Feature Articles

Kemmerer, Wyoming is the proposed site of a new sodium-cooled fast reactor plant designed by nuclear innovation company TerraPower. The National Reactor Innovation Center (NRIC) supports companies like TerraPower, by facilitating partnerships between the private and public sector to enable the technology demonstrations and eventual deployment of advanced reactor projects like Natrium. A significant portion of that work is taking place at Idaho National Laboratory (INL), utilizing its unique expertise and nuclear research and development facilities.

Idaho National Laboratory (INL) scientists explore key issues such as water supply and extreme weather events, like drought, through the laboratory’s energy and environmental research efforts.

Idaho National Laboratory's Microgrid in a Box includes 320 kilowatt-hours of battery storage, and can tie seamlessly into a modern electrical grid and coordinate the distribution of electricity for a small village, military base, or, in the event of a disaster, a hospital, transportation depot, or other critical infrastructure building.

When U.S. military members are deployed in the Middle East, they often have limited access to sustainable energy sources. To help reduce carbon emissions from troops abroad, Idaho National Laboratory and the U.S. Department of Defense are developing three pilot demonstration projects that will establish clean energy and sustainability solutions for the U.S. Army Central Command in Kuwait. The projects are part of a program called Operational Energy.

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) has awarded more than $5.8 million to Idaho National Laboratory to support research that boosts domestic supplies of the critical elements needed to meet the nation’s clean energy goals.

Nuclear and hydrogen could be the ideal fuel for recharging electric trucks, opening potential markets for developers of small modular nuclear reactors (SMRs). That’s according to a University of Michigan study funded by Emerging Energy Markets Analysis, an Idaho National Laboratory (INL) initiative.

On their way to market, technologies often reach what is called the “valley of death,” the point where a researcher or institution has developed a promising idea, has received funding through grants, and then runs out of cash to move the idea beyond the laboratory. How much easier would it be if the private sector found investors and raised capital, leaving research scientists free to do what they do best? Idaho National Laboratory is on a new path of exploration, as it has executed multiple agreements with Innovyz USA, a Chicago-based company that works with universities and laboratories to find new technologies ready for commercialization.

Although the likelihood of a terrorist nuclear attack is extremely low, a lot of work is required to prepare for such an unthinkable event. That’s why a response team assembled by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) recently trained in eastern Idaho’s desert on ways to collect and analyze simulated debris from a nuclear detonation. Nuclear forensics—the science of determining the origin of nuclear material—is an essential element of the United States’ strategy to prevent nuclear terrorism.

The marketplace debut of Idaho National Laboratory’s Colorimetric Detection of Actinides, or CoDeAc, isn’t the finish to the award-winning technology’s story. According to its inventors and now investors, it’s just the beginning of a new chapter. “CoDeAc has a bright future,” INL Researcher and CoDeAc inventor Catherine Riddle said. “As it gains interest and expands, there will be new opportunities for future colorimetric detection products and a diverse range of new technologies geared towards rapid radionuclide detection.” Riddle, along with fellow INL researcher Rick Demmer, started developing CoDeAc in 2019 to help first responders, radiation specialists and nuclear operators detect uranium and plutonium when responding to an emergency nuclear event.

Kamrynn Schiller, an Idaho National Laboratory nuclear research facility engineer, has designed a robotic system to support post-irradiation examination work at INL’s Irradiated Materials Characterization Laboratory (IMCL).