The Molten Salts in Extreme Environments (MSEE) Energy Frontier Research Center is a Brookhaven National Laboratory-led partnership with Idaho National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and six universities: University of Iowa, University of Michigan, University of Notre Dame, Stony Brook University, The University of Tennessee at Knoxville, and the University of Wisconsin at Madison. MSEE is establishing a mechanistic, multi-scale framework to understand and predict bulk and interfacial molten salt chemistry under coupled extremes of temperature, evolving chemical composition, and ionizing radiation, across the systems and conditions relevant to molten salt reactor operation.
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, while in other cases, the nuclear fuel is 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 MSEE – which initiated its research effort under DOE support in 2018 and was renewed for a second 4-year cycle in 2022 – 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.
Molten Salt Science as a Foundation for new Energy Technologies
Molten halide salts are central to MSRs and other emerging energy technologies. MSRs, which promise to enable commercial nuclear power generation that is safer, more cost-competitive and more sustainable, use molten salts in the temperature range of 500 — 900˚C as heat-transfer fluids or liquid fuel media. Yet these high-temperature liquids evolve continuously under radiation and as corrosion, fission, and transmutation products accumulate. Deploying MSRs with confidence requires a predictive understanding of salt chemistry, including the behavior of actinides and other dissolved species, redox processes, and interactions between molten salts and structural materials.
MSEE advances this fundamental science from the molecular scale upward. Combining theory, computation, and high-temperature experiments, MSEE investigates how salt composition, structure, radiation chemistry, and surface interactions determine properties relevant to fuel-salt behavior, corrosion, and materials degradation. Through real-time measurements at DOE user facilities and engagement with DOE Office of Nuclear Energy programs and industry, MSEE provides the scientific foundation needed to address key chemistry challenges for practical MSR systems.
