The Last U.S. Nuclear Boom Applied to Build 26 Reactors and Finished 2. NuScale Carries a $4 Billion Market Value on $10.7 Million of Sales.

NuScale Power (NYSE: SMR) is worth about $4.2 billion at today's stock price. Its revenue over the past 12 months totals about $10.7 million.

With a gap that wide, the market is paying for what the small modular reactor (SMR) developer might build (reactors for the utilities and artificial intelligence (AI) data-center operators now shopping for around-the-clock power), not for anything it sells today. That isn't automatically a mistake, of course. But the United States has run the new-reactor experiment before, recently, and the results are worth having in hand before paying for this one.

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The 26-to-2 record

In the late 2000s, the United States launched what was called a nuclear renaissance. By mid-2009, utilities had filed combined license applications with the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) for 26 new reactors at 17 sites.

Two of them were finished.

Georgia's Vogtle Units 3 and 4, originally estimated at $14 billion and expected in service in 2016 and 2017, entered commercial operation in July 2023 and spring 2024. The final cost was more than $30 billion. Seven years late, more than double the money.

South Carolina's V.C. Summer expansion got far enough to start construction before its utilities halted the project in 2017. The rest never produced an operating reactor. Some were withdrawn or suspended, and several won licenses only to be left to lapse. And when Vogtle's second new unit entered service in 2024, no other reactor was under construction anywhere in the country.

The failure mode wasn't the technology. Nuclear projects died in the delivery -- the years and the billions between an application and a working plant.

NuScale's answer

NuScale's pitch is aimed at exactly that problem. Its 77-megawatt reactor modules are built in a factory rather than assembled on site, and they can be deployed in configurations of up to 12 modules per plant. The company holds the only SMR design certification the NRC has issued, and it received approval for an updated design in May 2025.

It also says it has built a supply chain of more than 60 partners and has executed over 30 supply agreements. But a 12-module plant tops out at 924 megawatts -- less than a single new Vogtle unit produces.

"[T]he question for off-takers is no longer whether to go with nuclear -- it is which technology can actually deliver, and when," CEO John Hopkins said in the company's second-quarter release.

The financials, however, describe a company still waiting for its market to arrive. Second-quarter revenue came in at $75,000, down from $8.1 million a year earlier, when NuScale was still collecting engineering fees from its Romanian project work. That work wrapped up in late 2025, and revenue for the first half of 2026 totaled just $640,000. The company's second-quarter net loss attributable to its Class A shareholders was $47.5 million.

NuScale does hold $1.9 billion in cash and investments, so it can fund itself for years to come. But that cushion has come from shareholders. The weighted-average Class A share count nearly tripled year over year, to about 365 million shares, and the company added a new $750 million at-the-market stock sale program on Tuesday.

Two deals, both pending

To me, the last cycle sets a clear test for a growth stock like NuScale: not interest, not agreements to study -- a signed, funded order.

Neither of NuScale's two lead opportunities has reached that line yet. The Tennessee Valley Authority is in discussions with ENTRA1 Energy, NuScale's commercialization partner, toward a definitive power purchase agreement the company says would potentially be the largest nuclear deployment program in U.S. history. And in Romania, the six-module RoPower project, the most advanced SMR effort in Europe by NuScale's description, is still working through conditions attached to a shareholder vote to advance it.

Both could get there. Sure, this cycle has something the last one lacked: a new class of buyer in data-center operators, with urgent power needs and deep pockets. But the last boom had committed utilities, federal support, and 26 proposed reactors on file. It ultimately produced two reactors, both late and far over budget.

A $4.2 billion valuation on $10.7 million of trailing sales is arguably priced for the moment the orders arrive. In the last cycle, getting the order turned out to be the easy part.

Daniel Sparks and his clients do not have positions in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends NuScale Power. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.