Wedbush assigned NuScale Power an Underperform rating with a $5 target, while rating Oklo, X-Energy and NANO Nuclear Outperform as it weighed customer orders and development progress.
For Oklo, Wedbush cited a reactor that it said reached criticality less than 11 months after groundbreaking. The firm also pointed to Oklo’s work in power, fuel recycling and isotopes.
Wedbush described NANO Nuclear’s KRONOS as one of a few Generation IV designs at the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) construction-permit application stage. It said X-Energy’s Xe-100 was nearing a construction permit and that the company’s fuel facility would be the first new commercial fuel fabrication plant licensed by the NRC in more than 50 years.
Wedbush said NuScale had spent 19 years without a reactor-module purchase commitment that was both binding and financed. It also identified ENTRA1 as central to NuScale’s ability to carry out the orders in its pipeline. The firm cited a canceled project after its target electricity rate rose to $89 per megawatt-hour from $58.
That customer-order concern is separate from a component order Doosan Enerbility said it secured for the first upper reactor pressure vessel module in a NuScale project. The order covers manufacturing a component; Wedbush’s stated concern was the lack of financed customer orders for reactor modules themselves.
