Denmark’s Seaborg Technologies has raised DKK200m ($28M) from existing investors and appointed a new chairman, Niels de Coninck-Smith. Seaborg said the funds would be used to “accelerate our development” and expand its team in Denmark and Korea “as well as launching several development projects with partners in Europe, the US and Korea”.
Seaborg added that it has seen continued, strong progress in the development of its scalable molten salt reactor concept. Seaborg’s design is for modular compact molten salt reactor (CMSR) power barges equipped with between two and eight 100 MWe CMSRs, with an operational life of 24 years. Instead of having solid fuel rods that need constant cooling, the CMSR’s fuel is mixed in a liquid salt that acts as a coolant, which means that it will simply shut down and solidify in case of emergency. However, as low-enriched fluoride fuel salt is not yet commercially available, Seaborg said the initial power barges will be fuelled with low-enriched uranium (LEU).
Seaborg, founded in 2014, has had discussions about deployments in various countries including Norway, Indonesia and Vietnam. In 2023 it signed a cooperation agreement with Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power and Samsung Heavy Industries to establish a consortium to develop floating NPPs based on Seaborg’s CMSR technology. In May 2024 it signed a memorandum of understanding with the Korea Atomic Energy Research Institute “to combine their research and development strengths” to advance nuclear technology.
Andreas Schofield, chief technology officer and co-founder, said: “The design and research basis of our reactor technology has now reached a maturity where we are ready to start licensing activities with the nuclear authorities in South Korea. The next design phase will be focused on scaling up testing and validation in our newly expanded facilities and with external partners in Korea and globally.”
CEO Klaus Nyengaard said: “Together with our two, strong consortium partners, Samsung Heavy Industries and Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power, we plan for our first reactor to be ready in the first half of the 2030s, followed by series production from the mid-2030s.” However, Seaborg had previously aimed to produce a commercial prototype in 2026 and Power Barges from 2028.
