The DOE-NE Molten Salt Reactor (MSR) Program serves as the hub for addressing the technology challenges for MSRs to enter the commercial market.

MISSION: Develop the technological foundations to enable MSRs for safe and economical operations while maintaining a high level of proliferation resistance.

1) MSRs can provide a substantial portion of the energy needed for the US to achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2050 and

2) There is a need for an abundant energy worldwide for the foreseeable future.

Salt Chemistry

Determination of the Thermophysical and Thermochemical Properties of Molten Salts – Experimentally and Computationally

MSR Radioisotopes

Developing new technologies to separate radioisotopes of interest to the MSR community

Technology Development and Demonstration – Radionuclide Release

Radionuclide Release Monitoring, Sensors & Instrumentation, Liquid
Salt Test Loop

Advanced Materials

Development of materials surveillance technology Graphite/Salt Interaction De-risk the transition from 316H to higher performance alloy 709

Mod & Sim

Identify, prioritize, and resolve technical gaps related to mechanistic source term (MST)
modeling and
simulation tools

International Activities

What are Molten Salt Reactors?

A molten salt reactor (MSR) is any nuclear reactor that employs liquid halide salt to perform a significant function in-core.  MSRs include a broad spectrum of design options including:

  • ​liquid- and solid-fueled variants,
  • chloride- and fl​uoride-based fuel salts,
  • thermal, fast, time variant, and spatially varying neutron spectra,
  • wide range of reactor power scales,
  • intensive, minimal, or inherent fuel processing,
  • multiple different primary system configurations, and compatibility with
  • nearly all fuel cycles.

The breadth of the MSR design space presents a substantial challenge to the completeness and broad applicability of any technology development planning activity.  Dozens of design concepts are currently in some state of development, nearly all have been introduced in the past decade, and it is not currently possible to reasonably evaluate which designs will eventually be successful.  Nevertheless, MSRs have common characteristics and many technology development issues are broadly applicable to most MSRs​

Contacts

Federal Manager (Acting)

Michael Stoddard
Email: [email protected]
Office NE-52

National Technical Director

Patricia Paviet
[email protected]
Office: (509) 372-5983
Cell: (208) 757-2048

Announcements

April 22-24, 2025
MSR Annual Campaign Review Meeting
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland, WA
Meeting Website: https://pnnl.cventevents.com/msr25
Meeting Registration: https://forms.office.com/g/SM7DX4AwvG

November 5-7, 2024
ORNL Annual Molten Salt Reactor Workshop, Oak Ridge, TN
https://msrworkshop.ornl.gov/

MSR Awards

FY2022 Integrated Research Projects Awards
  • Reduction, Mitigation, and Disposal Strategies for the Graphite Waste of High Temperature Reactors
  • Bridging the gap between experiments and modeling to improve design of molten salt reactors
NRL Projects Awarded CINR FY22 Funding
  • Integrated Effects of Irradiation and Flibe Salt on Fuel Pebble and Structural Graphite Materials for Molten Salt Reactors
FY2022 CINR MSR Awards
  • ​​A Molten Salt Community Framework for  Predictive Modeling of Critical Characteristics​
  • ​Understand​ing the Interfacial Structure of the Molten Chloride Salts by in-situ Electrocapillarity and Resonant Soft X-ray Scattering (RSoXS)​
  • Nuclear Material Accountancy During Disposal and Reprocessing of Molten Salt Reactor Fuel Salts
  • ​Optical Basicity Determin​ation of MoltenFluoride Salts and its Influence on Structural Material Corrosion
FY22 SciDAC Award
  • Los Alamos National Laboratory to lead study of molten-salt nuclear reactor materials
MSR Annual Campaign Review
MSR Course
Molten Salt Thermal Properties Database (MSTDB)
Molten Salt Thermal Properties Working Group
Presentations on Molten Salt Chemistry
Reports
  • Chemistry
  • Off Gas Management
  • Modeling and Simulation
  • Materials
GIF Webinars

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