LIFTT invests EUR 3 million in clean nuclear start-up founded by our President Stefano Buono, which expands in France.The dramatic combination of the climate emergency and the geopolitical crisis we are currently experiencing has demonstrated, if proof were still needed, the irreversible urgency to definitively eliminate dependence on fossil fuels and create a new model of sustainable, reliable and long-term growth.
A need that LIFTT’s founder, Stefano Buono translated into practice by identifying clean nuclear power as the closest possible ‘game changer’ and setting up Newcleo, a nuclear technology company for the development of fourth-generation reactors and the production of fuel by ‘recovering’ existing nuclear waste.
A technology start-up that was born last autumn and has been enthusiastically received by investors, enabling Newcleo a few days ago to conclude its second €300 million capital increase in two months, in which LIFTT participated with €3 million. As many as two thirds of those who chose to invest had already taken part in the first round in 2021, which had raised EUR 100 million (on that occasion LIFTT had contributed EUR 1 million).”Newcleo is moving quickly to respond to the pressing need for clean and sustainable energy,” commented Stefano Buono, CEO and chairman of the entrepreneur-scientist company, who has developed in-depth expertise on the subject at CERN. “Recent geopolitical developments have undeniably reinforced the importance of nuclear power in ensuring global energy security and the necessary step change in decarbonisation efforts. The time is right to change the paradigm of nuclear energy and move to a new technology that can efficiently and sustainably address the main concerns of our industry: cost, safety and waste.”
Newcleo is ‘made in London’ but has a base in Turin where researchers and scientists work, and is also expanding in France, with the newly founded Newcleo SA, at a particularly propitious time: the government in Paris has in fact decided to continue to focus on nuclear power. Beyond the Alps, thanks to the new technologies that will be tested with the new tranche of investments, work will be done on a ‘Mox’ fuel production plant composed of depleted uranium and plutonium that will be economical and completely sustainable, because it will make it possible to manage the waste from traditional reactors without drawing on new fuel.
A resounding advantage in terms of reducing the environmental and financial cost of disposing of long-lived radioactive waste.
Newcleo’s value proposition garnered the convinced confidence of investors, and this will make possible an ambitious business plan that will develop over the next five to seven years along two lines: in addition to the production of Mox fuel, also the construction of new reactor prototypes with absolutely revolutionary characteristics.
