The Intermountain-West Nuclear Energy Corridor Tech Hub will boost Eastern Idaho economically in several ways.
“First and foremost bringing in $40 million into a small region is a really significant economic engine,” said Hope Morrow, the Idaho National Laboratory manager of workforce and economic development programs, who foresees “boundless economic impact for a period of years.”
The tech hub is a $40 million multi-state regional initiative across Idaho and Wyoming. It’s funded by a five-year $31 million federal grant from the U.S. Economic Development Administration and $9 million in local matching funds. Implementation funding officially began July 20.
The initiative is led by the Idaho Advanced Energy Consortium and anchored by INL to advance U.S. small modular reactor (SMR) technology, which is an advanced type of nuclear fission reactor designed to be smaller, safer and more flexible than traditional nuclear power plants.
The defined region of the corridor includes Idaho Falls, Pocatello, Blackfoot, the Fort Hall Indian Reservation, as well as the Wyoming cities of Laramie and Rock Springs.
INL is at the center of the advanced energy industry, especially the nuclear renaissance. Morrow said INL plays both a role in facilitating that launch into the commercial space and continuing doing research and development simultaneously.
“That means we have a lot of needs in the workforce space between replacing folks who get poached by our commercial partners, because we raise great workers here,” Morrow said. “As we continue to grow and take on new charges by the Department of Energy, we need more staff with different types of skill sets.”
Two areas of economic impact stand out for Morrow, the first being workforce development.
The funds will help build training programs for careers in nuclear construction, operations and advanced manufacturing.
That’s vital for an industry that needs to grow rapidly, Morrow said.
The College of Eastern Idaho in Idaho Falls plays an even more important role after classes began Monday in the new Battelle Energy Alliance Future Tech Building in Partnership with Frontier Credit Union. The on-campus building features 12 labs and 10 classrooms to strengthen workforce development across the region. BEA manages and operates INL for the energy department.
The BEA Applied STEM Institute in the Future Tech Building connects students with educators, mentors and industry professionals through hands-on learning and career-connected experiences designed to accelerate workforce development.
“Programs like the STEM Institute really facilitates an opportunity to grow those pipelines to get those students familiar with INL and the advanced energy earlier than they would have beforehand and give us a chance to really connect with those students as early as possible,” Morrow said.
Up to 1,000 local college and high school students are estimated to take courses at the institute, focusing on fields like nuclear energy, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity and engineering.
High school students will include sophomores, juniors, and graduating seniors participating in specialized regional STEM pipelines, summer bridge programs and early college-credit courses.
CEI students are also enrolled in technical and degree programs housed within the Future Tech Building.
The Future Tech Building satisfies a lot of needs.
“CEI needs the space,” Morrow said. “The community needs the space, and INL and other large employers need the workforce.”
According to Morrow, the commercial industry will take on a lot of the burden the DOE has been carrying for 75 years.
“But more folks need to be trained overall to go commercial,” she said.
That’s why the Future Tech Building and tech hub both matter.
“If we don’t create those academic programs and we don’t expand capacity now, then all of these companies won’t be able to fulfill their workforce needs and oftentimes won’t locate in Eastern Idaho,” Morrow said.
Companies must have an available workforce.
“The point of the tech hub is to bring in those dollars to bridge that gap so we can support the community colleges and universities to build those programs and expand capacity without putting more pressure on the Idaho taxpayers,” Morrow said. Companies in turn will get the needed workforce.
That pipeline will encourage companies to locate, stay and grow in Idaho.
“About $15 million of the $40 million for the tech hub is dedicated to workforce development,” Morrow said.” It’ll be a very large impact in that capacity between Idaho and Wyoming community colleges and universities.
“The second major focus is on the supply chain,” she said. “In the ecosystem of trying to build the nuclear industry, we’ve been spending a lot of time on research and development and the technologies.”
Morrow said commercial partners are now reaching the point where they can get Nuclear Quality Assurance (NQA-1) Certification.
This certification is a rigorous quality assurance program requirement for nuclear facilities, set by the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. It governs the design, construction, operation and decommissioning of nuclear components and plants.
Attaining that certification moves commercial partners closer to selling their products, Morrow said.
Companies in the tech hub will sell advanced nuclear energy products, including SMRs, microreactors, modernized nuclear fuel management systems and domestic uranium and fuel-fabrication components, according to the U.S. Economic Development Administration.
“We still have to build out the workforce and the supply chain,” Morrow said. “These are two areas that are very significant bottlenecks to the success of these technologies actually living on the commercial market.”
The tech hub is going to be focused on supporting manufacturers of all different sizes in the corridor expanding into the nuclear industry.
Companies must follow a specialized international standard that incorporates strict nuclear safety, risk management and traceability protocols defined alongside the International Atomic Energy Agency so they can actually produce materials for the nuclear industry.
“The tech hub is going to support those companies as best they can with access to these resources,” Morrow said. “They’ll partner with the manufacturing extension partnerships in both states to connect them with the right people, financial resources, you name it.”
Much remains to accomplish before that though.
“We really haven’t exercised these muscles in building small modular reactors, because we don’t have any yet,” Morrow said. “One of the large components of the tech hub is actually to build mockup small modular reactor buildings at CEI.”
This means exercising the whole supply chain on a pilot scale, Morrow said, from dealing with the groundwork to putting in basemats to erecting the steel structure for the reactor.
A basemat for a nuclear reactor is a massive, thick foundation pad made of reinforced concrete—and sometimes steel composite materials—that sits at the very bottom of a nuclear plant. It acts as the primary load-bearing platform supporting the entire heavy weight of the reactor containment building, shield structures and internal nuclear systems.
Newer projects, like SMRs, sometimes pre-fabricate large steel-concrete composite basemat modules off-site before lifting them into place with heavy cranes.
“We’ll combine the activities of the suppliers learning how to do those things for the first time with the civil engineering companies and workforce development and actually go through that process,” she said.
Four new SMR designs reached criticality in the last handful of months.
“That’s a strong signal that we are moving at a faster, more efficient pace,” Morrow said. “My guess would be in the next couple of years we’ll have several of these licenses and a handful of these reactor companies on the market actively building their products.”