HTGR Core Design Patent Snapshot 2026
The HTGR core design patent space is small and highly concentrated, with a handful of industrial and academic filers dominating a corpus of 7 patent families. The field reached a brief activity peak in 2021 and has since eased back, signalling a mature-to-declining phase with limited new entrants outside of early-stage university and national-lab actors.
A tightly held niche led by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Brown Boveri
The top two filers — Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Brown Boveri & Co AG — are tied at the head of the applicant ranking, with Tsinghua University and Chinergy Co Ltd forming a distinct second tier focused on pebble-bed reactor configurations.
The top five filers account for 80% of the combined patent records of the ranked applicants visible in this query, indicating extreme concentration; a small number of organisations have effectively shaped the technical agenda for HTGR core design.
| # | Applicant | Patent records | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. | 5 | |
| 2 | BROWN BOVERI & CO AG | 5 | |
| 3 | URENCO | 4 | |
| 4 | Tsinghua University | 3 | |
| 5 | Chinergy Co., Ltd. | 3 | |
| 6 | U Battery Ltd | 1 | |
| 7 | Purdue Research Foundation | 1 | |
| 8 | UT-Battelle, LLC | 1 | |
| 9 | Badan Tenaga Nuklir Nasional (BATAN) | 1 | |
| 10 | Fuji Electric Systems Co., Ltd. | 1 |
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries’ leadership position reflects a gas-turbine integration strategy rather than a pure reactor-physics focus, while Tsinghua University and Chinergy anchor the Chinese pebble-bed programme — a configuration that has reached commercial demonstration scale.
The most recent 18–24 months of filing data should be treated with caution due to standard patent publication lag; apparent silence in 2025–2026 does not confirm cessation of activity. Longer-window growth, applicant concentration, and technology-route coverage are therefore more reliable signals than the latest-year bar alone.
A 2021 filing spike against a flat baseline, with gas-turbine integration as the dominant technical branch
Two charts together reveal the temporal and technological structure of HTGR core design patenting: an irregular annual filing pattern punctuated by a single active year, and a technology mix skewed toward nuclear reactor fundamentals with meaningful secondary coverage of power-conversion machinery.
Annual filing trend
Filing activity was essentially absent from 2018 through 2020, surged to 5 records in 2021, then fell back to near zero. The 2021 cluster likely reflects coordinated programme activity rather than broad market entry. Treat 2024–2026 counts as incomplete due to publication lag.
↗ Hover for values · click a bar to ask EurekaTechnology composition
G21C (Nuclear reactors) is visible in the IPC branch mix, consistent with a corpus focused on core structural and physics design. G21D (Nuclear power plants) and the paired F01D/F02C turbine classes indicate that integrated gas-turbine power conversion is a recurring design theme, particularly in Mitsubishi’s portfolio. G21F (Radiation protection and shielding) appears as a secondary but consistent concern.
↗ Hover for values · click a bar to ask EurekaHighly cited patent families surfaced by the query
Citation-heavy patent families returned by the query. Use this section as citation context, not as a curated list of the most topic-specific patents.
High temperature gas-cooled reactor core
The disclosure relates to a high temperature gas-cooled reactor core including a plurality of elongate fuel elements arranged in the form of a multi-lobed prism. Each prismatic fuel element includes an elongate prismatic body and a plurality of elongate fuel channels located within the prismatic body, wherein the cross-sectional area of each prismatic fuel… (excerpt from the patent abstract)
| # | Patent | Citations |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Gas turbine plant | 7 |
| 2 | Gas turbine plant | 7 |
| 3 | High temperature gas-cooled reactor core | 5 |
| 4 | Pebble bed type high-temperature gas reactor | 5 |
| 5 | Method of exchanging the moderator and fuel of a n… | 4 |
| 6 | Reactor core system | 1 |
| 7 | Residual heat removal ventilation system for spent… | 1 |
| 8 | Low-contamination, high breeding-yield thorium bre… | 1 |
Ranked by total forward citations. Citation counts favour older and broadly cited patent families, and broad or adjacent patents may appear when they match the search scope. Treat this section as citation context, not as a curated list of the most topic-specific patents. Some patent titles may be shown in their original, non-English language where an accurate translation could not be guaranteed.
Assignee snapshot from the current evidence set
The applicants below are visible in this query result. Because the evidence set is relatively small, read this section as a directional snapshot rather than a full competitive ranking.
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries holds 5 patent records, focused on turbine and gas-turbine plant classes (F01D and F02C), reflecting a design philosophy that integrates the HTGR core with direct-cycle helium gas turbines. This emphasis on power conversion rather than reactor physics differentiates Mitsubishi from purely reactor-focused filers. No momentum data is available for this incumbent, consistent with its established rather than recently active filing profile.
families: 5Purdue Research Foundation
Purdue Research Foundation entered the corpus as a new entrant with 1 patent record, concentrating on G21C reactor coolant and fuel classes. Its collaboration with U Battery Ltd — also a new entrant with 1 record and a G21C-focused portfolio — positions this pair as the most recently active actors in the space. The ‘new entrant’ momentum designation indicates no prior-period baseline, so the trajectory should be interpreted cautiously at this scale.
families: 1Frequently asked questions
The evidence corpus contains 7 patent families in scope for HTGR core design. This is a notably small corpus, indicating that the technology remains at an early-to-declining commercialisation stage with limited broad industrial patenting.
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Brown Boveri & Co AG are tied at the top of the applicant ranking. URENCO holds the third position, followed by Tsinghua University and Chinergy Co Ltd, which represent the Chinese pebble-bed reactor programme.
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries’ patent records concentrate on turbine and gas-turbine plant classes (F01D and F02C), reflecting a design approach that couples the HTGR core with direct-cycle helium gas turbines for power conversion rather than focusing solely on reactor physics or fuel handling.
The United States leads with 8 patent records, followed by Europe via the EPO with 4 records, and France and the United Kingdom each with 3 records. Japan holds 2 records, with a further tail of single-record jurisdictions including Canada, Indonesia, Austria, Switzerland, Hungary, and Poland.
The lifecycle assessment places the field in a decline stage. Annual filings peaked in 2021 with 5 records, then eased back to near zero. The most recent 18–24 months of data may be under-counted due to publication lag, so apparent silence in 2025–2026 should not be interpreted as confirmed cessation of activity.
The evidence shows one documented co-filing relationship: Purdue Research Foundation and U Battery Ltd jointly filed 1 patent record, connecting a US research university with a UK small modular reactor developer. No other co-applicant relationships are documented in the corpus, indicating that the field is primarily prosecuted by independent organisations.
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Disclaimer. This page is generated from Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent and scientific-literature records, and is provided for general information and reference only.
Patent data carries inherent limitations: recent filings (typically the most recent 18–24 months) are under-counted due to standard publication lag; counts may be reported at either a patent-family or a patent-record basis and are not always directly comparable; classification, applicant-name, and citation data may contain errors, duplicates, or omissions; and the underlying search query defines and constrains the scope shown. As a result, the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
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