Bitrick Consulting Group open for business

Monica Bitrick

Monica Bitrick, active on the Idaho Falls business and non-profit scene for more than five years, has started her own company, Bitrick Consulting Group, aimed at helping large and small enterprises with customized business and management solutions.

Since coming from Boise in 2007, Bitrick has helped businesses in the area as director of human resources for Advantage Employer Solutions. Before that, she was employed with Manpower International and Workscape, Inc. in Boise. She holds a bachelor’s in business administration (general business administration and human resources management) from Boise State University.

“My career has always centered around helping businesses and organizations become better at what they do," she said. "It seems only logical that I create a business the focuses on just that.”

Bitrick also has volunteered her abilities to non-profit organizations, serving as treasurer of the Suicide Prevention Action Network of Idaho. She is a member of Idaho Falls Rotary, and serves as Bronco Contact for southeast Idaho with the Boise State Alumni Association.  Previously, she served as the chair of the Military Affairs Committee, Young Professionals Network, Distinguished Under 40 Awards Program, and the Greater Idaho Falls Chamber of Commerce's Fourth of July Parade.  She participated in Dancing with the Idaho Falls Stars in 2013 to benefit the American Cancer Society. She is an active volunteer with EITC Foundation and Calvary Chapel Christian School.

Bitrick’s accolades include the “Accomplished Under 40 Award” from the Greater Idaho Falls Chamber of Commerce, Service to Others Award from the Military Affairs Committee, and the POW-MIA Recognition Award from the Veterans for Foreign Wars.

For more information or to schedule an appointment, call (208) 932-8436. Bitrick Consulting Group can be found on Facebook with this link.

Watkins Distributing opens new warehouse

Tony Watkins, who with his brother, Mitch, owns Watkins Distributing, which opened a 100,000-square-foot warehouse south of Idaho Falls this past month.

Try to visualize 1.3 million cases of beer, wine, soda pop and bottled water and you'll get an idea of the volume that Watkins Distributing is doing out of its new warehouse on the south side of Idaho Falls.

Co-owners Tony and Mitch Watkins had been in Idaho Falls for more than a decade, operating out of the old B&F warehouse on Iona Road near U.S. Highway 20. The new 100,000-square-foot warehouse near I-15 Exit 113 offers many more advantages.

"Being close to the freeway was very important to us, with the inbound and outbound loads," Tony Watkins said.

Watkins was founded in Havre, Mont., in 1933, right after the repeal of Prohibition. It has warehouses in several location. This newest one, which opened in late November, serves 23 counties, distributing close to 430 different products.

The estimated cost of the warehouse is more than $8 million. Watkins said they don't plan to expand employment right now, but eventually the number of people working there will be between 40 and 45.

The building was built by Ryan Companies US, of Minneapolis, which specializes in tilt-up concrete buildings all over the world. Watkins said more than 80 percent of the work on the building was done by local subcontractors, however, and that the people from Ryan were impressed with the speed and quality of the local work.

Center for Aesthetics opening Jackson Hole office

The Center for Aesthetics' new office in Jackson, Wyo., at 3395 Pines Way North, Suite 102.

Dr. Catherine E. Durboraw

The Center for Aesthetics is planning a "Grand Opening and Cool Night Out" at its new office in Jackson, Wyo., this Thursday from 5 to 7 p.m.

The new office is in Teton Pines, at 3395 Pines Way North, Suite 102. In Idaho Falls, the Center is located at 2375 East Sunnyside Road, Suite G.

At Thursday's event in Jackson there will be free Coolsculpting consultations with the centers board certified providers, complimentary makeovers, wine and hors d'oeuvres. Seating is limited and must be reserved in advance by calling (208) 529-8232.

Coolscuplting, non-surgical fat reduction, on one of the services provided by the Center, founded in 1998 by Dr. Catherine E. Durboraw. A graduate of University of Tennessee Medical School, Durboraw studied ophthalmic plastic surgery at Albany Medical Center. A fellowship trained and board certified surgeon, she has performed more than 125,000 dermal filler and neurotoxin injections.

Reactor developer gets nod from DOE

The desert west of Idaho Falls was once home to 50 reactors. Those days are gone, but NuScale Power LLC has moved one step closer to its goal of building 12 small modular reactors generating 545 megawatts of power here by 2025.

NuScale announced Thursday that it has been selected as the winner of the second round of the U.S. Department of Energy’s competitively-bid, cost-sharing program to develop nuclear small modular reactor technology. As part of the award, NuScale will receive funding that will support the accelerated development of its NuScale Power Module™ SMR technology. NuScale will be required to match the Federal funds it receives, somewhere in the neighborhood of $226 million.

The regulatory hurdles are formidable and the permitting process alone will cost $1 billion, said Michael McGough, chief commercial officer for NuScale. A subsidiary of Fluor, NuScale has had a prototype small modular reactor in operation since 2003.

An artist's rendering of how NuScale's small modular reactor assembly would work. For a full story, visit this link: http://greenbuildingelements.com/2013/07/01/nuscale-powers-small-modular-reactor-chosen-as-preferred-technology-by-western-initiative-for-nuclear/

Compared to a typical pressurized water reactor of 1,000 megawatts, the  advantage to a small modular reactor of 45 megawatts is that it is a "plug and play" proposition, McGough said.

Fluor wants to market nuclear power plants to the world, which is why it bought NuScale in October 2011. "They want to build power plants around the world," he said.

It is possible that NuScale plants could be going online abroad sooner than they might in the United States. Now that this hurdle is cleared, they anticipate having their design certification application -- typically a document of around 10,000 pages -- submitted to the NRC in 2015. The review of that application would take 39 months, after which they need to get NRC permission to build.

"There's lots of things you have to do, and you have to do them right," McGough said.

Unlike traditional reactors, which rely on electric pumps to keep water on the fuel rods to keep them from melting, NuScale's self-contained, self-circulating reactors shut themselves down during a station blackout.

As for the selection of Idaho Falls, it's a case of going where you are wanted. "If the community won't support it, you just shouldn't try," he said.

The Western Governor's Association has had nuclear energy on its mind for the past three years. New hydro-electric projects aren't in the cards, and new coal-fired plants are out to the question. Wind and solar are intermittent sources and heavily subsidized. That leaves natural gas and nuclear for big baseline loads.

In June this year, at its conference in Park City, the Association released its "State of Energy in the West" report. One of the stated goals was to find ways to accelerate introduction of small modular reactors into Western states.

Shortly after that, NuScale announced the launch of the Western Initiative for Nuclear, a demonstration project in Idaho to be built and owned by a consortium of regional utilities including Energy Northwest and Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems (UAMPS), the latter of which Idaho Falls Power is affiliated with.

Economic development, circa 1949

Click to read a more legible version of this letter.

I've been researching local historical figures for a book called "Legendary Locals of Idaho Falls," due out in 2014 from Arcadia Publishing. One secondary source with a lot of good information is "Proving the Principle," a history of the Idaho National Laboratory.

While looking through it, I was intrigued by this memo from D.V. Groberg, a local developer, to E.F. McDermott, publisher of the Post-Register, detailing what needed to be done to land the Atomic Energy Commission's offices for the National Reactor Testing Station.

Anyone who thinks parks and golf courses don't matter in the economic development game need to take a look at this. Groberg's memo doesn't even mention the airport, which at the time was a landing strip with two log buildings but still better that the competitors'.

Competition came from Arco and Blackfoot, both of whom were found to be too small and lacking in services, and Pocatello.

Idaho Falls ended up beating out the "Gate City" by putting on better parties, hosted by the most "winsome" young ladies the boosters could trot out for the visitors. Pocatello, on the other hand, offered an all-male delegation that seemed diffident if not outright stiff.

The biggest drawback for Idaho Falls was the lack of a paved road to the desert. To minimize this, attorney Bill Holden persuaded Mayor Tom Sutton to put road construction crews to work at the west end of Broadway, to give the appearance that road construction was already underway.

And, as we all know more than 60 years later, it worked. The AEC put its headquarters in Idaho Falls, pop. 19,000, and the city went on to become what it is today. Could anyone get away with this kind of stuff today? Probably not. Those were simpler times, and sure fun to read about.