CNERG Mission, Vision & Values

Mission

To foster the development of new generations of nuclear engineers and scientists through the development and deployment of open and reliable software tools for the analysis of complex nuclear energy systems

Vision

To have a positive impact on the ongoing development of peaceful nuclear technology by improving the understanding of those technologies through modeling & simulation

Core Values

Welcoming, Inclusive & Healthy Community

We all do our best work when we feel respected by our peers and our contributions are valued. Every member of CNERG is responsible for creating this environment of mutual respect and value. The group is made up of individuals with a wide range of personal and educational histories. Being sensitive to these differences is an important part of our professional development. The community also supports the healthy life choices of each its members as they work to achieve their professional goals.

Open, Reproducible & Maintainable Software

Our vision is best achieved by developing software tools that are accessible to all, produce the same results over multiple invocations, and permit new developers to easily contribute. Every member of CNERG is expected to develop skills to contribute to the development and maintenance of our software tools.

CNERG Research Philosophy

In addition to computational modeling in general, a defining characteristic of CNERG research is the physics of nuclear reactions and the radiation that they produce. This puts our work at the heart of nuclear engineering, more removed from other fields of study than most other parts of nuclear engineering.

While there may be diversity among the projects being pursued within CNERG, a common thread is a desire to improve the understanding of nuclear energy systems. This leads to a research philosophy that puts us on the boundary between methods development and systems analysis, delivering real analysis capability. Where some research groups focus on theoretical methods development with little regard for realistic problems, and others focus on using other people’s computational tools to analyze systems, we focus on delivering new capability to analyze real systems. This can include the development of new methods and often requires the analysis of real systems to test the delivered capability, but CNERG’s strength is in delivering robust tools that extend the types of analysis that are available for nuclear energy systems.