As usual, the workshop featured a mix of lectures, student talks, posters, and panel discussions. Topics ranged from health and safety to fusion to AI. Some highlights:
- construction update on Darlington’s New Nuclear – the first new CANDU reactor in Canada in 40 years.
- building out the supply chain for small modular reactors (SMRs) as Ontario plans to add 15GW of nuclear generation
- Ontario Power Generation’s new modular approach to building power plants
- advantages (and pitfalls) of using AI in nuclear design and modelling
- industry weighing in on essential skills for today’s energy job market (incl. teamwork, project management)
- grad student perspectives on research, academia, and employment in nuclear
- new imaging techniques for analyzing real reactor components
- preparing for nuclear fusion as a viable power source including OPG partnership with fusion startups
- corrosion and containment of nuclear waste over long time scales in Deep Geological Repositories
- developments in radiation decontamination and generator plant decommissioning
- Canadian government priorities and planning for the future
Tremaine group presented several posters at this year’s student session:
- Jason Yap – Measuring Enthalpies of Ionization of Hydrazine Alternatives via Isothermal Titration Calorimetry at 25°C
- Samantha Binkley – Thermochemical Constants for Aqueous Alkanolamines from Twin-Cell Scanning Nanocalorimetry and Densimetry
- Dr. Dhanya Swaroop – Experimental Determination of the Ionization Constant of DEHA under PWR and CANDU Secondary Coolant Conditions
Special congratulations are in order for our phD candidate Sam Binkley, who won the prize for the best student poster!
New this year, the research groups of the UNENE Chairs were invited to create and display group-wide posters highlighting experimental capabilities and general research themes of the group. Credit to Swaroop for taking the lead in designing ours. The group-level posters were left up in the conference room for the whole 3 days, generating discussion at breaks and over meals and hopefully leading to future collaborations.
