NuScale Power (NYSE: SMR), the small modular reactor company that went public in 2022, has seen its stock collapse by more than 80% since last summer, pushing its market valuation below $4 billion.
The dramatic decline follows an earlier period of astronomical gains, suggesting that investor enthusiasm for the nuclear energy upstart has cooled significantly for the second time since its debut.
Despite the steep selloff, some analysts and investors are asking whether the correction represents a genuine buying opportunity or a warning sign about the company’s long-term viability.
NuScale’s underlying technology retains a strong credential that few competitors can match, having become the first company to receive design approval from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission for its SMR technology back in 2020.
In 2025, regulators approved an additional upscaled SMR design, prompting the company to position itself as “the most near-term American SMR power solution” in the domestic energy market.
However, repeated struggles with advancing its project pipeline have made NuScale an exceptionally difficult business to forecast, and that uncertainty is widely seen as a key driver of ongoing pressure on its stock price.
Only a handful of SMR facilities currently operate anywhere in the world, meaning NuScale’s ambition to scale production of a relatively novel energy source carries substantial execution risk despite broadly optimistic industry projections.
The most closely watched development over the coming years is NuScale’s partnership with the Tennessee Valley Authority, a 6-gigawatt SMR project located in the eastern United States that represents the company’s most significant near-term commercial opportunity.
While the project itself is not expected to be fully constructed within the next three years, a power purchasing agreement could potentially be announced as early as December, which would commit the utility to buying power from NuScale’s facility for decades.
Investors should not expect any NuScale facility to be operational before the end of this decade, meaning the stock will continue to trade primarily on sentiment and confidence in the company’s pipeline rather than hard revenue figures.
That dynamic points to continued heavy volatility in both directions, as shifting market assessments of NuScale’s risk profile are likely to produce sharp swings in share price with little fundamental anchoring in the near term.
For investors weighing the risk, the next three years will be defined not by operational milestones but by contract announcements, regulatory developments, and whether NuScale can finally demonstrate meaningful commercial traction for its technology.
