Nuclear Turbines, a company spun out of Europe’s largest aerospace and defense company, BAE Systems, announced it has emerged from stealth after raising £15 million in funding led by IQ Capital, with participation from Rhapsody Venture Partners, Zero Carbon, and Empirical Ventures, along with continued support from BAE Systems.
The company is developing a compact nuclear power system that pairs an advanced modular reactor with a commercial gas turbine, rather than designing a reactor first and solving the power-conversion challenge afterward. In its system, the reactor directly heats compressed air before returning it to the turbine at high temperature to generate electricity, an approach the company says relies on off-the-shelf, mature technology wherever possible while concentrating novel engineering on the reactor itself to enable direct air heating. The company says the design is intended to unlock superior economics at a genuinely modular scale through efficiency and simplicity, targeting markets including data centers, where speed to power is a critical factor for hyperscalers and colocation partners, industrial energy users seeking reliable low-cost electricity and heat, hybrid grid connections for behind-the-meter and microgrid deployments, and long-term energy resilience through a passively safe reactor design.
Founded by Jeremy Owston, who serves as CEO and CTO, and Tim Abram, who serves as Chief Scientific Officer, both of whom bring backgrounds in advanced reactor design and nuclear power systems, the company describes its mission as addressing one of the world’s most important infrastructure challenges: clean, affordable, and scalable power. Alongside the funding announcement, Nuclear Turbines welcomed Lauren Dickerson as Chief Commercial and Strategy Officer, bringing commercial strategy and business development experience from Centrica to help bring the technology to market. The company, established in the UK in 2025, is also actively hiring across engineering, operations, and marketing roles based primarily in the North West of England as it works to scale its team.
KEY QUOTE:
“The UK needs clean, cheap, and reliable power in order to stimulate our economy, revitalise our industry, and address our energy security. We are building it.”
Nuclear Turbines statement
