France-based nuclear start-up newcleo announced that it will go public in the US through a blank-check deal that values the company at about $2.4bn. After the deal is completed, newcleo is expected to trade on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol NWCL. The deal with special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) NewHold Investment Corp III is expected to generate up to $429m in gross proceeds, before accounting for redemptions and transaction expenses.
“The capital raised as part of this strategic transaction, combined with public market access, will enable us to rapidly advance our reactor deployment and fuel manufacturing capabilities across Europe and the United States,” CEO Stefano Buono said in a statement.
Since its launch in 2021, newcleo has been very active in fundraising and signing partnership and collaboration agreements. Its business now counts over 90 partnerships, with more than 1,000 employees based in 19 locations across France, Italy, the UK, Switzerland, and Slovakia, including three manufacturing facilities.
Newcleo has also announced that the hull of its PRECURSOR non-nuclear demonstrator has been installed at the ENEA Brasimone Research Centre, near Bologna, Italy. The case for PRECURSOR was manufactured in Piombino, Tuscany by Fucina Italia and designed in conjunction with SRS Servizi di Ricerche e Sviluppo – both part of the Newcleo group.
PRECURSOR, a 10 MW Basin Non-Nuclear Test System, will use electric heaters to simulate nuclear fuel to replicate the company’s planned LFR-AS-30 lead-cooled fast neutron reactor demonstration reactor on a reduced scale. The empty weight of the hull is just over 20 tonnes, but after filling with lead and internal components, the total weight will exceed 155 tonnes.
What makes [PRECURSOR] truly unique is that it will generate electricity using a turbine – the only component that we did not produce ourselves, but just completed with the help of our partner Fincantieri, making it potentially the only installation in the world that performs such a complete demonstration of reactor functionality», said newcleo founder and CEO Stefano Buono.
Newcleo noted that PRECURSOR is also a demonstration of the company’s vertical integration capabilities: engineering, production, transportation and installation. The company plans to complete the construction of PRECURSOR by end of 2026 and to commission it in the early months of 2027.
Currently, the company has established collaborations with ship builder Fincantieri (for nuclear-powered ships), offshore engineering company SAIPEM (for floating nuclear power plants), chemicals and engineering company MAIRE (for green chemicals production), and steel mill manufacturer Danieli (for green steel manufacturing) among others.
In France, the company has submitted its nuclear safety programme for both its advanced fuel manufacturing facility and advanced reactor design and aims to apply for construction licences for both facility types by the end of 2027. The company has secured a site in Nogent-sur-Seine to host the advanced fuel manufacturing facility and has initiated the land acquisition process for a site in Chinon to deploy the advanced reactor.
In Italy, newcleo is building a state-of-the-art R&D and Qualification facility at ENEA’s Brasimone Research Centre, where it is installing PRECURSOR and has already completed the construction of OTHELLO, a 2 MW loop-type system to qualify key components and solutions of its LFR technology.
In Slovakia, newcleo has established Newvys, a joint venture with Slovakia’s state-owned nuclear decommissioning company JAVYS, to deploy up to four 200 MWe reactors at the Jaslovske Bohunice nuclear site. In the US, newcleo and Oklo have signed a strategic partnership to advance the domestic nuclear fuel ecosystem and the construction of advanced nuclear fuel manufacturing infrastructure.
Newcleo’s key projects are its reactors and a planned facility to produce mixed uranium plutonium oxide (mox) fuel in France targeted for 2030 – both still in the basic design stage, although pre-licensing processes are underway with French regulators.
Newcleo has an ambitious timeline: 2024–2026: test the mechanical systems (PRECURSOR); 2026–2028: finalise the “Standard Design” and get the construction permit; 2028–2031: Rapid assembly (using modular components built in their own factories); 2032: First criticality. Newcleo has explicitly told regulators that their 30 MWe reactor and the mox plant are “interdependent projects”. If one fails to get licensed, the other cannot function.
NEwcleo’s plans to use mixed uranium-plutonium oxide (mox) fuel for the LFR-AS-30 introduces complexities that could be an obstacle to the project. Mox is significantly more difficult to handle than uranium and manufacturing requires highly shielded, automated hot cells. Moreover, the performance of mox fuel inside a liquid lead environment is unknown and must take into account the chemical interactions of the fuel/cladding and the thermal-hydraulic stress of the lead.
Because newcleo is planning its own mox plant in France this will require coordinating reactor designers simultaneously with chemical engineers, nuclear physicists, and specialist builders from disparate organisations and companies.
Acquiring plutonium may also be a problem. In 2025, the UK government decided to immobilise its plutonium stockpile rather than make it available for advanced reactors. This decision forced newcleo to suspend its UK reactor programme and move its headquarters to Paris. The company may have to access stockpiles of plutonium separated at Orano’s La Hague reprocessing plant or US stockpiles through its co-operation with Oklo, which may have access through the Department of Energy’s Surplus Plutonium Utilization Program.
While the newcleo website includes a mock-up of the LFR reactor, it provides very little technical information about the reactor design. Currently, the only operating liquid metal-cooled fast reactors are in Russia, using sodium as the coolant. Russia is also constructing the world’s first ever lead-cooled SMR (Brest-OD-300) in Seversk as part of a facility to demonstrate an on-site closed fuel cycle. This reactor, based on decades of complex research and development supported by the entire Russian nuclear industry, is due to begin operation in 2029.
By contrast, despite its rapid business expansion, newcleo’s reactor technologies remain in the basic design stage despite progress on non-nuclear component. Progress will also depend on co-ordinating the activities of companies and organisations spread across Europe. To meet its ambitious 2030–2032 target for a first-of-a-kind (FOAK) reactor, newcleo is adopting a parallel processing strategy. Normally designing, licensing and building is done in sequence. Newcleo is attempting to do all three at once.
