Het Oak Ridge Verhaal

The Experiment

In 1965, at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee, a team of scientists and engineers started up the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment (MSRE). It was the first reactor to successfully use uranium-233 as fuel — the fissile isotope bred from thorium.

The MSRE ran for over 11,500 hours across four and a half years. It demonstrated that molten salt reactors could work safely and reliably.

Alvin Weinberg

The director of Oak Ridge, Alvin Weinberg, championed the molten salt approach. He believed it was safer and more promising than the pressurized water reactors (PWRs) being built for the Navy and then adapted for civilian power. He staked his career on it.

The Politics

In the early 1970s, the Nixon administration and the Atomic Energy Commission chose to focus funding on the Liquid Metal Fast Breeder Reactor (LMFBR) instead. The LMFBR program was based at Argonne National Laboratory — a political rival to Oak Ridge.

In 1973, Weinberg was fired from Oak Ridge. The molten salt program was defunded. The MSRE was shut down.

“The technology worked. The politics didn't.”

The Legacy

For nearly 40 years, molten salt reactor research was largely dormant in the West. The data from Oak Ridge sat in archives. But the fundamental proof was there: the fuel cycle works, the reactor operates safely, and the physics is sound.

Now, starting in the 2010s, engineers around the world have picked up where Weinberg's team left off. Over a dozen companies in eight countries are developing modern versions of the technology — and several are targeting first power by 2030.