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Providing a fundamental understanding of molten salt bulk and interfacial chemistry underpinning molten salt nuclear reactor technology

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Basic Energy Sciences created Energy Frontier Research Centers (EFRCs) in 2009. EFRCs represent a unique approach, bringing together creative, multi-disciplinary scientific teams to tackle the toughest scientific challenges preventing advances in energy technologies. Brookhaven National Laboratory is honored to have been selected as the lead institution of an EFRC to investigate Molten Salts in Extreme Environments, along with our partners Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Idaho National Laboratory, Stony Brook University, the University of Iowa, and the University of Notre Dame.

About MSEE

Molten Salt Reactors (MSRs) are a potentially game-changing technology that could enable cost-competitive, safe, and more sustainable commercial nuclear power generation. Proposed designs employ molten salts in the temperature range of 500 – 900 ˚C acting as coolants for solid-fueled reactors or in other cases where the nuclear fuel dissolved in the molten salt as combined coolant and fuel. Consequently, the development of reliable MSRs requires a thorough understanding of the physical properties and chemistry of molten salts and of their interfacial interactions with reactor materials.

The Energy Frontier Research Center for Molten Salts in Extreme Environments (MSEE) seeks fundamental and predictive understanding of the bulk and interfacial chemistry of molten salts in the operating environments expected for MSRs. MSEE addresses this challenge through a coordinated experimental and theoretical effort to elucidate the atomic and molecular basis of molten salt behavior, including interactions with solutes (dissolved materials such as nuclear fuel and fission products) and interfaces, under the coupled extremes of temperature and radiation.

Research Overview

The center for Molten Salts in Extreme Environments is building a fundamental and predictive understanding of molten salt bulk and interfacial chemistry, including the effects of solutes and impurities on those properties.
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Research Structure

Our research is organized along two interrelated thrusts: Molten Salt Properties and Reactivity, and Interfacial and Corrosion Processes in Molten Salt Environments, an effort to understand the atomic-scale structure and dynamics at interfaces and related mechanisms of interfacial and corrosion processes between molten salts and materials.
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Addressing Challenges

We are addressing three Grand Challenges: controlling material processes at the level of electrons; understanding how remarkable properties of matter emerge from complex correlations of atomic or electronic constituents; and characterizing and controlling matter that's far from equilibrium. 
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Brookhaven National Laboratory is honored to have been selected as the lead institution of an Energy Frontier Research Center to investigate Molten Salts in Extreme Environments, along with our partners Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Idaho National Laboratory, Stony Brook University, the University of Iowa, and the University of Notre Dame.

Brookhaven National Lab
PO Box 5000
Upton, NY 11973-5000