Four Idaho National Lab technologies have received R&D 100 awards, the most prestigious technology research and development innovation awards program.

The lab announced the winning technologies in a Tuesday news release. The awardees were selected by a panel of industry-leading expert judges from submissions made across the public and private sector, the release said.

Known to some as the “Oscars of Innovation,” the yearly R&D 100 awards are designed to recognize the 100 most significant new inventions in the world.

“R&D 100 Awards are the most prestigious awards for science and technology innovation,” wrote lab Director John Wagner in an email to the Post Register. “We’re very proud to have four technologies, developed by our talented researchers, represented among this impressive list of winners.”

INL had two additional technologies recognized as award finalists. Since 2005, INL technologies have won more than 30 R&D 100 Awards, the release said.

The winning INL technologies are:

RE-Metal

Donna Baek, Robert Fox, Abderrahman Atifi

RE-Metal seeks to enable the environmentally friendly recycling of a limited supply of essential rare earth elements that are required for most of today’s high-tech devices, the release said. Many countries, including the U.S., have banned this process because it has involved an environmentally toxic method to do so but RE-Metal enables the recovery of rare earth metals from waste electronics and other sources without harming the environment.

Bison

Jason Hales, Richard Williamson, Albert Casagranda, Kyle Gamble, Stephen Novascone, Stephanie Pitts, Gyanender Singh, Benjamin Spencer, Aysenur Toptan, Wen Jiang

Bison enhances the safety and effectiveness of nuclear plants by making advanced simulation more accessible to nuclear engineers, the release said. Bison is a “flexible, next-generation” nuclear fuel performance analysis code that is unique in its ability to analyze fuels of varying types and geometries in one, two or three dimensions.

Commercial Routing Assistance Tool

Ollie Gagnon, Robert Edsall, Mary Klett, Timothy Klett, Michael Overton

The Commercial Routing Assistance Tool is an interactive website that maps routes and displays information about state government actions that can impact interstate transportation. The tool can be used by state governments to produce routes for commercial, emergency and disaster response vehicles to travel into or around various states in an efficient, compliant and safe manner, the release said.

Plug-N-Play Appliance for Resilient Response of Operational Technologies

Craig Rieger, Edward Springer, Michael McCarty, Timothy McJunkin

The Plug-N-Play Appliance for Resilient Response of Operational Technologies helps defend from cyberattacks on critical infrastructure operations by providing a manual or automated response that isolates a cyberattack and prevents harmful impacts while maintaining operations, the release said.

Finalist technologies led by INL:

Wireless Valve Position Indicator Sensor System

Vivek Agarwal, John Buttles, Robert England

Valve Position Indicator allows workers at industrial facilities to monitor the position of valves from a remote location, cutting manual inspections, verification, unnecessary maintenance and calibrations, and labor costs and increasing the safety and efficiency at these facilities, the release said.

Carbon CACHE (Ceramic Anode Cell with High Efficiency)

Dong Ding, Ting He, Wei Wu

Carbon CACHE offers clean and efficient electricity generation with a carbon fuel cell that uses solid carbon as fuel, the release said. It offers much cleaner and more efficient electricity generation compared to combustion-based technologies from resources such as coal and biomass, the release said.