In early January, a group of five students from Colorado State University (CSU) and CU Anschutz Medical Campus visited Idaho National Laboratory (INL) for a weeklong trip. Made possible by the Mountain & Plain Education and Research Center and in collaboration with CSU alumni at INL, this trip allowed graduate students, myself included, to see what it is like to work at a national laboratory and how health physics is used in the field.
While at INL, we toured many of the facilities responsible for designing, cleaning and managing new fuels and materials for modern reactor technologies. We toured the Materials and Fuels Complex (MFC) where fuel rods are prepared for analysis within large lead and concrete “hot cells.” Workers in these facilities use mechanical arms to manipulate the objects within the cell which allow employees to work with material that would be too dangerous to handle without the mechanical arms and thick shielding.
This was one of the most interesting aspects of the tour for me. The fuel material is placed in a reactor environment for up to 60 days and is then brought into the hot cells where the rods (which are six to 12 feet) are cut into small, two-inch pieces and sent off to other areas of the site for analysis to determine if the material can withstand the reactor environment.
We were also given the opportunity to learn how to dress in protective Tyvek suits to work in areas contaminated with radioactive material. It was a great experience learning to practice getting in and out of these suits without contaminating your street clothes underneath. We talked with several radiation control technicians about their day-to-day work at INL, which allowed us students to see life at INL from a different point of view from a radiological engineer, which is the job title that the gracious CSU alumni who hosted our group have.
Alumni, radiological engineer, and history buff Connor Williams arranged a tour of Experimental Breeder Reactor 1 (EBR-1), which lies on the INL site and is open for tours in the summer. EBR-1 was once a power plant that supplied power to INL and was the first breeder reactor to produce more fissile isotopes than it consumed. It now serves as a piece of history that you can tour and see what the inside of a nuclear power plant looks like. Having the opportunity to walk through a piece of history was incredibly valuable.
Very few universities offer students the opportunity to tour a national laboratory, but thanks to the MAP ERC and our alumni, we visited two incredible sites and had an amazing experience.
