Nuclear stocks have fallen as much as 80% from their peak. Of the four most-watched companies, only one is actually making money

Oklo, NuScale, NANO Nuclear, and BWX Technologies. Last year, investors bet on them as the energy source for artificial intelligence; this year, three of them have hit 52-week lows. We take a look at what each company actually has and what the market is really betting on.

As recently as last fall, all it took was saying “small modular reactor” for a stock to take off. Oklo $OKLO was trading above $176 at the time. On Thursday, October 15, it closed at $30, its lowest level in the past twelve months, and continued to fall on Friday. NuScale Power $SMR is trading around $6 and has lost more than half its value this year. NANO Nuclear Energy $NNE has plunged from a 52-week high of $54 to less than $14.

Only BWX Technologies $BWXT , a company that has been building reactors for the U.S. Navy for decades, is holding up. But even its stock has lost more than 40% from its peak.

Demand for electricity for data centers hasn’t gone away. What has changed is investors’ patience. Rising U.S. bond yields favor companies that are already making money and punish those whose first revenues aren’t expected until sometime after 2028. Let’s take a look at what these four companies actually have.

Oklo: $3 billion in cash and dilution that won’t stop

Of the four companies, Oklo is furthest along in what can be seen in the real world. Its Groves test reactor in Texas achieved first criticality on August 5, less than a year after construction began. It’s a small reactor for producing isotopes, not a power plant, but the company has shown that it can build and start up a nuclear facility at a pace that’s unusual in the sector.

The first commercial Aurora power plant in Idaho is scheduled to start up in 2028. At the end of June, Oklo had about $3 billion in cash and marketable securities and also raised its investment plan for this year to $400–$500 million. Second-quarter revenue was $1.2 million, the first in the company’s history.

“The increase in operating cash outflow does not reflect a significant increase in cash burn for the company’s day-to-day operations.”

Craig Bealmear, Oklo’s chief financial officer, on the conference call discussing second-quarter 2026 results

The catch is where those billions came from. Oklo raised them by selling new shares. It raised $1.9 billion this way in the first half of the year, and on September 11 it signed another program with banks to sell up to $1 billion in shares. It exhausted the previous program of the same size in four months, at an average price of more than $55 per share. At today’s price of around $30, the same amount would mean roughly 33 million new shares, or another 17% dilution. The company’s share count has risen by about a quarter over the past year.

The market is therefore valuing Oklo at $5.4 billion, for a company with revenue in the low millions, whose first power plant is supposed to be running in two years and which will keep selling shares until then.

NuScale: the only approved technology and a project falling apart

NuScale has something nobody else does: the only small modular reactor design certified by the U.S. regulator, the NRC. It also has $1.9 billion in cash, according to its second-quarter results. What it doesn’t have is a customer.

“We hold the industry’s only design certification from the U.S. NRC for small modular reactors; our technology runs on fuel that is proven and available today, and we have built a supply chain with more than 60 specialized partners and over 30 contracts already signed.”

John Hopkins, CEO of NuScale Power, in a comment on second-quarter 2026 results

The company’s second-quarter revenue fell to $75,000 from $8 million a year earlier, as design work for the Doicești project in Romania came to an end. And it was Romania, NuScale’s most advanced contract in Europe, that ran into trouble in October. State-owned Nuclearelectrica published an assessment finding that more than 80% of the conditions for the investment decision from February remain unmet. There is no framework agreement with NuScale, nor any commitment from the U.S. company to supply the modules. The Romanians are proposing that NuScale be given 30 days to remedy the situation, that spending be cut to a minimum, and that other U.S. technologies also be considered.

UBS analyst Jon Windham downgraded NuScale to “sell” on September 11, with a $6 price target. He argued that the company was losing its edge over competitors, had no firm customer contracts, and would burn around $700 million in 2026–2028. The stock fell nearly 16% that day. Today it’s exactly where UBS said it would be.

NANO Nuclear: $570 million in the bank and a $350 million reactor

The smallest of the three startups is also the easiest to understand. NANO Nuclear is building a single 15-megawatt KRONOS reactor on the University of Illinois campus. The NRC accepted its construction permit application in May, and in October the company announced that, according to the NRC schedule, the final safety evaluation is due in September 2027. Construction could begin in the second half of 2027, while the company’s management is targeting commercial operations in 2029–2030.

The prototype is expected to cost $300–$350 million. At the end of June, the company had about $570 million in cash, and the market values it at just under $700 million. In other words, when you buy NANO Nuclear stock today, you’re paying almost just for the cash in the bank, plus a modest premium for the hope that KRONOS will actually get built. The risk, on the other hand, is that all the cash gets spent on a single reactor that will only start looking for customers after 2030.

BWX Technologies: the boring one that makes money

BWX Technologies has never been a social media star. It has been making fuel and reactors for U.S. nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers for more than 60 years, and it is the sole supplier of fuel for all U.S. Navy nuclear reactors. At the beginning of October, it announced a $189 million contract to supply fuel for Virginia-, Columbia-, and Ohio-class submarines, as well as Ford- and Nimitz-class aircraft carriers.

“This contract underscores the Navy’s confidence in our decades of disciplined performance and our role in delivering fuel that gives the fleet unmatched endurance, mobility, and combat readiness.”

Howard Markle, president of BWX Technologies’ Nuclear Operations Group, in a press release about the contract

The company is profitable, pays a dividend, and its market value of $12.3 billion is higher than that of Oklo, NuScale, and NANO Nuclear combined. BWXT’s problem isn’t its business, but its price. The stock trades at around 27 times expected earnings, while traditional defense contractors like Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman trade at 15 to 16 times. BWXT investors are paying a premium for its nuclear label, and this is exactly the premium that has shrunk this year, from $242 per share to $137.

What the market is actually buying in each company

The table shows why this year’s sell-off can’t be explained in a single sentence. With Oklo, the market is still paying billions for a plan that’s only just being built, and each additional share sale cuts existing shareholders’ stake in the company. NuScale has the technology, but its closest contract is falling apart and revenue is practically zero. NANO Nuclear is trading at nearly the value of its cash, which is either an opportunity or a warning that the market sees no value beyond KRONOS.

And BWXT? It shows that even real profits and a sixty-year history can’t protect a stock that rode the wave of nuclear enthusiasm for free. The nuclear renaissance is real; it will just take longer and cost more than the market imagined last October. The companies that see it through will be the ones that don’t burn through everything in their coffers before then.