At Idaho National Laboratory, researchers have built a bridge between computer models and the lab’s Microreactor Applications Research Validation and Evaluation (MARVEL) microreactor.

Tony Crawford, an INL researcher and MARVEL’s reactivity control system lead, designed a phone booth–sized surrogate nuclear reactor called ViBRANT, or Visual Benign Reactor as Analog for Nuclear Testing, which uses light instead of neutrons to show a “nuclear” reaction.