Pioneering Nuclear Startup Lays Off Nearly Half Its Workforc

[Oscar]

Pioneering Nuclear Startup Lays Off Nearly Half Its Workforce

[ https://www.huffpost.com/entry/nuscale- ... f4cfd24dba ]

By Alexander C. Kaufman January 5, 2024

NuScale is the second major U.S. reactor company to cut jobs in recent months.

EXCERPT: "Almost exactly one year ago, NuScale Power made history as the first of a new generation of nuclear energy startups to win regulatory approval of its reactor design ― just in time for the Biden administration to begin pumping billions of federal dollars into turning around the nation’s atomic energy industry.

But as mounting costs and the cancellation of its landmark first power plant have burned through shrinking cash reserves, the Oregon-based company is laying off as much 40% of its workforce, HuffPost has learned. . . . .

But the financial headwinds are taking an especially acute toll on nuclear power. It takes more than a decade to build a reactor, and the only new ones under construction in the U.S. and Europe went billions of dollars over budget in the past two decades. Many in the atomic energy industry are betting that small modular reactors ― shrunken down, lower-power units with a uniform design ― can make it cheaper and easier to build new nuclear plants through assembly-line repetition. . . . . . "