A public-private partnership from Japan has purchased a $110 million piece of NuScale Power, the Portland-based advanced nuclear startup that expects to go public this quarter in a SPAC merger.
Texas engineering firm Fluor Corp. said it would remain NuScale’s majority owner as Japan NuScale Innovation takes a stake worth 8-9% of the small modular reactor designer. Fluor owned about 80% of NuScale as of the end of last year, the company said in a February securities filing.
“This partnership capitalizes on NuScale’s ongoing momentum to bring America’s first SMR to market and to secure a better future for all,” NuScale CEO John Hopkins said in a statement.
The investment valued NuScale at $1.9 billion, Fluor said, the same valuation used in December when NuScale and a special purpose acquisition company announced their plans to take the company public in a deal that could raise $413 million for NuScale.
The SPAC partners last week announced an additional $10 million private equity investment in the deal.
NuScale has designed the first small modular reactor to receive a final safety evaluation report from the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The company is working to deploy its first plant in Idaho before the end of the decade with a consortium of Western municipal power systems and backing of the federal government.
The Japanese investment, meanwhile, signals the country’s renewed interest in nuclear power more than a decade after an earthquake and tsunami devastated the Fukushima plant. Nuclear power accounted for about a quarter of the country’s electricity before the 2011 disaster, but just six of 30 plants are operating now and in 2020 they produced just 3.7% of the Japan’s power.
Japan NuScale Innovation is a partnership between JGC Corp. and IHI Corp. of Japan, who had earlier investments in NuScale. The new $110 million investment brings in Japan Bank for International Cooperation, described by NuScale as “a policy-based financial institution of the Government of Japan.”
