Natura Resources, LLC (Natura) is partnering with the Texas Produced Water Consortium (TxPWC) at Texas Tech University to look at the deployment of Natura’s liquid-fueled molten salt reactor (LF-MSR) technology to power the Permian Basin.

Dubbed “Fortifying the Future,” this partnership provides an opportunity to deploy Natura’s LF-MSR technology to provide additional sources of reliable, dispatchable energy paired with produced water treatment facilities to supply two new forms of critical resources for the state of Texas.

Natura Resources is leading in the development and deployment of LF-MSR technology.The Fortifying the Future partnership with the TPWC and the upcoming construction permit issuance in September for Natura’s first reactor deployment at Abilene Christian University are both evidence of the rapid pace at which Natura is developing LF-MSR technology, the company said.

The TPWC was created by the Texas Legislature in 2021 as the state’s premier produced water research consortium focused on the potential for beneficial uses of treated produced water outside the oil and gas industry. The consortium is specifically tasked with providing the Legislature and state agencies guidance and recommendations on policies that could encourage a system of beneficial use that is both environmentally safe and economically viable.

Affordable, reliable energy is a critical component of the economics of any water treatment process. Having access to a commercialized molten salt reactor in remote areas of the state could prove to be not only a major breakthrough in achieving economic feasibility for treating new sources of water but also could serve as another critical component in supplying Texans with additional electric generation capacity at a crucial time in the state’s history, Natura said.

A Liquid-Fueled Molten Salt Reactor (LF-MSR) is a type of advanced reactor that uses liquid fuel in the form of molten salts for both the fuel and the coolant. The most commonly discussed molten salt for this application is a mixture of lithium fluoride (LiF) and beryllium fluoride (BeF₂) salts, and/or thorium fluoride salts. LF-MSRs operate at high temperatures and have unique features that differentiate them from traditional solid-fuel reactors.

In liquid-fuel MSR designs, the fission products dissolve in the fuel salt and are ideally removed continuously in an adjacent online reprocessing loop and replaced with fissile uranium, plutonium and other actinides or, potentially, fertile Th-232 or U-238.

Liquid fuel eliminates the possibility of a meltdown making MSRs “walk away safe.” If a malfunction occurs, the fuel salt cools, turns into a solid, and is safely contained within the system. They are also far more efficient, targeting greater than 90% burnup of the fuel as opposed to the less than 5% consumption rate of current solid fuel reactors.

Cooling nuclear reactors with molten salt instead of water allows operation at the pressure of household pipes as well as operation at significantly higher temperatures than conventional reactors, creating an opportunity to serve industries that require 24/7 sources of pow