NuScale Power's SMR stock has done something almost no investor could ignore: after soaring by more than 1,800% from the start of 2024 to the summer of 2025, it has slumped by more than 80% since last summer. The company that once looked like a breakout story is back to being a test of patience.
That is why Ryan Vanzo, who says he has no position in any of the stocks mentioned, is back on the name now. NuScale's run has been tied to a simple idea: if AI keeps driving electricity demand higher, small modular reactors could become part of the answer, and Bank of America analysts have gone so far as to call nuclear energy a $10 trillion opportunity over the next couple of decades, with SMR technology playing a key role.
The attraction is easy to see on paper. NuScale went public in 2022, became the first to receive approval from the Nuclear Energy Commission for its SMR designs in 2020, and regulators approved another upscaled design in 2025. After that approval, the company called itself the most near-term American SMR power solution. But the market has not rewarded approval alone. The share price had already collapsed by more than 80% from August 2022 through the end of 2023 before the later surge, and the latest decline shows how quickly enthusiasm can reverse when a company still has no operational facilities.
That caution is not theoretical. NuScale's project pipeline has been marked by delays and cancellations, and its project in Romania has seen its completion date pushed back from 2030 to 2034. The company also has a 6GW SMR project with the Tennessee Valley Authority in the eastern United States, and a power purchasing agreement for that project could be announced as early as this December. Yet even that milestone would not change the larger picture: NuScale is not expected to have operational facilities by the end of this decade.
That is the friction behind the stock. The technology is real and newly approved, but the value of the company still hangs on whether those projects turn into signed contracts, built reactors and revenue. For now, SMR stock investors have a clean reminder that a promise can move a share price far faster than a plant can.
