๐๐๐๐ฉ ๐๐๐ช๐๐๐ฉ ๐ข๐ฎ ๐๐ฉ๐ฉ๐๐ฃ๐ฉ๐๐ค๐ฃ? Josh Wolfe, the co-founder of New York venture capital firm Lux Capital, pitching SMR companies Nano Nuclear, Oklo and NuScale as shorts in a thread on X.
๐๐๐ฎ ๐๐ฉ ๐ข๐๐ฉ๐ฉ๐๐ง๐จ? Nuclear technology of all flavors have made the headlines this fall as hyperscalers from Amazon to Google to Meta have all made announcements connected with the technology. These names have run up 100-400%+ this year and Joshโs post is a good reminder that excitement may have outrun the reality in the short-run. Nuclear may well play a major role in the future - the critique is that future may be further off that the market is currently underwriting.
NB: Josh noted that โEveryone knows I LOVE elemental energy. (fka "nuclear")โ in his comments.
๐๐๐ฃ๐ ๐จ:
โขย ย Joshโs thread on X
Indeed. Fundamentally, the economics of small reactors designed to generate electricity just don't look great as compared to larger ones, and that seems unlikely to change anytime soon for a variety of reasons. Alternate applications such as process heat could be a very different story but that is also unlikely to happen quickly - at least at scale. What we know how to build at the moment are AP-1000s, and funny enough, there seems to be plenty of room on ever-shakier grids for gigawatt scale, zero carbon generation...