Newcleo, a London-based nuclear power technology start-up founded by Italian physicist Stefano Buono has secured $118 million investment funding. The company has been established with a view to developing a new kind of technology that will produce safer, cleaner and cheaper nuclear power than today’s reactors.
Mr Buono previously worked at European nuclear research organisation Cern and also has a track record as an entrepreneur. He founded the nuclear medicine company Advanced Accelerator Applications which was listed on the Nasdaq exchange before being acquired by Novartis for $3.9 billion in 2018. Mr Buono personally made around $200 million from the sale.
Newcleo aims to develop mini reactors ranging from 20MW to 200MW able to power large ships, islands and produce power to be fed into national grids. The small reactors, which could be dotted around a country, would be a new kind of advanced modular reactor (AMRs) that still needs to be developed.
AMRs are typically smaller than conventional reactors such as those being built at Hinkley Point and use different fuels and coolants. Standard reactors are kept cool by pressurised water but Newcleo plans to use lead instead, which Buono says is safer because it does not need to be pressurised and can also operate at higher pressures which increases efficiency.
The new ARM technology will be fueled with thorium instead of uranium which will both create less radioactive waste and mean it can be shut down more easily. Another advantage of thorium is that it is much more abundant than uranium.
Other next-generation nuclear power technologies plan to use high-assay low-enriched uranium, HALEU, as fuel. However, there are currently no established supply lines for HALEU, which is currently only produced for commercial purposes in Russia and it could take years for reliable supply lines to be established.
Until they are, new nuclear power technologies that rely on it will remain mothballed, giving Newcleo’s alternative thorium-based technology a potentially significant competitive advantage.
Mr Buono has put up $10 million of the initial $180 million capitalisation of Newcleo and holds a 10% stake in the new company. Exor, the holding company of the Agnelli family that owns 23% of Ferrari, 43.4% of The Economist magazine and 63.8% of the Italian football club Juventus among other interests is among the other investors. As is Ian Lundin of Lundin Energy.