Idaho National Laboratory

 

Idaho National Laboratory (INL) is a federally funded research and development center located in the southeastern Idaho desert. At 890 square miles (569,135 acres), INL is roughly 85 percent the size of Rhode Island. It was established in 1949 as the National Reactor Testing Station and for many years was the site of the largest concentration of nuclear reactors in the world. Fifty-two nuclear reactors were designed and built at the site, including the U.S. Navy's first prototype nuclear propulsion plant.

The Department of Energy (DOE) is only the most recent inhabitant of the desert which hosts certain INL operations. Prehistoric campsites, historic homesteads, roads and canals are evidence of earlier inhabitants. INL’s Cultural Resource Working Group, which includes historians, anthropologists, archaeologists, and representatives of the Shoshone-Bannock tribes and DOE, works to identify artifacts on the site and to protect and preserve their integrity.

The INL we know today was created in February 2005 by combining INL’s predecessors, the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory and Argonne National Laboratory-West. INL now stands as the U.S. Department of Energy’s leading center of nuclear energy research and development where more than 3,600 researchers and support staff work with national and international governments, universities and industry partners to deliver energy and national security solutions and expand the frontiers of science and technology.

Due to continuing uncertainty in the electricity sector and our nation’s difficulty in ending its reliance on foreign sources of energy, I am convinced now more than ever that a renewed commitment to nuclear power is vital to our nation’s energy and national security. INL, as the nation’s lead nuclear energy research laboratory, is leading our nation’s research into new reactor designs, including the Generation IV Energy Systems initiative and the Next Generation Nuclear Plant, and the nuclear fuel cycle.

INL is also leading the development of a new DOE venture – the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership.

The Global Nuclear Energy Partnership (GNEP) promises to facilitate our nation’s renewed focus on nuclear power by looking to policies abandoned long ago in the United States, but embraced for decades overseas.

I have long believed that we should apply to nuclear power the same conservation ethic we apply to aluminum, glass, paper and other re-usable materials. Nuclear fuel retains roughly 95 percent of its usable energy after its first pass through a nuclear reactor. Burying these barely-used fuel rods and their massive energy potential in Yucca Mountain is the functional equivalent to putting gold back into the mine.

Through GNEP, we can recover usable energy while minimizing the amount of long-lived high-level waste requiring repository disposal. GNEP will afford us the ability to incorporate transuranic elements which we now plan to dispose of as waste in a repository into a new, recycled fuel source and make the best use of it all in a fast reactor. It allows us to access the vast benefits of recycling without separating out plutonium from other radioactive elements of the fuel – a potential source of diversion for use in nuclear weapons and long the Achilles’ heel of other recycling technologies.

In my view, the approach here is fundamentally no different than those being examined in other sectors of our “energy economy” – such as the use of agricultural waste to produce bioenergy. An across-the-board re-evaluation of our approach to energy, with an eye toward wringing every last kilowatt hour or BTU out of our energy assets, is going to be essential over the long term if we are ever to reduce our large, and growing, dependence on energy now coming from the most volatile regions of the world and as we compete for energy resources with global competitors.

As enthused as I am about the national impact of GNEP, I am even more excited about the positive impact it will have on Idaho and its federally-owned national laboratory. Home to more nuclear reactors than any other site in our nation’s history, Idaho National Laboratory (INL) is prepared to lead on all three major components of GNEP.

INL has the history, facilities and expertise to lead this effort for our nation. It has the local, regional, statewide and federal support required to tackle some of the complex challenges that will face any proposal to host GNEP facilities.

While nuclear energy research constitutes a large portion of INL’s research budget, the Laboratory is at the forefront of efforts to improve our national security, expand our horizons in space, develop new renewable energy technologies and improve the environment. INL researchers are helping protect our nation’s critical infrastructure against cyber attacks, detect dangerous materials before they enter our ports and shores, and secure nuclear material abroad from falling into the hands of terrorists.

As Idahoans, we can be proud of the important work being done at INL to enhance our national and energy security.

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