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  Texas universities evaluating SMRs for water desalination
  Natura Resources has signed a memorandum of understanding with two Texas universities—Texas Tech University and Abilene Christian University—to evaluate the integration of the company’s molten salt small modular reactor technology with water desalination systems. The collaboration includes Texas Tech’s Texas Produced Water Consortium, which was established by the Texas legislature in 2021 to explore the potential benefits of using treated produced water for purposes outside of the oil and gas industry of the Permian Basin. Produced water is salty or brackish hydrocarbon-containing water that is produced as a byproduct of oil and gas extraction. The stated goal of the new collaboration is to develop “a sustainable solution for water scarcity by purifying produced water from oil and gas operations, making it available for agricultural and other beneficial uses.” Abilene Christian University is planning to host the first deployment of Natura Resources’ Natura MSR-1, a 1-MWt molten salt research reactor.
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The characteristics of flashing-induced instabilities, which are of importance during the startup phase of natural-circulation boiling water reactors, are studied. Experiments at typical startup conditions (low power and low pressure) are carried out on a steam/water natural-circulation loop. The flashing and the mechanism of flashing-induced instability are analyzed. The effect of system pressure and steam volume in the steam dome is investigated as well.

The instability region is found as soon as the operational boundary between single-phase and two-phase operation is crossed. Increasing pressure has a stabilizing effect, reducing the operational region in which instabilities occur. Nonequilibrium between phases and enthalpy transport are found to play an important role in the instability process. In contrast with results reported in the literature, instabilities can occur independently of the position of the flashing boundary in the adiabatic section of the loop. The period of the oscillation is found to be about twice the fluid transit time in the system.