CEI opens Future Tech Building as eastern Idaho prepares for growing nuclear workforce. August 13, 2026 11:40 PM IDAHO FALLS, Idaho (KIFI) - The College of Eastern Idaho officially opened its new Future Tech Building Thursday, expanding space for technical programs as eastern Idaho prepares for growing workforce demand tied to nuclear energy, advanced manufacturing, cybersecurity and other high-tech industries. The 88,000-square-foot Battelle Energy Alliance Future Tech Building in Partnership with Frontier Credit Union will house programs including cybersecurity, mechatronics and automation, energy systems, battery technology, advanced manufacturing, robotics, health physics, engineering and computer networking. Gov. Brad Little, U.S. Sen. Jim Risch, Lt. Gov. Scott Bedke, Idaho National Laboratory Director John Wagner and other state, college and community leaders attended Thursday's ribbon cutting. Students will begin using the building when CEI's fall semester starts Monday. CEI President Lori Barber said the project has been about five to six years in the making and comes as the college continues to grow. CEI says current enrollment is more than 1,900 students, up 7.7% from last fall. Barber said the project was also driven by what employers across eastern Idaho have been asking CEI to provide. "What they were telling us is we need high tech, high tech programs," Barber said. "We need programs like our mechatronics, like cybersecurity, like engineering, engineering technology, electronic controls. All of those are workers who are needed with all of these amazing jobs that are coming to eastern Idaho." That demand is especially important as Idaho National Laboratory and companies connected to the nuclear industry continue to grow. Barber said many of the jobs needed to support that growth are technician positions, not just engineering or research roles. "We have so many companies, so many contractors that are coming here and they're going to need those technicians," Barber said. She also pointed to demand outside the nuclear industry, including Micron and health care employers. "This building in particular is driving economic development at its core," Barber said. "We're driving economic opportunity, we're creating taxpayers for the state, we are creating prosperity for the state." INL says workforce demand is growing Idaho National Laboratory Director John Wagner said the pace of work at INL has created an increasing need for people with technical skills. "The pace and the need associated with what we're working on at the laboratory right now is beyond anything it's been in any modern history," Wagner said. "And in order to keep that pace going, obviously we need people. We need people with those skill sets." Wagner said future INL employees do not necessarily need nuclear engineering degrees. The laboratory needs workers across cybersecurity, mechatronics, engineering technology, health physics, skilled trades and other disciplines. He also said INL staff have worked with CEI on curriculum development and instruction. Wagner pointed to mechatronics as one example of how those programs can connect directly to work underway at INL, including components for the MARVEL microreactor. Employers looking for technicians CEI mechatronics instructor Gary Holyoak said employers are already struggling to find workers with skills in electronics, pneumatics, hydraulics, robotics, automation and programming. He said troubleshooting is one of the most important skills employers are looking for because equipment failures can quickly stop production or research. Holyoak said the workforce is also going through what he called a "silver tsunami," as baby boomers retire. "We're kind of at a critical juncture where we are transitioning from, I guess you could call it the silver tsunami, where the baby boomers are retiring, and there's not enough Gen X to kind of fill a lot of those positions," Holyoak said. "And so we need a lot of people to come in and fill those." Holyoak said technicians often play a different role than engineers, working directly with equipment to build, maintain and troubleshoot systems. Workforce challenge could last decades INL Manager for Workforce and Economic Development Hope Morrow said workforce development is one of the largest challenges facing the nuclear industry. "I would say it's probably one of the largest challenges that's facing the nuclear industry," Morrow said. She said meeting future demand could require years or even decades of education and training. "We're talking about years and years and years, decades worth of workforce development and training and education that's going to be critical," Morrow said. Morrow said INL, Battelle Energy Alliance and the U.S. Department of Energy cannot build that workforce alone. "We need the education partners. We need the state partners. We need the elected officials to all lean in to help us do that," Morrow said. She said INL continues to need engineers and scientists, but also construction workers, fabricators, manufacturers and technicians as more projects move into demonstration and commercial development. Morrow said CEI students can already follow several pathways into INL, including skilled trades, cybersecurity and engineering programs. Risch points to Idaho's nuclear role U.S. Sen. Jim Risch tied CEI's expansion to Idaho's position in the nuclear industry. "The biggest and most important factor that goes into anything we do is human resources," Risch said. "And the institution here that is looking to the future and developing the programs that are wanted not only at INL, but a lot of places - this is the future." Risch said demand for nuclear energy is increasing nationally and internationally, particularly as electricity needs grow from artificial intelligence, data centers and other industries. "When you think of the future of American energy, nuclear energy is what you think about," Risch said. "And when you think about nuclear energy, you think about Idaho and you think about Idaho Falls." Battelle Energy Alliance and Frontier Credit Union are among the project's major partners. Frontier Credit Union CEO Dan Thurman said the company viewed the project as an investment in both students and the region's future workforce. "Education is one of the greatest investments that you can make," Thurman said. "It creates opportunities, opens doors, and gives people the tools that they need to build meaningful careers and fulfilling lives." Thurman said Frontier's involvement also includes support for scholarships at CEI, with a focus on students pursuing STEM-related programs. During Thursday's ceremony, Idaho National Laboratory Director John Wagner announced another $1 million installment toward Battelle Energy Alliance's contribution to the project. CEI President Lori Barber said 97 donors also helped support the new building. Students will begin filling the classrooms Monday, with CEI positioning the facility as a direct link between education and the technical jobs already growing across eastern Idaho. Article Topic Follows: News

ARC partners with INL for first reactor deployment. Concept art of an ARC-100 facility, which is planned to house a 100-MWe sodium fast reactor. (Image: ARC) Earlier this week, ARC Clean Technology announced that it has entered into a Strategic Partnership Project agreement with Battelle Energy Alliance - the management and operating contractor of Idaho National Laboratory. That agreement establishes a multiyear framework for ARC and INL to collaborate on the design, demonstration, and first deployment of the company's ARC-100, a 100-MWe sodium-cooled fast reactor. The background: ARC stands out in a sea of reactor start-ups as perhaps the oldest in the group. The Washington, D.C.-based company was founded in 2006, before other long-standing industry names like TerraPower (founded in 2008), X-energy (founded in 2009), and Oklo (founded in 2013). In its two decades of operation, ARC has pursued many potential development and deployment avenues, though the activities of its early years are not well documented and are obscured by the company's several name changes, which have included Advanced Reactor Technologies, Advanced Reactor Concepts, and ARC Nuclear. Early patent applications show that the company was developing its reactor design in the years after its founding, and its plans to develop a sodium fast reactor are mentioned in several Department of Energy publications around 2015. In 2017, ARC partnered with GE Hitachi Nuclear Energy to jointly develop, license, and deploy the ARC-100 in Canada. At the time, GEH planned to license intellectual property related to its Prism reactor design to ARC. Progress on the Canadian side of ARC's work continues to this day; the ARC-100 has moved through several stages of regulatory review with the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, and ARC has partnered with several companies to advance plans for reactor deployment in Alberta. Meanwhile, in the United States, ARC received a major boost in 2020 when the DOE rolled out the Advanced Reactor Demonstration Program, which aims to speed the demonstration of advanced reactors through industry-government cost-sharing partnerships. The ARDP is split into three different groups, the most well-known of which involves TerraPower and X-energy. ARC was selected for a different group, the confusingly named ARC-20 pathway. (ARC-20 is an abbreviation of Advanced Reactor Concepts 2020; its similarity to the company name is coincidental.) With ARC's selection in ARC-20, the company received $27.5 million in DOE funding and set a goal of deploying its reactor by the mid-2030s. That year, ARC also began prelicensing engagement activities with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The company is now planning to pursue licensing under the recently unveiled 10 CFR Part 53. The agreement: This newly formed partnership with Battelle, according to ARC, will see INL supporting "multiple technical functions including engineering and design, advanced materials and manufacturing, high-performance computing and modeling, irradiation testing, reactor commissioning and operation, and site development; covering the full lifecycle from detailed design through [first-of-a-kind] deployment." Unlike other recent, high-profile reactor deployments at INL, ARC has not been named as a participant in either the Reactor Pilot Program or the Nuclear Energy Launch Pad. As such, its design must progress through NRC licensing rather than expedited DOE authorization. Instead, the value of the DOE's Strategic Partnership Projects Program is in making available "the wealth of technologies, distinctive personnel and expertise, and facilities" at INL to private industry, other federal organizations, and universities - as explained in an INL fact sheet on the program. The ARC-100 is sodium-cooled and fueled with a metallic uranium-zirconium alloy that makes use of a supercritical CO[2] Brayton Cycle power converter. It will not be the first sodium-cooled fast reactor built at INL. The ARC-100 directly builds on the lessons learned from the Experimental Breeder Reactor-II, which operated on the site for more than 30 years. ARC's newest press release did not include a tentative target date for NRC approval or commercial operation for the first deployment of the ARC-100.