INL and ISU launch new SUPER research agreement

IDAHO FALLS – Ushering in a new era of research collaboration, Idaho National Laboratory and Idaho State University announced a Strategic Understanding of World-Class Education and Research (SUPER) agreement Wednesday at the laboratory’s headquarters in Idaho Falls.

John Wagner, director of the Idaho National Laboratory, and Robert Wagner, president of Idaho State University, signed the agreement during a news conference in the Engineering Research Office Building, expanding the companies’ joint research efforts for the next five years.

“We are particularly focused on collaboration in two areas that are important to the economic prosperity of the state of Idaho and the country… and that is critical and strategic materials and minerals and environmental sustainability and security,” John Wagner said.

The agreement will promote cutting-edge research in “carbon reduction, sequestration and storage technologies, digitalization and artificial intelligence, geothermal energy, and spent fuel storage and disposal,” according to an INL press release.

Robert Wagner described the university’s partnership with INL as “multidimensional.”

More than 1,200 of INL’s 6,200 employees have earned one or more degrees from Idaho State University.

“As an institution, we prepare the workforce that works here at INL, and now your workforce is helping us teach,” Robert Wagner said. “Not only do we join research assignments, but we also have INL staff who serve as adjunct professors/lecturers in our courses.”

The university offers unique opportunities to leverage educational programs for employment in the laboratory.

“We just don’t talk about doctoral programs or nuclear engineering, even though those are critically important,” Robert Wagner said. “We talk about our College of Technology certificates (and associate degrees). These students…get to work right away, find incredible jobs here, and contribute to the community. “

“Over the last five years, we have had more than 220 interns from Idaho State University,” said John Wagner.

The two organizations will “exchange academic materials and host joint symposiums, seminars, workshops and conferences – building on their existing, joint efforts in nuclear energy, high performance computing and cybersecurity,” the release said.

The agreement will also facilitate important research to strengthen U.S. national security.

“(This) collaboration includes evaluating long-range nuclear material detection techniques and developing capabilities for waste detection and chemical weapons disposal,” John Wagner said.

The partnership will advance efforts to strengthen America’s supply of essential minerals for technological development and national defense.

According to the Associated Press, China announced Tuesday that it would ban exports of gallium, germanium and antimony to the United States in retaliation for U.S. restrictions on Chinese semiconductor imports.

“We are currently almost 100% dependent on these elements from abroad, many of them from China,” said INL chief geologist Travis McLing. “Therefore, developing our own domestic supply chain is paramount to the national security of the United States and our ability to develop our own technologies for the future.”

John Wagner explained that Idaho contains significant deposits of two or three of the elements banned by China along its border with Montana.

ISU and INL’s research will focus on “bringing the technology to bear to bring cost-effective minerals to market using environmentally friendly and safe methods of processing and mining,” McLing said, to strengthen Idaho’s economy and the domestic one Supply chain for strategic minerals to be developed.

Finally, the partnership is critical to developing a trained workforce as the nuclear industry makes significant progress in the United States and internationally.

“Nowhere on the planet does as much nuclear energy research and development take place as here, where we are,” said Mustafa Mashal, deputy director of the Center for Advanced Energy Studies (CAES), who represents ISU at the facility. “This location is not a game-changer for energy development for the state of Idaho, but actually for the world, as all of the expansion comes with the upcoming advanced reactors.”

Since 2020, the total number of employees at INL has increased by 25%.

Mashal represents Idaho State University, which is a partner in the CAES facility on the INL campus in Idaho Falls.

“Nuclear energy will triple by 2050,” Mashal said.

He said the university is uniquely positioned to provide mechanical engineers, electrical engineers, civil engineers, surveyors and others with the specific preparation they need to enter the industry.

Recently, the two institutions collaborated to “develop the world’s first digital twin of an operating nuclear reactor,” said John Wagner. “… It combines a virtual model of ISU’s AGN-201 nuclear reactor, machine learning and the physical reactor, … demonstrating their ability to recreate reactors.”

But the history of collaboration between Idaho State University and the nation’s leading nuclear research laboratory clearly dates back to the laboratory’s founding in 1949.

For the past 25 years, the two institutions have partnered at ISU’s Idaho Accelerator Center to “research photoinduced fission and isotope production and provide critical isotopes for INL’s work with the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Defense,” the site director stated.

INL faculty, scientists and guests also speak regularly at ISU’s Energy Systems Technology and Education Center.

Looking forward, the two leaders (who are not related) hope the ISU-INL partnership will help advance the progress needed to secure America’s energy future.

“This SUPER agreement now prepares us for the next phase of collaboration and has a strong foundation to build on,” said John Wagner.

ISU has successfully recruited faculty who conduct cutting-edge research in each of these areas, Robert Wagner said.

“Just the idea that our relationship is evolving with critical and strategic materials and minerals and environmental sustainability and security — strategically, that’s incredibly important for our state, for the Intermountain West (and) for the nation as a whole,” Robert said Wagner.