251. Fission Impossible: the SMR Gamble - Oct26

Last year, the nuclear industry experienced something close to a gold rush. SMRs — Small Modular Reactors — became the hottest story in energy. Private capital poured in, valuations exploded, and the industry produced an impressive collection of truly bombastic promises. The backdrop is undeniably powerful: electrification is accelerating, geopolitics are reshaping energy markets, and the world needs reliable, 24/7 clean power. Nuclear has rarely enjoyed such formidable tailwinds.

So, what could possibly go wrong? Gerard and Laurent bring in Andrei Utkin, Associate Director at S&P Global Energy, and one of the more independent observers of the nuclear industry, to separate the nuclear opportunity from the nuclear hype. Because there is a problem. The Western nuclear supply chain has not exactly covered itself in glory this century when it comes to delivering large reactors on time and on budget. Governments are nevertheless pushing ahead — rightly so. We are particularly interested to see how smaller designs such as GE Hitachi’s reactor in Ontario and Rolls-Royce’s SMR in the UK perform. These projects have something many start-ups do not: government backing, established industrial supply chains, and companies with decades of nuclear experience. Whatever the final cost — and, for reasons that remain remarkably consistent, that cost always seems to go up — these SMRs are likely to happen.

But the really fascinating story is the private SMR market. Today, it counts roughly 50 developers, 130 designs, 20 publicly listed companies, and more than $10 billion of private and corporate capital. Yet only a much smaller number of technologies are genuinely approaching commercial deployment. Some have made it to the stock market: NuScale, Oklo, X-Energy, Nano Nuclear. Their share prices all peaked around twelve months ago. Since then? Down 50% to 80% from their highs. Perhaps the public markets are beginning to tire of an industry that has delivered an extraordinary number of promises — and comparatively few reactors. Meanwhile, the executives and early shareholders of some of these companies have managed to cash out hundreds of millions of dollars.

Then comes the small detail of economics. With nuclear CAPEX estimates somewhere around $15–20/W — your guess is probably as good as ours — and brutally long lead times, nuclear has to compete with hydro at around $10/W, gas at roughly $4/W (up from about $1/W), wind at $2–5/W… …and solar plus batteries at around $0.40/W. That is an uncomfortable competitive landscape.

And we haven't even discussed the fuel. Russia still controls roughly 40% of the conventional nuclear fuel supply chain — and effectively 100% of the HALEU capacity required by some advanced SMR designs. So much for energy independence.

Laurent then tackles another increasingly abused acronym in the nuclear world: FOAK — First Of A Kind. What does it really mean? And, more importantly, how many times can a technology be “first of a kind” before investors start asking when the second one is coming?

All of this — and much more — in our yearly deep dive into nuclear: the technology, the economics, the geopolitics, the promises, and the increasingly uncomfortable gap between them.

---- Link to S&P report on nuclear https://www.spglobal.com/energy/en/commodity/electric-power/nuclear

Michael Barnard articles on SMRs https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/scaling-examples-pt-1-small-modular-nuclear-reactors-smnrs-martin https://nbmediacoop.org/2022/07/31/smnrs-riddled-with-high-costs-among-other-unresolved-problems/ And of course World Nuclear Industry Status Report 2026 (WNISR2026) https://www.worldnuclearreport.org/World-Nuclear-Industry-Status-Report-2026 Finally, the full text of 1953 Memo By Admiral Hyman Rickover https://whatisnuclear.com/rickover.html