Who says an old dog can’t learn new tricks?
At long last, the NRC issued its first permit for constructing a liquid-fueled advanced reactor. Abilene Christian University in Texas received the historic permit to build a Natura Resources molten salt reactor, dubbed MSR-1, at a $23M test facility on campus.
- This is only the NRC’s second time permitting an advanced reactor, the first being Kairos Power’s Hermes reactor.
- Under the permit, Abilene Christian University will stand up a research reactor, funded privately by Natura Resources.
“In oil and gas, we’re all about production,” Douglass Robison, founder and president of Natura Resources and long-time entrepreneur in the Permian Basin, told Ignition. “We talk about daily production, we talk about annual production, we talk about production reserves, production decline. It’s all production, production, production. Nothing else matters.”
Nuclear looks a bit different, Robison said. “Production in the nuclear world is you have to get a license, you have to work with the NRC. And we’ve been very, very pleased with our engagement within the NRC.”
Natura’s road to riches: Robison has been working with the DOE and a handful of university partners since before founding Natura in 2020. Rather than design and build the reactor in house, Natura instead owns the technology and forges partnerships with universities—including Abilene, Georgia Tech, Texas A&M, and the University of Texas—and engineering firm Zachry Group to get the job done.
All the work now is done under a programmatic letter of support from the DOE, which Robison says has encouraged project development from the get-go.
“DOE basically said, ‘You need to build this reactor. It’s a matter of national security, strategic technology. We need to beat China. We need to beat Russia,’” Robison said. “So I held my hand up and said, we’ll do it. And actually said, we’ll privately fund it. That’s my instinct as an oil and gas man.”
To date, Natura Resources has raised $78M in funding to support MSR development. Abilene funded the construction of the $23M test facility that will host the research reactor.
The trial run: ACU will host the reactor and have full access to it as a research reactor, Robison said. On Natura’s side, MSR-1 will provide the operating data to prove and de-risk the design so the company can pursue future iterations and commercial opportunities.
“For Natura, it’s our demonstration reactor, but for the universities, it is a research reactor,” Robison said. “[That] gave us a pathway to working with the NRC where we did not incur NRC licensing costs,” potentially saving hundreds of millions in regulatory burdens.
Looking ahead…A commercial project has always been top of mind for Natura after deploying the research reactor. The company filed for that construction permit in August 2022.
Lead Reporter of Ignition
