Manchester-based Nuclear Turbines has raised £15 million (almost $20 million) to develop a compact nuclear power system that it claims could generate electricity at one-fifth the cost of today’s nuclear plants.
The Seed round was led by deeptech investor IQ Capital, with participation from Rhapsody Venture Partners, Zero Carbon Capital and Empirical Ventures.
Nuclear Turbines will use the money to validate its reactor design, construct large-scale test rigs, hire more engineers and prepare to manufacture its first nuclear fuel elements.
The startup was founded by former BAE Systems principal engineer Dr Jeremy Owston and University of Manchester nuclear engineering professor Tim Abram. It was developed through BAE Systems’ Launchpad initiative and Empirical Ventures’ venture studio.
The company’s bet is that the nuclear industry has been designing the power plant in the wrong order.
Most commercial reactors heat water, producing steam that drives a turbine. Although well understood, steam systems require boilers, pressure vessels, heat exchangers, condensers and extensive cooling infrastructure. That makes them expensive, physically large and difficult to shrink.
Nuclear Turbines instead started with the compact, high-temperature gas turbines used in jet engines and gas-fired power stations, then designed a reactor capable of supplying the heat they require.
The company says its reactor avoids the graphite used by many other high-temperature designs, allowing air to be heated without creating the fire risk associated with exposing hot graphite to oxygen.
“The nuclear industry has always designed reactors first, then figured out what to do with the heat,” said Owston in a statement. “We flipped this script: we started with the cheapest way to generate power and designed a reactor to fit.”
By removing much of the steam infrastructure, Nuclear Turbines believes its systems could be placed ‘behind the meter’ at factories, data centres and other energy-intensive facilities, providing continuous power without relying entirely on the grid.
The company enters an increasingly busy market for small reactors intended for industrial customers.
US developer Last Energy is pursuing a similar behind-the-meter model with its 20MW PWR-20. But Last Energy uses established pressurised-water reactor technology and retains a modular steam plant.
California-based Radiant Nuclear is building Kaleidos, a portable 1MW microreactor aimed primarily at replacing diesel generators at remote facilities, military installations and backup-power sites. It uses air cooling and requires no on-site water, but operates at a significantly smaller scale than the industrial and data-centre market Nuclear Turbines appears to be targeting.
In Europe, Newcleo has raised more than €500 million to develop lead-cooled fast reactors capable of using recycled nuclear material. Its proposed 200MW commercial system is much larger than a typical behind-the-meter microreactor and uses molten lead rather than Nuclear Turbines’ high-temperature gas architecture.
The timing is favourable. The UK government’s Advanced Nuclear Framework, published in February, established a route for private advanced-reactor projects to seek government endorsement and support. Britain is also investing roughly £400 million with Urenco in a domestic supply of high-assay low-enriched uranium, or HALEU, with commercial enrichment operations targeted for 2031.
(Pictured: Leadership team: Lauren Dickerson, Chief Commercial and Strategy Officer; Jeremy Owston, Co-founder and CEO; Tim Abram, Co-founder).
