Small Reactor Supply Chain
mike
@mikk
+1.0%
since Oct 6
The idea
I believe small modular reactors get built through the 2030s to meet rising baseload electricity demand, but the surest money is in the suppliers, not the reactor developers themselves. So this skips the SMR upstarts and instead leans into the fuel chain, especially HALEU enrichment, alongside component makers, engineering and construction firms, and specialty-metals producers whose alloys go into every core.
What it owns
- Pumps, vessels, turbines and radiation instruments go into every reactor regardless of whose design wins. · BWX TechnologiesIt already builds reactor components for the US Navy and is the incumbent supplier whichever small-reactor design wins., GE VernovaIt supplies the turbines and grid equipment every new power plant needs, nuclear or not, so it wins if baseload demand drives any build-out., Curtiss-WrightIt makes the coolant pumps and control systems that go into reactors regardless of whose design gets built., Mirion TechnologiesIt sells radiation measurement gear that every reactor site needs for licensing and operation., Graham CorporationIt makes heat transfer equipment for nuclear and defense, a small supplier with outsized sensitivity to new reactor orders., FlowserveIts pumps and valves go into nuclear plants whoever designs the reactor, and the rest of its business pays the bills while waiting for new orders.36%
- New small reactors need specially enriched fuel that almost nobody in the West makes yet, so the fuel makers are the tightest bottleneck in the whole supply chain. · Centrus EnergyIt is the only US producer of HALEU, the higher-enriched fuel most small reactors need., CamecoIt is the biggest Western miner of uranium, so more reactors means more demand for its production., Energy FuelsIt mines uranium inside the US, which matters because the Western fuel chain can barely supply itself today., Uranium Energy CorpIt is restarting US mines into the uranium shortage the take is built on., LightbridgeIt designs advanced fuel that could go into whichever reactor design wins, the supplier layer in the fuel chain., ASP IsotopesIt is building new enrichment capacity, a second route to the HALEU the West can barely produce.32%
- Someone has to license, design and physically construct these plants, and these firms bill for that work either way. · Amentum HoldingsIt does the nuclear engineering work that every project needs before construction starts., FluorIt builds power plants, and if small reactors get built someone has to construct them., KBRIt handles the licensing and project delivery work that stands between a reactor design and an operating plant.12%
- Reactor cores need exotic alloys like zirconium that only a few mills can supply. · ATI IncIt makes the zirconium and specialty alloys that go into every reactor core, whichever design wins., Carpenter TechnologyIt makes the high-spec metals that reactor components are machined from, so it gets paid whoever wins the design race.8%
- Cash12%