NuScale's flagship SMR plant died when its power price hit $89/MWh and subscribers fled

NuScale Power, a Portland, Oregon company, owned the only small modular reactor design ever certified by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Its flagship deployment was the Carbon Free Power Project with Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems at DOE's Idaho National Laboratory, running since a 2015 agreement. Envisioned as a 720-MW plant of 12 modules, it was cut to 462 MW and 6 modules as member subscriptions lagged. In 2020 DOE awarded a 10-year, noncompetitive cost-share worth up to $1.36 billion.

The economics then came apart. In January 2023 NuScale raised CFPP's target power price from $58 to $89 per MWh, citing a changed financial landscape. Inflation pushed component prices up by as much as 106%, and the project's total cost rose 75% to about $9.3 billion; the cost of its power rose 50%. Communities pulled out of power-purchase commitments, and on November 8, 2023 NuScale and UAMPS mutually terminated the project before construction began. NuScale stock fell more than 30% the next day. DOE had already disbursed $232 million.

The post-mortem was damning. A DOE Inspector General audit made public in spring 2026 found about $183 million of government funds were spent 'without key results'; DOE's merit review never properly evaluated the subscription risk; the full-subscription milestone was dropped as 'duplicative' of a notice-to-proceed review not due until 2026; only one required semiannual review was performed; and $143.5 million of front-loaded cost-share may have to be repaid. The audit concluded DOE 'did not effectively manage the project' and its failures may have contributed to the termination.

For NuScale the termination crystallized into numbers: a charge of nearly $50 million helped push the 2023 net loss to $180.1 million on revenue of just $22.8 million, and in January 2024 it laid off 154 employees — about 28% of staff — to save $50-60 million a year. The stock bottomed at $1.92 before a data-center pivot narrative lifted it.

Project cost rose 75% to about $9.3bn; NuScale took a ~$50M charge and lost $180.1M in 2023; DOE spent $183M without key results

The subscription model spread cost risk across municipal utilities that were free to walk away — and once the price was real, they did.

Post-2021 inflation and interest rates repriced a plant whose design was already fixed; component costs rose as much as 106%.

Shrinking from 12 to 6 modules as subscribers dropped raised unit costs, a classic first-of-a-kind death spiral.

DOE's award had no interim subscription milestones, so the project's central risk went unmonitored for years.

A target price of $89/MWh was unsellable to community-owned utilities answerable to their own ratepayers.

First-of-a-kind plants need buyers locked in before costs are real. CFPP's subscription model kept commitments soft and unpriced for a decade — when the true $89/MWh price arrived, nobody wanted it.

The DOE Inspector General issued five recommendations on cost-share structure, milestone setting and oversight for future demonstration awards. UAMPS wound the project down with DOE and NuScale. NuScale spent 2024 pitching SMRs to data centers and heavy industry instead of utilities — including a plan with Standard Power for about 2 GW in Ohio and Pennsylvania — and its stock rebounded 275% from the January 2024 low of $1.92. But the company remained pre-revenue-scale, and the industry's benchmark case for SMR economics was now a terminated plant.