Haruko Murakami Wainwright

Haruko Wainwright received her BEng in Engineering Physics from Kyoto University, Japan in 2003; her MS in nuclear engineering in 2006, MA in statistics in 2010 and PhD in nuclear engineering in 2010 from University of California, Berkeley. Before joining MIT, she was a Staff Scientist in the Earth and Environmental Sciences Area at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and an adjunct professor in Nuclear Engineering at University of California, Berkeley. Her research focuses on environmental modeling and monitoring technologies, with a particular emphasis on nuclear waste and nuclear-related contamination. She has been developing Bayesian methods for multi-type multiscale data integration and model-data integration.

Nuclear Waste Disposal

Geological disposal is required to isolate nuclear waste for thousands of years. Models need to address the large uncertainty associated with geological heterogeneity and future climate. At the same time, the existing contamination from waste disposal in the 1940s–1980s provides significant insights on radionuclide mobility and datasets for model validation. We are developing uncertainty quantification (UQ) methods, including global sensitivity analysis, Bayesian parameter estimation, surrogate modeling, and experiment-to-model UQ pipelines. In parallel, we have been developing comparative analysis methodologies for quantifying the environmental impacts of nuclear waste and other energy waste.