Nuclear Turbines raises £15M to ditch steam turbines

A British startup aiming to strip the cost out of nuclear power by ditching steam turbines altogether has raised £15 million in its first major funding round.

Nuclear Turbines, which is developing compact, small-scale nuclear reactors, closed the round with IQ Capital as lead investor, alongside Rhapsody Venture Partners, Zero Carbon Capital, and Empirical Ventures. The company will use the money to develop and test its reactor design, build large-scale test rigs, grow its team, and move toward manufacturing its first fuel elements.

The company was founded by Jeremy Owston, a former Principal Engineer at BAE Systems, and nuclear engineer Professor Tim Abram, working with the venture studio Empirical Ventures. The startup spun-out of BAE Systems.

Its core pitch is a rethink of how nuclear plants generate electricity. Rather than relying on conventional steam turbine systems, Nuclear Turbines uses high-temperature turbine technology more commonly found in jet engines and gas-fired power stations. Cutting out the steam infrastructure shrinks the footprint of the reactor dramatically, according to the company, making it small enough to sit “behind the meter” at industrial sites – directly powering facilities such as data centres and manufacturing plants rather than feeding into the national grid.

Owston described the approach as an inversion of how the nuclear industry normally works. “The nuclear industry has always designed reactors first, then figured out what to do with the heat,” he said. “We flipped this script: we started with the cheapest way to generate power and designed a reactor to fit.”

The company has also brought in Lauren Dickerson as Chief Commercial and Strategy Officer. She joins from British Gas owner Centrica, where she spent more than four years as Strategy Director.

Nuclear Turbines frames its technology as a further step beyond small modular reactors (SMRs), which have already made nuclear plants smaller and faster to build. Where SMRs addressed deployment speed and adaptability, the company argues its design tackles the remaining cost and scale barriers that have kept nuclear power out of reach for many private investors.

The funding lands against a backdrop of high UK electricity prices, which the company says leave British businesses paying roughly 50% more for power than those in France and Germany, and around four times more than in the United States – though the picture varies across Europe. Traditional nuclear power stations, meanwhile, typically cost tens of billions of pounds and take decades to build, a barrier the government has been trying to address through recent policy moves, including last November’s Nuclear Regulatory Review calling for an overhaul of UK nuclear regulation, the Clean Energy Industries Sector Plan, and the Advanced Nuclear Framework. The UK is also building a new uranium enrichment facility capable of producing the high-assay fuel the company’s reactors will need.

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Investors backing the round pointed to a combination of technical promise and favourable timing. Jordan Billiald, Principal at IQ Capital, said it was the first small modular reactor design he had seen that “genuinely solves the economic and sustainability equation,” adding that shifting market dynamics, government ambition and regulatory reform were creating a rare window of opportunity.

Jason Whaley, General Partner at Rhapsody Venture Partners, argued that cheap, reliable power is central to industrial competitiveness, and that Nuclear Turbines’ technology could ultimately extend beyond exporting reactors to exporting the fuel supply chain itself.

Dr Ben Miles, Co-Founder of Empirical Ventures, linked the raise to recent government rhetoric about a “golden age of nuclear power” and comments from Andy Burnham on Britain becoming an “Innovation Nation,” saying the company reflected that ambition by combining British nuclear talent with committed deeptech investors.