INL awarded Technology Commercialization funding for 13 projects

Source: U.S. Department of Energy

Idaho National Laboratory has received funding awards for 13 projects proposed to the Department of Energy’s Office of Technology Transitions Technology Commercialization Fund (TCF). TCF was created in 2005 to promote promising energy technologies across DOE’s national labs. Overall funding awarded by DOE this cycle totals over $24 million across 12 national labs. INL was the most awarded laboratory with 13 winning proposals, receiving $2.18 million in TCF funds and equivalent matching funds from partners for a total of $4.36 million in funding.

Each project was selected for its potential to advance promising commercial energy technologies and strengthen partnerships between INL and private sector companies.

Topic 1 projects identify technology maturation activities to attract a private partner. Each Topic 1 project is matched with non-federal funds from a private sector partner or through the INL Royalty Fund. INL’s Topic 1 winners are:

Switchable Solvent Water Extraction for Material Processing and Isolation, $150,000
Principal Investigator: Aaron Wilson, Energy & Environment Science & Technology
Partner: Trevi Systems

Computer Programs for Analysis of Thermally Reactive Tracer Tests in Geothermal Reservoirs, $150,000
Principal Investigator: Mitchell Plummer, Energy & Environment Science & Technology
Partners: Geothermal Science, Inc. and Ormat, Inc.

Full-set Transformer Protection Barrier Manufacturing and Technology Commercialization Demonstration, $125,000
Principal Investigator: Todd Johnson, National & Homeland Security

Idaho National Laboratory Wireless Project, $150,000
Principal Investigator: Kurt Derr, National & Homeland Security

Advanced Manufacturing of Electrochemical Sensors for Molten Salt Applications, $75,000
Principal Investigator: Prabhat Tripathy, Nuclear Science & Technology
Partners: Boise State University and Inflex, LLC

Fabrication of Near-net-shape Metallic Components from Oxides, $75,000
Principal Investigator: Prabhat Tripathy, Nuclear Science & Technology
Partners: Boise State University and Inflex, LLC

High Temperature Next Generation Compact Heat Exchanger Development Using Additive Manufacturing Techniques with Embedded Sensor Capability, $150,000
Principal Investigator: Isabella van Rooyen, Nuclear Science & Technology
Partner: NuScale

Advanced Flow Meter for Extreme Environments (AFMEE), $100,000
Principal Investigator: Piyush Sabharwall, Nuclear Science & Technology
Partner: MicroNuclear

Rapid Field Chemical Detection Method of Actinides, $42,500
Principal Investigator: Catherine Riddle, Nuclear Science & Technology

Scintillation Hydro-Gel for Isotopic Neutron Emitters (SHINE) Neutron Detection Material for Nuclear Reactor Monitoring Systems, $37,500
Principal Investigator: Catherine Riddle, Nuclear Science & Technology

Neutron Spectrum Generator, $75,000
Principal Investigator: Wade Scates, Nuclear Science & Technology

Topic 2 projects cooperatively advance a lab-developed technology in collaboration with a private sector partner to bolster commercial application. Each Topic 2 project is matched with funds from a private sector partner. INL’s Topic 2 winners are:



Application of Advanced Preprocessing Technologies for Biopower and Biobased Products, $300,000
Principal Investigator: Jaya Tumuluru, Energy & Environment Science & Technology
Partner: Lignetics, Inc.

Highly Dynamic Electronic Work Instructions for Advanced Reactors, $750,000
Principal Investigator: Johanna Oxstrand, Nuclear Science & Technology
Partner: GSE Systems

Meeting tonight on South Downtown I.F. Development Plan

The City of Idaho Falls Community Development Services Department will hold an informational meeting tonight with residents of the south downtown area and the public to talk about the Idaho Falls South Downtown Plan, a proactive planning document designed to guide development for the future in the south downtown area.

The meeting will be held at the Idaho Falls Library. The first meeting with residents will begin at 6 p.m. and the open house for the public will begin at 7 p.m. Both meetings will be held in Meeting Room Two.

In 2018, Idaho Smart Growth, in partnership with the Greater Idaho Falls Association of Realtors, conducted background research and initial public outreach for the Idaho Falls South Downtown Plan. Building on that work, the Community Development Services department formed the South Downtown Steering Committee, comprised of residents, landowners, developers, and interdepartmental city staff.

In April, a design charrette was conducted with the steering committee to formulate ideas to aid in the development of the area. The charrette allowed feedback that provided a framework for the draft plan. That framework will be the plan presented to residents and the public at tonight's meeting. Residents and the public are being asked to provide critical feedback and recommendations to be incorporated into the draft South Downtown Plan.

“The south downtown area’s central location and proximity to amenities makes it prime for reinvestment," said Community Development and Services Director Brad Cramer. "The South Downtown Plan is intended to be a proactive planning document which guides development in the area’s future. Guiding this evolution through a shared community vision is paramount to preserve the areas historic character and to facilitate positive business development.”

Stevens-Henager, SBA offer free mini-course

EIRMC ER nursing unit named No. 1 in HCA system

The emergency room staff at Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center

Eastern Idaho Regional Medical Center's emergency department has been recognized as the best out of 185 HCA Healthcare hospitals nationwide. Nurses at EIRMC were recently recognized with the HCA Unit of Distinction award for driving excellence in clinical care and demonstrating outstanding performance in delivering compassionate, high-quality patient care.

“The Unit of Distinction Award is given only to the highest-performing ERs in HCA Healthcare,” said Matt Reeves, EIRMC's manager of Emergency Services. “Earning this award is a true acknowledgement of the outstanding caliber of emergency care that we deliver. It takes a high-performing team of nurses -- each demonstrating a deep level of commitment -- to achieve results like these.”

Idaho Falls Parks & Recreation to unveil survey results tonight

The Idaho Falls Parks & Recreation Department will roll out the results of their communitywide RECreate IF survey at a public meeting tonight at 7 p.m. at The Waterfront at Snake River Landing.

“This is important to our community because it gives us information that will help us craft RECreate IF, which is our strategic plan and our comprehensive master plan," said Interim Parks & Recreation Director P.J. Holm. "Together those plans will help us determine what, where and how to build for the future of Idaho Falls Parks & Recreation facilities.”

The survey was mailed to Idaho Falls community members in April, and garnered hundreds of community responses.  It was also available for people to take online, to provide their input and suggestions.

“The mailed surveys had a really great response, well beyond what we’d hoped, that will provide us with statistically valid data for our plans,” Holm said. “The online component was also important, as it gives us more of a qualitative understanding of the how the community feels. Both those pieces together give us a pretty complete view of the direction we should be heading.”

The meeting is open to the public. Results from the survey, and information about RECreate IF will also be posted on the department’s webpage, located at www.idahofallsidaho.gov and at www.ifparkplans.com.

Fall River Electric Co-op annual meeting set for Saturday

Fall River Electric Cooperative’s annual meeting for owner-members, featuring the theme “People, Power, Purpose,” is set for Saturday in Ashton and will highlight another outstanding year of achievements.

First established in 1938 by farm families around the Ashton area, the cooperative now boasts over 14,000 members and more than 17,000 meters that receive power transmitted over 2,300 miles of lines. Fall River’s service area includes all of Teton Valley, Island Park, West Yellowstone and rural portions of Fremont, Madison and Jefferson counties. It is one of only three electric cooperatives in eastern Idaho.

The annual meeting is free to all customers that receive power from Fall River Electric. The day will start with a free breakfast of pancakes, eggs, bacon, sausage, hash browns and a beverage, to be served from 8 a.m. to 10 a.m. inside North Fremont High School in Ashton. In celebration of the co-
op’s excellent year, the first 500 members attending will receive a free ceramic knife set with peeler. Attending members may also enter a drawing for a $1,000 energy credit as well as thousands of dollars in other prizes.

As a family event, Fall River’s annual meeting will feature kids’ activities including bucket truck rides, bounce houses, face painting and rides in the Fall River Propane train. Nearly two dozen vendor booths offering information and free prizes will be featured, too. Vendors include an RV dealer, financial and health care providers and local agencies. Smokey Bear will also be in attendance, courtesy of the Ashton district office of the Caribou-Targhee National Forest.

For the first time ever, Fall River will provide a free Medicare seminar, conducted by representatives of the Ballard Insurance agency.

During the annual business meeting, which starts at 10 a.m., owner-members will be finalizing the election of three board of director members from a field of ten candidates as well as a couple of proposed bylaw changes Members will also receive a financial report. In addition to the board election, Anita Decker, former executive director of the Northwest Public Power Administration will be a guest speaker during the business meeting.

New property management company offers help with rentals

Blue Pine Property Management has opened at 1820 E. 17th Street, Suite 135, specializing in managing residential real estate in Idaho Falls and surrounding areas.

"The community is growing quickly and the rental market is very strong," said Tyson Luthy, who started the company in April after more than seven years in the property management business. "We have developed a very owner-friendly management system that includes a 'vacancy guarantee' and 'pet guarantee' at no additional cost. These guarantees protect a property owner against potential vacancies or pet damages."

Blue Pine also owns rental properties in Idaho Falls. "We can relate to the concerns that property owners sometimes have," he said. "We believe that good management is the key to minimizing risk in real estate, and our experience and knowledge of the local market has allowed us to consistently help investors grow their portfolios and reach their financial goals."

The company offers flexible terms and a month-to-month management agreement that can be cancelled at any time. "We stand behind our work and don't want anybody to stay with us just because they are stuck in a contract," Luthy said.

For more information, visit the company's website, www.bluepinepm.com, call (208) 243-9492 or email info@bluepinepm.com.

Who remembers the age of the switchboard?

Switchboard operators in New York City, courtesy of the New York Daily News photo archive.

Raise your hand if you can remember when your phone number began with JAckson. Hmmm ... not many of you, are there?

Hard to as it may be to believe, but there was a day when the prefix to every number began with a word, its first two letters capitalized. Idaho Falls was JA, for JAckson. "JAckson 3-7393" may sound like a Wilson Pickett song (dating myself again), but it's actually the number I had for more than 30 years.

According to the Telephone EXchange Name Project, Blackfoot was SUnset, Rexburg was either ELmwood or ELwood and Rigby was SHerwood. There is a database where you can go to look up any town or city in the U.S.A. This makes me so glad we have the Internet.

Here's the cherry on top: A chart of Ma Bell's officially recommended exchange names. According to it, my smart phone number, 821-1285, should begin with one of the following: TAlbot, TAlmadge, TAylor, VAlley or VAndyke. I think Taylor rolls off the tongue best, e.g. "Hey man, call me at TAylor 1-1285." Of course, now you have to dial the area code first, another sign our world is in decline.

The past has so much to give us that's fun and fascinating. Could we marry the conveniences of the present with everything from the past that makes us smile? Or does the past make us smile because it's the past? In 50 years, maybe people will think of selfies as fondly as I do of my old phone number, OLympia 5-9822. I doubt it, but who knows? I don't expect to be around to find out.

INL Resilience Optimization Center established to help federal agencies, private industry

With impacts from natural disasters and human-caused incidents on the rise, resiliency — the ability to withstand impacts and rapidly recover from different degrees of disruption — has become a top priority.

With impacts from natural disasters and human-caused incidents on the rise, resiliency – the ability to withstand impacts and rapidly recover from different degrees of disruption – has become a top priority in the first two decades of the 21st century. According to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, disaster declarations between 2005 and 2014 rose 35 percent compared to the previous decade, costing $106 billion in federal assistance. Cyberattacks — more than half of which are preventable — cost an estimated $400 billion annually worldwide.

Now Idaho National Laboratory has established the INL Resilience Optimization Center (IROC) as an innovation center for system resilience and risk management. The center draws from INL’s extensive track record as a world leader in critical infrastructure systems analysis and security, as well as its unique, large-scale test ranges.

“Our national defense, economic prosperity and quality of life have long depended on critical infrastructures such as energy, water, transportation and telecommunications,” said IROC director Ron Fisher. “The rapid proliferation of telecommunications and computer systems all connected to each other has created new dimensions of vulnerability and risk to every organization. INL has been focusing on this in unique ways for a long time, and the IROC is INL’s commitment to offer resilience solutions to the nation.”

The IROC can organize multidisciplinary teams and lab-wide lifeline-infrastructure capabilities that are scalable to any asset, system or network, regardless of function or geography. Its experts also can analyze the resilience impacts posed by cyber-physical relationships and infrastructure dependencies and interdependencies.

In short, the IROC is a highly collaborative center that employs tools and resources from across the federal government, along with commercially available resources. By leveraging existing expertise, tools, test infrastructures and other partner capabilities, the IROC can comprehensively analyze the state of stakeholder resilience and provide optimized solutions that will yield observable results.

Forming a plan to enhance the resilience of critical infrastructures requires owners/operators to determine the ability of the system to withstand specific threats and then return to normal operations following degradation. Thus, a resilience methodology requires comprehensive consideration of all parts of critical infrastructure systems—from threats to consequences. The methodology must generate reproducible results that can support decision-making in risk management, disaster response and business continuity.

With the ability to provide personal attention to individual challenges posed by resilience gaps, the IROC can optimize a broad range of solutions to fit distinctive situations for federal agencies and private companies.

For more information, visit https://resilience.inl.gov or email resilience@inl.gov.

INL releases grid cybersecurity open source software

INL researchers Rita Foster and Jed Haile demonstrate the capabilities of INL's Structure Threat Intelligence Graph (STIG) software. The product helps electric utility operators visualize and share cyber threat intelligence information.

A revolutionary new cybersecurity tool that can help protect the electric power grid has been released to the public on the code-hosting website GitHub. Developed by researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory, the Structured Threat Intelligence Graph (STIG) software allows utility owners and operators to easily visualize, share, create, and edit cyberthreat intelligence information.

The ability to share threat intelligence is essential for protecting critical infrastructure like the electric power grid, water treatment facilities, oil refineries, and manufacturing plants from cyber exploits. Prior to the development of this software, threat information was too complex and cumbersome to share, limiting its application in operational environments. The new software standardizes the collection via Structured Threat Information eXpression (STIX) and converts complex data on cybersecurity vulnerabilities into a visualization that is easy to understand and act on. With STIG, utility owners and operators have a common system for sharing threat intelligence information, thus increasing the chances of detecting and mitigating cyber exploits before they lead to a cyberattack. 

“We’ve been working on the development of this tool for quite a while and have had success testing it with a major utility,” said Jed Haile, INL cybersecurity researcher and tool developer. “This software helps analysts process new threat information rapidly and makes it easier for them to find or create relationships between pieces of information.”

By releasing the open-source code on GitHub, INL researchers hope other developers will take on the challenge of making the tool even better and ultimately helping to better protect the nation’s critical infrastructure systems. In addition to Haile, INL Infrastructure Security Strategic Adviser Rita Foster and cybersecurity researchers Justin Cox and Zach Priest were instrumental in the tool’s development.

The team has been working closely to test the software with Southern California Edison, a principal member of the California Energy Systems for the 21st Century (CES- 21) Program, and the primary electricity supply company for much of Southern California. The company provides 14 million people with electricity across a service territory of approximately 50,000 square miles. Southern California Edison sponsored the research that led to the development of the software. Seeing the potential for wider application of structured threat sharing, the California Public Utilities Commission approved a request to release the open-source code.

The tool is available for free download at: https://github.com/idaholab/STIG.

Google makes good in class action settlement

$26.49 means never having to say you're sorry ...

Years ago BizMojoIdaho got bounced as a Google AdSense account for alleged violations of fraudulently urging people to click on the ads. Appeals were fruitless, as were attempts to restore the account.

My only explanation was that the Internet giant had taken umbrage at a tongue-in-cheek post from 2012 in which I didn't encourage readers to indiscriminately click on the ads but didn't discourage them from exploring the possibility of becoming a 7-11 franchisee. I was just having some fun, but within months I was busted. "What a humorless bunch!" I thought. I even got to talk to an actual Google guy from Chicago at a Chamber of Commerce event and he told me, "Yeah, they take a dim view of that." But it turns out it was a bigger deal than just me -- something I kind of knew all along -- and when I got a letter or email (not sure which) about a class action lawsuit, I signed up. What did I have to lose, right?

Now it looks like my wrongs have been avenged, to the tune of $26.49. According to this story in MediaPost.com -- Google's $11 million AdSense Settlement Gains Final Approval Ad -- this represents a fraction of what I may have earned if my account had been left up and running. Also note the lawyers made $3 million off this circus, but what else do you expect? Anyone have any suggestions on how to spend my settlement? Or should I wait for my Lumber Liquidators class action check to arrive? I'm sure it will be equally handsome.