texas

Texas project hopes to revolutionize nuclear power

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Can nuclear reactors help power Texas' future?

A project under construction at Abilene Christian University could help answer that question. It's a research reactor cooled with molten salt, not water.

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The fuel is liquid, not solid - two major differences from the hundreds of reactors generating electricity around the world today.

The concept was pioneered decades ago at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee. A molten salt reactor ran for several years in the late 1960s before the project ended. However, a group of scientists, investors, and academic institutions believe that technology is worth pursuing again.

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"They proved this thing with the reactor at Oak Ridge that was safer and cleaner and more efficient. And if that's true, then why wouldn't we want to do that?" said Dr. Rusty Towell, director of the NEXT Lab, a recently built research facility on the ACU campus.

The university has partnered with Natura Resources, an Abilene-based startup company. "This is a demonstration system that then feeds into the reactor being deployed," said Doug Robison, Natura's founder.

Natura's goal is to develop commercial molten salt reactors. The president of ACU said it fits the university's mission.

"We don't want to be about research for research's sake. We want to be about research that blesses the world," said Dr. Phil Schubert. The University of Texas at Austin, Texas A&M, Texas Tech, and Georgia Tech are also involved in the project.

The Federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission granted a license to construct the reactor in September 2024. The underground concrete trench where the reactor will sit is complete. It is 25 feet deep, and the walls and floor are four feet thick. It is part of what Towell said makes the project safe.

"I wouldn't be doing it. I wouldn't be living and working in a place where it wasn't safe," Towell said.

If any of the radioactive liquid fuel were to escape from the reactor, Towell said it would drain into the concrete trench. Because it is molten salt, he explains it would harden like candle wax. "So nothing escapes. Nothing goes up in the atmosphere, and nothing leaks around the world," Towell said.

Another element of the design that proponents said makes it safe is that the system operates at low pressure, which is also different from today's reactors.

"So we won't experience, say, what happened at Fukushima. That was a pressure release," Robison said, referring to the disaster at a Japanese nuclear power plant in 2011.

If it sounds too good to be true, some people think it is.

"Every reactor technology has its pluses and minuses," said Dr. Arjun Makhijani, president of the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research based outside Washington, D.C. He said the experiment at Oak Ridge showed how challenging molten salt reactor technology can be.

"Over the course of just a few years, it was shut down 225 times," he said. "Usually, those shutdowns were unanticipated."

Towell said there have been major advances since then, including supercomputers and high-tech materials. The research reactor's mechanical systems are already being developed and tested.

"So we're slowly just knocking down the things that are roadblocks," Towell said.

The first components of the reactor itself are expected to arrive at the NEXT Lab by the end of the year. It could be completed by the end of 2026. The NRC will have to do another review and issue another license before the reactor can start operating.

If that timeline holds, Natura believes it can deploy its first commercial molten salt reactor just a few years after that. "One of the things we've already proven is that you can build sites for molten salt reactors very quickly and fairly inexpensively," said Robison.

A commercial reactor would be larger than the research version at Abilene Christian but smaller than today's commercial reactors. It would also be modular in design, making it easy to mass produce. The idea is to place reactors wherever large amounts of power are needed. Natura hopes to have a commercial reactor ready as soon as 2030.

Makhijani is skeptical. Even if the technology can be mastered, he doesn't believe it can be practical.

"I do not see any small modular reactor avenue that is going to overcome the fundamental vulnerabilities of cost, time, and vulnerability to recalls," he said. Makhijani said Texas should focus on more wind and solar power.

But ACU's Schubert said there is value in trying to develop something new, even if success is not guaranteed.

"Sometimes it doesn't even matter if the end of the journey is as viable as maybe you think it might be because there's value in the journey itself."

Back in the NEXT Lab, Towell said the journey is going well.

"We're learning tremendous amounts." Robison is also satisfied with the project's progress.

"We are successfully moving forward towards deploying commercial reactors," he said.

And as Texas' appetite for energy grows, Robison maintains there is no time to waste.

"Now is not the right time. We should have been doing this 15 years ago."

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