INL leads research efforts to test advanced TRISO nuclear fuel, which has several layers of carbon and carbide that serve as the primary containment for radioactive material. Idaho scientists discover clue in the case of the missing silver   By Shannon Palus for INL Communications & Governmental Affairs Some come to Idaho to travel the highways that lead to the Tetons, to Yellowstone, to small towns and big adventures. Idaho National Laboratory researcher Isabella van Rooyen came, all the way from South Africa, looking for a piece of silver 500,000 times smaller than a poppy seed.      Researchers Isabella Van Rooyen, Tom Lillo, and Yaqiao Wu working in the Materials and Characterization Suite in the Center for Advanced Energy Studies at INL. The silver was somewhere inside irradiated tristructural-isotopic (TRISO) fuel particles — a safer, more efficient, next-generation nuclear fuel — the “poppy seed” in question. Break a TRISO fuel particle open and it looks like a jaw breaker on the inside. An outer shell of carbon coats a layer of silicon carbide, which coats the uranium center where the energy-releasing fission happens. These layers are meant to contain the radioactive products of fission, which includes little bits of silver. Containment of the radioactive material is

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