Nathan H. (left) and Daniel R. present their final findings at the end of a 10-week immersive training with the Energy I-Corps.
After 80 years, it can sometimes be difficult to be the first to do anything at Y-12, but Daniel R. and Nathan H. have done just that as the first Y-12 team participating in the Energy I-Corps training group.
According to the DOE website, “Energy I-Corps is a key initiative of the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Technology Commercialization, which sends teams of researchers and industry mentors through an immersive 2-month training, where the researchers define technology value propositions, conduct stakeholder discovery interviews, and develop viable market pathways for their technologies.”
The program started in 2015. Since then, 13 national laboratories have participated but no production sites. Daniel saw an opportunity to change that and recruited Nathan to join him.
“I knew about the patented technology Nathan had created to solve a problem at Y-12 and saw the opportunity for Tech Transfer to help find a possible commercial-scale solution,” Daniel said. “We wanted to find a valid pathway for this type of technology that we could develop at a commercial scale to support the nuclear deterrent.”
Daniel is a program manager for Partnerships and Tech Transfer, and Nathan is an operations staff specialist for Y-12 Radio Operations. Although they work for two organizations not close in proximity, this opportunity allowed them to come together to support the mission.
“Daniel was able to get us more involved with the rest of the industry, and I focused on creating the technology for production,” Nathan said.
Nathan and Daniel joined teams from across the country in a group-based training program for entrepreneurs and inventors to better understand the commercialization process. The hope was that after 10 weeks, they would have a better idea of how to take this product to the commercial market. After 75 meetings with industry experts, the consensus was that the innovation would fill a need to reduce the amount of rework involved in radiographic shots.
Nathan came up with this innovation, which improves computed x-ray image clarity by reducing image interference, to support Y-12 mission needs. Although it has only been used in a prototype phase so far due to the lack of commercialization, this experience showed the need for the product across the enterprise.
“This product will make the process easier, especially for new technicians to learn to successfully take radiographic shots,” Nathan said.
The information not only supported the need for this to be a commercially available product, it also showed that the need for qualified technicians wasn’t just a Y-12 issue.
“Information like this helps us understand how big of an impact we could have to support a better talent pipeline in our region while also supporting the quality inspection timeline at the site with this new, hopefully soon-to-be commercialized, technology,” Daniel said.
As they look toward the future, Daniel and Nathan are ready to finalize the steps to make this technology at the commercial level and are excited to bring back what they have learned to the site.
“For years, the national labs have been seen as the big thinkers. While it may seem like the ideas on the floor of the production agencies are small, they typically have more of an impact on us actually doing our job,” Nathan said. “Both sides need exposure, and more of the production agencies need and should be involved in this process. I hope now that we have participated in this program, we have set the precedent so that other Y-12ers can participate in the future.”