Have the Alien Power Source be researched immediately for free

Since it's been removed from research since it was felt it was penalizing the player to have to research a blast furnace to be able to use alien materials , then why can't we have it for free, the scientist could say that's a no brainer sir, there's our answer to that problem of working their metals yada yada... It's already in the after-action report after you capture a scout, even says it's sent to research, so sounds like an easy fix right?

An alternative that builds on your idea would be a workshop upgrade, the same way autopsy works the workshop simply gets upgraded with it. The Scientist could say similar to your lines but add something like "the engineers did something useful for a change, they've actually built a usable furnace in the workshop for melding these new materials based on our findings".

Yeah cool, why not combine both alien power cores plus workshop = blast furnace old-school goodness