New Projects - Nuclear

NRC issues permit to university for molten salt reactor

Abilene Christian University’s molten salt research reactor will be the first deployment of the Natura MSR-1, a 1 MW thermal molten salt reactor system.
NRC issues permit to university for molten salt reactor
Natura Resources' Molten Salt Test System (Credit: Natura Resources)

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) has issued a construction permit to Abilene Christian University (ACU) to build the Natura MSR-1, marking the first U.S. university research reactor approved in more than 30 years.

ACU’s molten salt research reactor (MSRR) will be the first deployment of the Natura MSR-1, a 1 megawatt thermal molten salt reactor system. This construction permit is only the second ever for an advanced nuclear reactor, ACU said.

“If we’re going to meet the growing energy needs, not only in the State of Texas but in our country and the world at large, we must begin deploying advanced nuclear reactors,” said Douglass Robison, Natura Resources founder and president. “The Natura MSR-1 deployment at ACU will not only demonstrate successful licensure of a liquid-fueled molten salt reactor but will provide operational data that will allow us to safely and efficiently design and deploy our commercial systems.”

Natura Resources brought together ACU’s NEXT Lab with Texas A&M University, The University of Texas at Austin and Georgia Institute of Technology to form the Natura Resources Research Alliance to license and deploy the MSRR, which will be located at ACU’s Dillard Science and Engineering Research Center, the nation’s first advanced reactor demonstration facility outside of a national lab.

“ACU is thrilled to have Natura as a partner as we work together to answer the world’s increased demand for reliable energy, medical isotopes, and clean water through the deployment of liquid-fueled molten salt reactors,” said Dr. Phil Schubert, ACU president. “With the NRC’s issuance of the construction permit, we are one step closer to making that a reality. The performance-driven approach of Natura Resources to advanced reactor deployment has quickly moved them from a relative unknown to a leader in the upstart advanced reactor industry.”

The construction permit review includes an environmental review and a safety evaluation to assess the proposed reactor’s effect on public health and safety. ACU’s environmental review was completed in March with a finding of “no significant impact.”  The recently completed safety review found that the preliminary design of the Natura MSR-1 meets federal regulations and is safe to construct, ACU said.

“We appreciate the thorough reviews by the NRC staff,” said Ben Beasley, NEXT Lab director of licensing. “This construction permit is the first step in the NRC’s two step licensing process. The construction permit allows ACU and Natura to build and operate the MSRR without uranium. The next step is to apply for and receive the operating license, which will authorize ACU and Natura to fuel the reactor and demonstrate the elegance of molten salt technology.”

With the construction permit completed, Abilene Christian will continue working with Natura to submit an application for an operating license, while Natura will complete the detailed design of the MSR-1. ACU and Natura said they hope to submit the operating license application in the first half of 2025.

As this is Natura’s first deployment, Natura is working to develop a small modular MSR system and recently announced a partnership with the Texas Produced Water Consortium to explore the deployment of Natura’s liquid-fueled molten salt technology providing additional sources of dispatchable energy paired with water treatment facilities.

In December 2023, the NRC issued a construction permit for a test molten salt reactor in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. The permit, issued to Kairos Power, was the first construction permit the NRC issued for a reactor that uses something other than water to cool the reactor core. The reactor won’t generate generate electricity and it will be far smaller than traditional ones.

Kairos Power is working on fluoride salt-cooled, high-temperature reactor technology. The California-based company received funding from the Department of Energy. The 35-MW thermal reactor will test the concept of using molten salt as a coolant and test the type of nuclear fuel, the NRC said.

Kairos Power aims to develop a larger version for commercial electricity that could be used in the early 2030s. It says the construction permit is a big step forward as it works to deploy clean, safe, reliable and affordable energy.

Earlier this summer, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) announced it had created its “first-ever” custom glass test cell to observe how gases behave inside a molten salt reactor. The test cell will be used to observe the “complex chemistry” that can occur in molten salt fueled reactors, ORNL said, and its data will be used to help verify existing computer codes and modeling software to better predict the reactors’ overall performance.

Molten salt reactors (MSRs) are still under development, but could be commercialized “early next decade,” ORNL said. Some MSR designs are intended to operate on liquid fuel, with fissile materials directly dissolved into a molten salt solution that can also cool the reactor.

However, the nuclear and chemical reactions that result can cause gases to bubble out of the molten salt, which runs the risk of impacting reactor neutronics and thermal hydraulic performance, ORNL said. The new glass test cell is meant to help researchers better understand this behavior.