InvestmentsOklo is down 49% in 2026 and trades 80% below its record high. NuScale Power is down 43% and sits 86% below its peak, according to a Benzinga tally from Sept. 20. Short interest is 17% at Oklo and 16% at NuScale, and the Financial Times estimates short sellers have made more than $2 billion this year. That is a sell-off, not a verdict. Some of the technology and some of the milestones are real. The job is sorting them from the noise, and three red flags do most of the sorting. 🔬 (Prices here are as of Sept. 20 and move daily.)
Red flag one: the stock is the funding source
Oklo booked $1.2 million of second-quarter revenue against a six-month net loss of $81.6 million. It ended June with $3.0 billion in cash and securities, per its 10-Q for the period ended June 30, and the company said on its earnings call that $1.9 billion of that came from at-the-market stock sales this year. On Sept. 11 it set up another ATM for up to $1 billion with 10 banks, including Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan. Shares fell 7% to $37.09, near the 52-week low of $36.61, Benzinga reported. Benzinga also puts the share count at about 185 million, up from 122 million in 2024, a 52% increase. 📉
NuScale has the same shape at a different scale. It reported $75,000 of second-quarter revenue against $1.9 billion in liquidity, according to 24/7 Wall St’s coverage of the UBS downgrade to Sell. UBS cited timeline and cash burn.
The cash is real, and that matters. Oklo raised its 2026 guidance to $120 million to $150 million of operating cash use and $400 million to $500 million of capital spending, so $3.0 billion covers years. The risk is dilution, not survival. When the share price is the funding source, every drop makes the next dollar more expensive.
What to check in any pre-revenue developer’s latest 10-Q:
Runway: cash against guided burn (Oklo’s ceiling is roughly $650 million in 2026 for operations plus capex)
Share count: this year against last year
ATM capacity: the size of open programs relative to market cap
Revenue source: Oklo’s second-quarter revenue came mainly from recent acquisitions, not reactor sales
How many quarters does a company last if its stock falls another 50%? Fair question to ask before the answer arrives on its own.
Red flag two: gigawatts on non-binding paper
ENTRA1 Energy and the Tennessee Valley Authority signed a non-binding agreement on Sept. 2, 2025 for up to 6 GW of NuScale capacity, as NuScale’s 10-Q describes it. At 77 MWe per module, that is roughly 78 modules. ENTRA1 would finance and own the plants and sell the output to TVA under future power purchase agreements, ANS Nuclear Newswire reported. A year later, NuScale’s Aug. 5 results release says ENTRA1 is still in discussions with TVA toward a definitive PPA. ⚡
The Romanian project has more paper. RoPower would put six NuScale Power Modules (462 MWe) at a former coal plant site in Doicești, and the Fluor-led FEED Phase 2 study finished in late 2025. Nuclearelectrica shareholders approved the next phase with conditions, and NuScale says it is working to meet them. That is progress, and it is also not a construction contract.
The same pattern shows up elsewhere. NANO Nuclear’s latest 8-K points to advanced discussions with a prospective customer building a multi-gigawatt data center pipeline. In December 2025, an Oklo spokesperson told Neutron Bytes it was too early to put numbers on power purchase agreements and described its data center and oil and gas agreements as non-binding MOUs. That is nine months old, so check whether it has changed. Every project, deal, company, and regulatory event we cover is logged, verified, and searchable in SMRbrief Pro, which turns the signed-versus-announced check into a filter.
Phrases that usually mean no contract yet:
“Up to” a capacity figure
Non-binding, MOU, or letter of intent
“Advanced discussions” or “continues to advance”
“Framework” with no price per megawatt-hour attached
Red flag three: the schedule runs through someone else’s fuel and license
Oklo’s first Aurora powerhouse is a 75 MWe sodium-cooled fast reactor at Idaho National Laboratory, targeting a 2028 startup. Its 10-K says HALEU and plutonium-based fuels are not available at scale. In May 2026, DOE selected Oklo for advanced negotiations in its Surplus Plutonium Utilization Program, but the 10-Q says any use of that material still depends on DOE authorization, regulatory approvals, and material availability. Neutron Bytes, an independent nuclear blog, estimates plutonium-derived fuel is a mid-2030s story at the earliest.
HALEU has a nearer date. Centrus signed a letter of intent to supply Oklo’s planned 1.2 GW Ohio campus, with deliveries starting in 2029, and DOE awarded $900 million for HALEU enrichment in January. SMRbrief’s HALEU glossary entry covers the details. A 2029 delivery date sits after a 2028 startup target, which is the kind of gap worth noticing. 🇺🇸
On licensing, Oklo’s regulatory page describes the INL plant as running under an in-progress DOE authorization that is meant to convert into an NRC commercial license.
NuScale flips the profile. Its CEO says the technology runs on fuel that is proven and available today. The 77 MWe NuScale Power Module received NRC standard design approval in May 2025. A design approval is not a site, a construction permit, or a buyer. The five reactor types SMRbrief has laid out carry very different fuel and licensing profiles, and a light-water design like NuScale’s skips the fuel problem entirely.
Dependencies to map before believing a date:
Fuel: enrichment level, supplier, and contracted delivery date
License: which NRC or ONR step is complete, and which is next
Customer: a signed PPA or EPC contract, not an MOU
Financing: who pays for the first plant if the stock is down 50%
What real progress looks like
Rolls-Royce SMR is the benchmark, though it is not a pure-play stock. Its 470 MWe PWR has a UK government contract for three units at Wylfa, signed in April 2026, with $3.4 billion allocated to the contract and wider program. The regulators’ guidance page shows the design in Generic Design Assessment Step 3, expected to finish by December 2026. A final investment decision is still ahead, and that gap is stated openly. 📈
Smaller pieces of real progress exist too:
Oklo: the Groves isotope facility reached first criticality on Aug. 5, 2026, roughly 11 months after the site was greenfield
NANO Nuclear: the NRC accepted the KRONOS MMR construction permit application on May 20, 2026, with about a 12-month review expected
NuScale: the Highly Integrated Protection System contract awarded to Paragon moves the supply chain from planned to purchased
Even NANO’s own filings tell readers to keep expectations in check: initial KRONOS operation is targeted around 2030 to 2031, and the company says the unit is not a near-term commercial power product.
So which of the gigawatts in a portfolio has a price, a regulator’s date, and a fuel delivery attached to it?