Natura receives Oak Ridge's 1960s FLiBE salt for its Abilene reactor

Natura Resources said on September 18, 2026 that it has received FLiBE salt from the US Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, via Idaho National Laboratory, for the Molten Salt Demonstration Reactor it calls the MSR-1, which is being built at Abilene Christian University in Abilene, Texas. The release says the salt contains 99.99% enriched lithium-7, which minimizes tritium generation, and that Natura was selected to receive it through a competitive DOE solicitation facilitated by Idaho National Laboratory and issued in August 2025. ANS Nuclear Newswire, which reported the delivery the same day, puts the shipment at more than 2 metric tons of the lithium fluoride and beryllium fluoride mixture and says it will be used as the primary constituent of the reactor's fuel salt.

Per Natura's release, the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment at Oak Ridge operated from 1965 to 1969, logging more than 13,000 hours, and this FLiBE was used to cool it. ANS, citing ORNL energy systems development group leader Kevin Robb, says the MSRE used it as the secondary system coolant and that it contains no fissile material. "The salt represents the only near-term domestic source of a significant supply of lithium-7 enriched FLiBe," Robb said, per ANS. Enriched lithium is scarce in general: Marathon Fusion adviser Per Peterson said in an August 27, 2026 release that the world makes less than a tonne of enriched lithium a year.

Names differ by document. The NRC's project page records that it issued a construction permit for the Molten Salt Research Reactor, the MSRR, to Abilene Christian University on September 16, 2024, and that the university submitted a revised regulatory engagement plan on October 31, 2024 related to its application for an operating license, the next licensing step. ANS describes the unit as a 1-MWt, molten salt-cooled, liquid-fueled, graphite-moderated reactor whose data Natura will use for its planned commercial reactors, and quotes NEXT Lab director Rusty Towell saying the university asked the DOE in 2019 for 2,000 kg of FLiBe with isotopically enriched lithium and received a commitment, before the DOE ran a further competitive process in 2025.