This Nuclear Stock Is Down More Than 60% Over the Past Year and Could Be a Screaming Buy

NuScale Power has fallen more than 62% over the past year, but the article argues the pullback creates a buying opportunity after the NRC approved two reactor designs. The company reported 2025 revenue of $31.5 million, down from $37 million in 2024, and filed to sell up to $500 million in stock, raising dilution concerns. Despite near-term headwinds, the approval status and AI-driven power demand narrative are presented as key long-term catalysts.

Analysis

The market is treating SMR like a binary science project, but the more important setup is that the stock has likely de-rated faster than the commercialization curve. NRC design approval is not a revenue event, but it is a de-risking step that narrows the gap between “optional future platform” and “financeable project pipeline,” which matters because institutional capital often requires regulatory visibility before underwriting multi-year buildout risk. In that sense, the selloff may have pushed valuation from “expecting perfection” to “discounting delay,” creating room for a sentiment rebound if execution stabilizes.

The second-order winner is not just SMR; it is the broader data-center power ecosystem. If hyperscalers keep searching for firm, carbon-light baseload, nuclear-adjacent suppliers, engineering firms, grid interconnect specialists, and uranium fuel chain names gain more from the narrative than from SMR’s revenue today. Conversely, traditional utility capacity and gas peakers are threatened at the margin if modular nuclear becomes financeable over the next 12-24 months, because the competitive debate shifts from megawatts to permitability and time-to-power.

The key risk is that investors are likely underestimating the gap between regulatory approval and repeatable deployment. The next 3-9 months could still be ugly if capital raises continue, because each financing window resets the dilution overhang and keeps the stock trading as an option on future contracts rather than a cash-flow business. The contrarian view is that the recent drawdown may have already priced in most of that dilution risk, so the stock can rerate sharply on any credible order announcement or partner financing structure.

For AI infrastructure investors, the real trade is relative value: if SMR becomes the market’s preferred nuclear proxy, it can draw speculative flow even before earnings improve, while NVDA and INTC benefit only indirectly through sustained data-center capex. That makes the setup more about sentiment convexity than fundamentals in the next quarter, but over a 1-2 year horizon execution quality will dominate. The biggest mistake would be to confuse regulatory progress with de-risked economics; the stock can work, but only if commercialization becomes visible before the next dilution event.

Key Decisions for Investors

• Trade SMR tactically long on weakness for a 3-6 month horizon, but only as a small-size momentum position; use the recent drawdown as the entry point and define risk tightly below the next financing headline because dilution remains the primary near-term downside.
• Pair long SMR vs short a basket of gas-peaker / merchant power names over 6-12 months to express the view that modular nuclear optionality will start crowding out marginal thermal capacity if AI power demand stays elevated.
• Prefer a basket long in nuclear-adjacent enablers over SMR outright for lower binary risk: consider exposure to uranium/fuel cycle and grid infrastructure beneficiaries, since they capture the commercialization theme without single-company financing risk.
• Avoid chasing NVDA/INTC on this headline alone; any benefit is second-order and likely already embedded in AI capex expectations, so use them only as hedge legs if you want to express a broader data-center power theme.
• Watch for a contract or financing catalyst over the next 1-2 quarters; if SMR announces a credible customer-backed deployment structure, re-underwrite for a 30-50% rerating, but if no such catalyst appears, expect drift and continued equity issuance pressure.