January 08, 2024
By Mike Rogoway

Oregon nuclear power company NuScale acknowledges layoffs, says 154 lost their jobs

A one-third-scale model Of NuScale Power's 50-megawatt reactor is perched in a
birdcage of steel girders in a nuclear test facility at Oregon State University.TNS

Portland-based NuScale Power said Monday it has laid off 154 employees, 28% of its staff, as it strives to find commercial customers for its nuclear reactor technology.

That’s a substantial reduction in the workforce of the struggling nuclear energy company but smaller than had been suggested by a report Friday in HuffPost, which indicated up to 40% of NuScale workers had lost their jobs.

The bulk of NuScale’s employees work in Oregon, mostly at its research and engineering site in Corvallis. NuScale also has a small team at its headquarters office in Southwest Portland. The company declined to say how many Oregon workers lost their jobs but said it laid off fewer than 50 people at any single location.

NuScale said the job cuts will save the company between $50 million and $60 million annually, after paying severance costs of around $3 million.

NuScale pioneered a new class of nuclear plant known as a small modular reactor, based on technology developed at Oregon State University. The company says its reactors are more cost-effective and safer than conventional nuclear plants, and NuScale had won key regulatory approvals and $600 million in federal backing to develop its technology.

While several other companies are working on their own small reactors, too, utilities have been slow to adopt the technology. In November, a coalition of Western utilities dropped plans to build a NuScale reactor in Idaho, sending the company’s stock plunging.

NuScale’s shares fell 8% Friday, to $2.65. Shares fell another 2.9% early Monday. The company had $117 million in cash at the end of September, down from $268 million in cash and short-term investments at the start of the year.

Projected costs for the Idaho project ballooned by 75% last year, to $9.3 billion, and the target price for power from NuScale’s reactor climbed by more than 50%. That made it less appealing to the utilities seeking an affordable alternative to electricity generated by fossil fuels.

NuScale said Monday that its layoffs represent a shift away from the research stage of its operations toward commercialization of its small modular reactors. But it did not announce any deals to actually deploy reactors.

“Our U.S. Nuclear Regulatory-approved, industry-leading SMR technology is already many years ahead of the competition,” John Hopkins, NuScale’s CEO, said in a written statement. “Today, commercialization of our SMR technology is our key objective, which includes near-term deployment and manufacturing.”

Mike Rogoway | mrogoway@oregonian.com | 503-294-7699
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