Blykalla has completed a significant funding round, raising a total of 80 mSEK. The round was led by Norrsken Launcher together with Nucleation Capital, with participation from Earth Venture Capital, Farvatn, and several private investors.
The raised capital will be instrumental in Blykalla's industrialization of its advanced nuclear reactor, the SEALER (Swedish Advanced Lead-cooled Reactor). The SEALER is designed for commercial power production in a highly compact format, with unique safety features that are made possible by a number of proprietary innovations.
One of these key innovations is Blykalla’s corrosion-tolerant steel alloys, which enable the efficient cooling of reactors with liquid lead. With this technological breakthrough, Blykalla can achieve effective serial production, leading to faster deployment and lower costs than conventional nuclear power. The SEALER also enables nuclear power to be used for decarbonizing industrial applications through hydrogen, biochar, and biofuel production, in addition to providing local electricity production. Finally, this technology helps realize a circular waste model. Compared to conventional nuclear power, the SEALER’s fuel cycle can extract up to 140 times more energy from uranium ore, thereby producing only a fraction of the waste, which needs to be stored for just 1% of the deposit time.
Tien Nguyen, founding partner at Earth Venture Capital, comments: "Our investment in Blykalla underscores a firm belief in deep-tech at a moment when Southeast Asia's need for clean, sustainable energy is undeniable. With Indonesia, Singapore, the Philippines, and Thailand at the forefront, SMR powered demand is estimated to exceed 10 GW by 2035. This reflects an acute need for energy solutions that can drive economic growth while ensuring climate sustainability. Blykalla's innovative approach is perfectly aligned to address this challenge, offering a scalable, efficient energy solution."
Blykalla is currently in preparatory work to license the technology in Sweden, a regulatory environment that is quickly adapting to the development of new nuclear power. An important step to industrialize and qualify the technology is to build the electric test reactor in Oskarshamn, Sweden, that is being developed together with OKG (Uniper’s Swedish subsidiary) and KTH (the Royal Institute of Technology). In parallel, the company is in discussions with industrial partners to support building nuclear reactors for off-grid heat and electricity production. Blykalla has so far garnered market interest from actors within mining, steel, and other energy-intensive industries.
Jacob Stedman, Blykalla’s CEO, comments: “It is fantastic to be part of this nuclear renaissance, and to see how much interest in nuclear power there is from businesses as regulatory conditions are falling into place. The SEALERs features, cost, and output makes it perfectly suited for industrial users looking to decarbonize and become sole offtakers, or even owners, of SMRs. It mirrors the strong and urgent need from the industry to secure access to clean and competitive energy. After all, this will be decisive for the industry's green transition and continued growth.”