Jeremy Owston

Jeremy Owston is chief executive and chief technology officer of Nuclear Turbines, the Manchester company he founded with nuclear engineer Professor Tim Abram, now its chief scientific officer. A former principal engineer at BAE Systems, Owston developed the idea inside BAE’s Launchpad program, from which the company was spun out. It came out of stealth on 27 July 2026 with £15m of funding.

Designing the reactor around the turbine

Conventional nuclear plants use reactor heat to raise steam for a steam turbine. Nuclear Turbines drops the steam cycle. Its reactor heats compressed air directly and returns it to a high-temperature gas turbine of the kind used in jet engines and gas-fired power stations. The design uses novel reactor materials and no graphite, World Nuclear News reported. Removing the steam plant is what makes the units compact enough to install on an industrial site.

Owston describes the approach as a reversal of the usual order. “The nuclear industry has always designed reactors first, then figured out what to do with the heat. We flipped this script: we started with the cheapest way to generate power and designed a reactor to fit,” he said at the launch.

£15m to reach the test rig

The round was led by IQ Capital, with Rhapsody Venture Partners, Zero Carbon Capital and Empirical Ventures. The company says it will use the money to validate the reactor design, build large-scale test rigs, expand the team and prepare to manufacture its first fuel elements. Its leadership team also includes Lauren Dickerson, chief commercial and strategy officer.

Owston has framed the project as industrial policy as much as engineering. “If we’re serious about reindustrialising while meeting climate goals, we need energy that’s clean and cheap,” he said.

Why it matters to UK technology buyers

Nuclear Turbines is aimed at the buyers who most need power they control. The company targets data centers, industrial energy users, hybrid grid connections and energy resilience, with units designed to run behind the meter on the customer’s own site. For data center developers, colocation providers and energy-intensive manufacturers in the UK, a compact reactor built around a gas turbine may become another option for on-site power, though the design is still at the validation stage.

Owston has taken an idea from a defense contractor’s internal incubator to a funded company with a clear target market. The large-scale test rigs will be the first public measure of whether the design can deliver on its cost case.