£15m · Other round · Energy · Manchester, UK
Nuclear Turbines, a Manchester company developing compact nuclear power systems, has raised £15m in a funding round led by IQ Capital, with Rhapsody Venture Partners, Zero Carbon Capital and founding investor Empirical Ventures participating. Empirical Ventures says the capital will fund reactor-design validation, large-scale test rigs, team expansion and preparations to manufacture the company's first fuel elements.
Sources use different labels for the financing, including foundational, seed and pre-seed. Tech.eu classifies the event as Other, which maps to the Other round tag used here.
The turbine changes the reactor's cost structure
Conventional nuclear plants use steam systems to convert reactor heat into electricity. Those systems require pressure vessels, boilers, heat exchangers and cooling equipment that stay large even when the reactor becomes smaller. Nuclear Turbines starts with a different constraint: its reactor is designed to heat compressed air for a commercial gas turbine, technology already manufactured for aviation and gas-fired power. The company says removing graphite from the reactor architecture makes direct air heating possible while eliminating much of the steam infrastructure.
That design puts the commercial proposition in the balance of plant, not only the reactor core. If mature turbine hardware can be paired with a smaller nuclear system, industrial sites and data centres could host generation behind the meter instead of waiting only for grid capacity or a utility-scale plant. The customer case would depend on total delivered electricity cost, licensing and dependable operation, not simply reactor size. Reusing an established turbine supply chain can narrow the equipment that must be invented, but the nuclear system and fuel still have to clear a demanding validation path.
The round buys engineering evidence
Nuclear Turbines was created in 2024 around technology licensed from BAE Systems through its Launchpad programme. Co-founder Jeremy Owston previously worked on nuclear systems at BAE Systems, while co-founder Tim Abram holds the Westinghouse Chair in Nuclear Fuel Technology at the University of Manchester. IQ Capital's investment thesis is that the team is concentrating novelty in the reactor and fuel while using established equipment downstream.
The financing therefore supports a specific transition: from an architecture and licensed technology to test rigs, validated design work and initial fuel manufacturing. That is not yet a commercial deployment. The company told Energy Voice that reaching a first commercial unit will require further rounds. The useful milestone for this capital is whether engineering tests reduce enough technical and regulatory risk to justify that next, larger commitment.
