Mini-nuclear start-up wins backing of Italian investor

A NUCLEAR developer planning to turn the UK’S plutonium stockpile into carbon-free energy has signed a deal to work with Italian energy giant Enel.

Enel has agreed to lend its resources to Newcleo under an agreement that could lead to the Italian energy giant becoming an investor.

Newcleo, which is also backed by the billionaire owners of Italy’s Juventus football club, is designing small nuclear generators and is hoping to build a fleet of its reactors in Britain and France, among other countries.

Enel will help the start-up develop its technology and, in return, the Italian utility company will have first refusal for investing in the first Newcleo plant.

Dozens of firms are vying to develop nuclear power plants that can be built in factories, including Rolls-royce.

Newcleo has raised €400m (£353m) over the past two years from investors including Claudio Costamagna, a former Goldman Sachs banker, and Azimut, the asset manager. It is also backed by the Agnelli industrialist family, who are behind Fiat.

The start-up’s lead-cooled reactor models use a mix of uranium and plutonium, which is a waste product of existing plants in Britain. The UK has 140 tons of plutonium, which is both a health and security risk. Newcleo’s design could use about a ton a year of the toxic metal if it can build a sufficiently large fleet.

Stefano Buono, Newcleo chief executive, said: “The concrete possibility of having Enel as a first investor allows us to set ever bigger ambitions.”

The company plans to make 200MW reactors at a cost of less than €1bn each, which is a fifteenth of the power of the new £33bn reactor being built at Hinkley Point, and more comparable in size to the modular reactor being developed by Rolls-royce.

‘The possibility of having Enel as a first investor allows us to set ever bigger ambitions’