INEEL (Idaho) to host space research-to become the space nuclear center for the whole country

Generators will be developed at Argonne Lab

IDAHO FALLS — Argonne National Laboratory-West has been named the place where nuclear generators will be developed for deep-space exploration.

William D. Magwood, director of the Energy Department´s Office of Nuclear Energy, Science and Technology, visited for the announcement.

“We think Idaho is going to become the space nuclear center for the whole country,” Magwood said Tuesday. “Without a new mission, INEEL was a cleanup site. You´re going to see significant activity at this site indefinitely.”

Magwood met Monday with Shoshone-Bannock tribal members and the nuclear watchdog group Snake River Alliance. Both voiced concerns that Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory cleanup might suffer now that the lab is being run by the Office of Nuclear Energy instead of the Office of Environmental Management.

Beatrice Brailsford of the alliance reiterated its long-standing opposition to reprocessing spent nuclear fuel, and said cleanup should continue despite the new mission.

The Radioisotope Thermal Generator program is being moved from Mound, Ohio, for safety and security reasons, as well as for nuclear expertise at Argonne.

Four or five people will be moving to Idaho almost immediately, and the number should grow to about 25. The nuclear energy mission represents a future for Argonne and the INEEL.

Nuclear reactors are essential to deep-space exploration.

“Galileo and Voyager are still sending signals after 20 years because they´re nuclear-powered,” Magwood said.

With nuclear propulsion, sending people to Mars will take half the time it would to send them by slingshotting their craft around the sun, the only other way to achieve the necessary velocity.

As for nuclear power on Earth, power utilities are facing difficult decisions in the next decade.

Prototype reactors will need to be built, Magwood said, and the national lab will likely be the place where that happens.

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