NuScale's UAMPS Project Cancellation Exposed That SMR Costs Escalated from $3 Billion to $9.3 Billion, Undermining Investor Confidence in the Entire SMR Sector

NuScale Power — the only company with an NRC-approved SMR design — and Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems (UAMPS) terminated the Carbon Free Power Project (CFPP) in November 2023 after the estimated cost ballooned from $3 billion in 2016 to $9.3 billion, and the target electricity price rose from $58/MWh to $89/MWh, and only 101 MW of the plant's 462 MW capacity had been subscribed. Why it matters: the cancellation of the world's most advanced SMR project destroyed the foundational narrative that SMRs would be cheaper than large reactors through factory fabrication and modular construction, so venture capital and institutional investors now demand far higher risk premiums for nuclear startups, so competing SMR developers like GE-Hitachi (BWRX-300) and Rolls-Royce SMR face heightened investor skepticism even though their designs differ substantially, so utilities that were considering SMRs for coal plant replacement are now defaulting to natural gas combined-cycle plants, so the window for nuclear to contribute to 2035 clean energy targets narrows further. The structural root cause is that NuScale's cost estimates were based on Nth-of-a-kind projections for a first-of-a-kind project, the regulatory process added design changes that increased scope, and municipal utility subscribers could not absorb rising costs because they had cheaper alternatives available.