Nuclear power usually arrives with a very large price tag and a very long wait. Nuclear Turbines, a Manchester startup spun out of BAE Systems, has raised £15M to argue that it need not be either, at a moment when nuclear power startups across Europe are pulling in record amounts of private capital.
The foundational round was led by IQ Capital, joined by Rhapsody Venture Partners, Zero Carbon Capital and Empirical Ventures.
The money will go towards validating the company’s reactor design, building large-scale test rigs, and expanding the team as it prepares to manufacture its first fuel elements. The company positions the technology as a step beyond the conventional small modular reactors now competing for UK contracts.
The technical idea is a substitution. Nuclear Turbines replaces the steam turbine systems at the heart of a conventional plant with high-temperature turbine technology borrowed from jet engines and gas-fired power stations.
Take out the steam infrastructure, the company says, and the reactor becomes compact enough to sit ‘behind the meter’ on an industrial site, powering data centres, factories and manufacturing plants directly rather than feeding the grid.
