From Barron's, June 4:
The race is on to build the first set of small nuclear reactors that can power everything from artificial-intelligence data centers to neighborhoods. More than a dozen companies are at work on creating new nuclear reactor models, but one has pulled ahead—GE Vernova Hitachi Nuclear Energy.
GE Vernova Hitachi Nuclear Energy is a joint venture between U.S. industrial company GE Vernova and Japanese conglomerate Hitachi. The JV won approval last month in Canada for its small modular reactor, or SMR, design, known as the BWRX-300. The first of four reactors is already under construction near Toronto. GE Vernova has decades of experience in the nuclear industry, and already makes money servicing existing nuclear reactors.
GE Vernova Hitachi’s small modular design is starting to gain traction elsewhere. It’s a finalist in a “Great British Nuclear SMR” competition that could result in more orders, and Poland has announced decisions-in-principle supporting construction of the reactor at six sites. Sweden, Finland, and Estonia are also considering it.
The reactor also hit a major milestone in the U.S. just two weeks ago. The Tennessee Valley Authority, the country’s largest publicly owned utility and a longtime nuclear operator, submitted an application for a construction permit to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build a BWRX-300 at a site in Tennessee that already has an early site permit for a reactor. It’s the first U.S. utility to submit a construction permit application to build a small modular reactor. No SMR has been built in the U.S. yet.
That’s a big deal—utilities are the most important players in the nuclear industry, because they’re the ones taking on most of the risk by building new nuclear plants.
Small modular reactors are meant to be less expensive to build than the large reactors that have been built in the past, because they can be built in pieces at a factory—rather than being constructed on site. The BWRX-300 will produce 300 megawatts of power, below the roughly 1,000 megawatt capacity of most existing large-scale nuclear reactors....
....MUCH MORE
Regarding those Nordic deals:
HELSINKI, Finland (July 1, 2025) – GE Vernova Hitachi Nuclear Energy (GVH) and Fortum have entered into an early works agreement to advance potential deployment of the BWRX-300 small modular reactor (SMR) in Finland and Sweden....
—from July 1's "GE Vernova, Other Power Stocks Weigh on the S&P 500" (GEV).
As noted introducing June 27's "Trump plans executive orders to power AI growth in race with China" (PWR; GEV; CCJ):
I think we're positioned correctly with the Quanta, GE Vernova, Cameco etc.
But until sales, earnings, and cash flow catch up to the news, valuations are getting stretched.
But at least we have sales, earnings, and cash flow should the overall market tumble.
Money coming in the front door is comforting and a cushion against impulsivity, regret and all the other things that get in the way of big gains.
And as mentioned exiting May 23's ""Trump plots ‘Manhattan Project 2’ in nuclear power push" (CCJ; GEV)":
The "set it and forget it" stocks are in the headline, Cameco among the miners and GE Vernova among the nuke reactor manufacturers.
However, as is so often the case the speculative lottery tickets are seeing a lot of enthusiasm for their shares. The problem with them as investments are 1) a lack of stuff like sales/earnings/cash flow and 2) our conviction that we will see at least one and possibly three bear markets before they have products.
And in bear markets it is the companies lacking in sales/earnings/cash flow that get hit hardest; as investors begin to question whether they may have made a big mistake.
Addendum: I should have mentioned that with Cameco you also get 49% of nuke plant company Westinghouse. Brookfield owns the 51%.
And in June 16's "Why U.S. Uranium Production Surged 12-Fold In 2024" a reminder that Kazakhstan's Kazatomprom is and will probably remain the world's largest producer.
