A Laboratory’s Journey into Space
Mihály Veres, former CEO of Isotoptech, describes how the development of a company to provide research and development, manufacturing and laboratory measurement services has supported research activities from nuclear power to the heart of our Solar System.
Read article in the fully formatted PDF of the Europlanet Magazine.
Isotoptech’s story began in the 1990s with a recognition by our founder, Ede Hertelendi, that research results in Hungary were not being sufficiently disseminated to industrial users, even though there was a clear and existing demand from industry for exploitation of those results. In response, in 1998 Hertelendi founded Isotoptech, a company to develop research-based products and related service packages. Our first product was a water-sampling device, along with the associated measurement methods, to support the environmental monitoring activities of the Paks Nuclear Power Plant.
In the early 2000s, we started to expand the instrumentation in Isotoptech’s laboratory, incorporating the best isotopic analytical instrumentation and related measurement techniques available on the market.
Since 2005, we have been operating an integrated quality and environmental management system, with accreditation from the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the Hungarian National Accreditation Authority. By the end of the decade, we had installed a modern low-background gamma
spectrometer, a stable isotope ratio mass spectrometer, liquid scintillation spectrometers and a quadrupole mass spectrometer, among others, which enabled us to offer a complex package of isotopic analytical services to the market.
In 2006, we signed a 25-year cooperation agreement with the Hungarian institute for nuclear research, Atomki, with the declared aim of translating scientific results into practical applications. This cooperation allowed us not only to focus on the development of the instrumentation, but also to create a modern analytical laboratory complex through infrastructural renovations, including a wellequipped electronics and mechanical workshop. The laboratory was named the Ede Hertelendi Laboratory of Environmental Studies (HEKAL) in memory of our founder, who died tragically in 1999 at the age of 48. Within two years, we were able to provide a complex service for the full operation of environmental monitoring systems for domestic nuclear facilities and radioactive waste repositories. In the next few years, we started offering isotope analytical measurements and nuclear monitoring equipment on the international market, and now we have customers in over 45 countries on every continent. Supporting the safe operation of nuclear facilities is an ongoing part of our core business, and we are currently working on the establishment, in the near future, of an International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Training Centre for the characterisation of radioactive waste, working with Thermo Scientific to develop the instrumentation and related specialised components.
Perhaps unusually for an SME, Isotoptech invests a lot of energy in the implementation of Research and Development (R&D) proposals. We have been involved in ten successful European Commission (EC) projects to date, seven of which have been R&D-related. In 2020, we joined consortia for two grants under the EC’s Horizon 2020 programme, and this is how our involvement in planetary exploration began.
A Journey Into Space
We were introduced to the Coordinator of the Europlanet Research Infrastructure (RI), Prof Nigel Mason, in the summer of 2018. During a late-night conversation, we discussed with him the possibility of four of our laboratories joining the Europlanet Transnational Access (TA) network of facilities that offer researchers from other countries access to carry out experiments. Although we had not previously worked in planetary science, except for terrestrial studies, the relationship seemed a natural fit for both parties. A few days later, the head of Europlanet’s TA programme, Prof Gareth Davies, arrived for a short visit and we underwent an “exam” of sorts. Three out of the four laboratories “passed” and were able to demonstrate that they had sufficient knowledge and equipment to be included in Europlanet’s network of 22 TA laboratory facilities. For each of the three laboratories, beyond the opportunity for international collaboration, there were clear benefits of becoming involved with the planetary community and expanding the services that we could offer.
Our Accelerator Mass Spectrometry Carbon-14 Dating (AMS C14) laboratory had already been used for a wide range of radiocarbon dating applications, including archaeology, geological and hydrological dating, discharge and environmental monitoring of nuclear installations, quality control of biofuels, vintage control of wines and spirits, and dating of artworks. The possibility of developing a method for in-situ C14 measurements of meteorites, to determine when they had impacted with Earth, had already been raised, as the measurement technique was available using the AMS gas ion source. However, the sample preparation was a very complex, instrument-intensive task and thus we had lacked the funding to follow this up. By joining Europlanet, we were able to set up a new in-situ sample preparation system to allow both the dating of meteorite impact times and the ageing of surface rocks.
Historically, our Noble Gas Laboratory had two focus areas: one was related to the nuclear industry, namely the verification that fuel rods are hermetically sealed by measuring the isotopic ratio of noble gases dissolved in the water of the primary circuit; the other was related to hydrology and paleoclimatology research, determining the mean residence time and infiltration temperature of water. The financial and scientific support of Europlanet enabled developments in this laboratory that now allow us to measure the noble gas composition and isotope ratios of fluid inclusions in various rocks of relevance to planetary and Earth sciences.
The Stable and Clumped Isotope Laboratory offered a number of services with stable isotope mass spectrometers in the fields of hydrology, geology, the food industry and the medical industry. However, at the beginning of our Europlanet collaboration, carbonate clumped isotope thermometry (whereby the growth temperatures of carbonate minerals are measured through the extent of carbon and oxygen isotope bonding) was a newly-introduced research area in our laboratory. Over a four-year period, our team developed a reliable and precise clumped isotope measurement protocol, enabling us to generate internationally-recognised results. This achievement culminated in 2024, when a paper based on data collected during one of the TA visits was published in a top-tier scientific journal.
Overall, during the four years of the Europlanet 2024 RI project, 19 TA visits by international researchers were organised and successfully completed. Some highlights included a study of Miyake events – extreme solar radiation storms – in the AMS C14 laboratory, which besides providing insights on a very hot topic, has made radiocarbon dating more accurate. Recent publications from TA visits to the Stable/Clumped Isotope Laboratory include an analysis of soil samples that reveal the environmental conditions prevailing when the first humans settled in the Khovaling Loess Plateau in Tajikistan.3
Through the TA Planetary Field Analogue programme, our own researchers also participated in an expedition to the Greenland Arctic fieldsite, EASTGRIP, where we made drillings and measurements of the ice sheet to investigate tritium concentrations before nuclear tests and their correlation with solar cycles. High-precision measurements are being evaluated and an article is now in preparation.4 In addition to these concrete results, we have established several new international contacts that will most certainly enhance the recognition and sustainability of our laboratory in the future.
Impact of Europlanet Involvement
The involvement of Isotoptech in Europlanet is a story of how a facility established and operated by a SME not only made it into Hungary’s Top 50 research infrastructures, but also became the first commerciallyoperated laboratory to provide research infrastructure to support cutting-edge planetary research in Europe and around the world.
However, for me, perhaps the greatest experience was seeing the community of over a thousand researchers – mostly young people – who were part of this programme at the Europlanet Science Congress (EPSC) 2022 in Granada. This meeting was an embodiment of what EC-funding, alongside incredible effort and decades of work by individuals and groups, can build. We hope very much that the EC will continue to support research infrastructures and the planetary science community in the future.
Seeing the enthusiastic faces of the young people who attended EPSC2022, and listening to their high-quality presentations on their research, impressed on me the importance of sustaining this community. This is why, although we are a small market-based business with limited resources, we have joined Europlanet as an organisational member and the pilot initiative to maintain the Europlanet laboratory network. We have offered all three facilities for the TA pilot call this spring and look forward to contributing to the full TA programme that will start annually from autumn 2025. We have received a lot from this community and we feel that now is the time to give a little back.
Europlanet 2024 RI has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 871149.
