💡 Three nuclear energy innovation news this week!
♨️ Steady Energy (Finland) raises a €2m Seed round led by VTT, Yes VC, and Lifeline Ventures. The startup ambitions to develop an SMR, the LDR-50, operating at 150°C and below 10 bar, with a thermal output of 50 MW. The low pressure simplifies the design, while the temperature is good enough for district heating. The funds will be used to build a full-scale mockup powered by electric heat.
⚡ Focused Energy Inc. raises a $11m Series A round led by Prime Movers Lab. The startup spunoff from the Technische Universität Darmstadt in 2021, and has established offices in Darmstadt, Germany, and Austin, US. The funds will be used to advance it laser-based inertial fusion technology.
🧂 The Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics, an entity of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, has received permission to commission the TMSR-LF1 experimental thorium-powered molten-salt reactor. Construction of the facility started in September 2018, and was accelerated compared to the original 2024 completion date. If this 2 MWt prototype is succesful, the Chinese government plans to build a 373 MWt version by 2030.
🎓 Paper of the week: "Inversion techniques to obtain local rotation velocity and ion temperature profiles for the x-ray crystal spectrometer on EAST", Plasma Science and Technology (2023). https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/2058-6272/acc503
👇 Did you spot anything else? Let me know!