Renting nuclear reactor gets cheaper

IDAHO FALLS – The U.S. Department of Energy plans to make it easier for university researchers to use a nuclear reactor at the Idaho National Laboratory by reducing how much money it costs.

The department’s Office of Nuclear Energy earlier this week designated the 40-year-old Advanced Test Reactor as a National User Facility.

With the designation, the department will subsidize much of the cost of running the reactor, making it more affordable for researchers. The size of the subsidy was not immediately available.

“This doesn’t take away from work already being done; it adds to it a research program,” Ralph Bennett, INL’s director of strategic planning, told the Post Register.

He said he anticipates receiving some proposals for use of the reactor this year.

The annual operating budget for the reactor is more than $70 million. He said high costs have prevented much research by universities at the facility.

“It has been pretty expensive to run an experiment in the ATR, typically more than a university grant will cover,” Bennett said.

The reactor is one of three operating at the INL, an 890-square-mile federal nuclear research area in eastern Idaho. It was built to test nuclear fuel for the U.S. Navy’s aircraft carriers and nuclear submarines.

The reactor can be used to simulate the conditions found in other types of reactors, but can do so while operating at a low temperature. Pressurized water is use to cool its internal core.

The Navy cut back its use of the reactor after the end of the Cold War, and it was made available for other tests. It also has been used to produce the isotope cobalt-60, used in medical treatment of brain tumors and vascular deformities.

“The U.S. would be in a position of total dependence on foreign suppliers were it not for our production of cobalt-60 in the ATR,” said Steve Laflin, president of International Isotopes, an Idaho Falls company.