The 2027 Nuclear Watch List: Five Names Almost Nobody Is Covering
SEQH Capital Research · Wednesday, Nov 11, 2026
Everyone has a view on $OKLO, $SMR, $LEU and $NNE. Almost nobody has one on the five companies below. Each sits in a part of the nuclear buildout with a real gap: domestic uranium supply, the cost of a reactor, waste treatment, project development, and permanent disposal. Together they are worth about $860M at Tuesday’s prices. That is a little over a quarter of the $3.13B in cash $OKLO reported for Q3.
All five are small, early and risky. Three of them disclose going-concern doubt in their own filings. That is part of why the market has stopped paying attention, and it is why each one needs to be underwritten from the filings rather than from the headlines. This report introduces the five and sets out what we know, what has to happen, and what could break each story. Our full model and analysis on each company follows.
How we picked them
Listed and tradable today. No private companies, and no SPACs that haven’t closed yet.
Small. Every name is under about $330M in market value.
In a real gap. Each addresses a bottleneck the reactor story depends on, not another reactor design competing for the same headlines.
Under-followed. Thin trading, new listings, or stocks that have fallen so far the crowd has left.
Left out on purpose: the well-covered leaders ($OKLO, $SMR, $LEU, $BWXT, $LTBR) and the names that already have a following in small-cap nuclear ($ASPI, $NNE).
1. Eagle Nuclear Energy ($NUCL): the biggest conventional uranium deposit nobody is talking about
The gap: US reactors need about 50M lbs of uranium a year, and almost none of it is mined here. The domestic supply story has been about in-situ recovery in Wyoming and Texas. Conventional, near-surface deposits have been ignored.
What it has:
The Aurora deposit in southeastern Oregon: 32.75M lbs indicated and 4.98M lbs inferred, under an S-K 1300 technical report. The company describes it as the largest conventional measured and indicated uranium deposit in the US. Next door is the Cordex deposit, which Eagle believes can add to that.
A proprietary small modular reactor program. In June 2026 it hired Tensor Medium for AI-based reactor modeling. No design specifications or timeline have been published.
$25.5M of cash and no interest-bearing debt at Aug 31, 2026.
Where it stands:
Public since Feb 25, 2026, through a SPAC merger with Spring Valley Acquisition Corp. II.
Permit applications filed with the BLM and Oregon DOGAMI in April 2026. Environmental baseline work started in May. Drilling waits on Oregon state approvals.
A pre-feasibility study is targeted for the second half of 2027, contingent on those approvals.
Added to the Sprott Junior Uranium Miners ETF ($URNJ) in June, and to the index behind the Global X Uranium ETF ($URA) in August.
The number that matters: At $3.80 on Nov 10 (about $115M market value), and net of Aug 31 cash, the market is paying roughly $2.70 per pound of indicated resource. That is our calculation, not a company figure.
What could break it: Oregon permitting is the whole story for the next 12 months. There is no economic study yet, and the reactor program has no published design. The stock is down from a 52-week high of $14.22.
2. Deep Fission ($FISN): putting the reactor a mile underground
The gap: The cost of a reactor is mostly the building around it: the containment structure, the site work, the security perimeter. Deep Fission’s design removes most of that by placing a pressurized water reactor at the bottom of a borehole about a mile deep, using the rock as shielding.
What it has:
A design of about 15 MW per borehole, which the company says can be stacked to as much as 1.5 GW on a single site.
A place in the DOE Reactor Pilot Program, with its pilot site at the Great Plains Industrial Park in Parsons, Kansas. The prototype reactor canister arrived on site on July 7, 2026.
Non-binding letters of intent for up to 18.5 GW as of June 24, 2026. The largest is a 2 GW arrangement with Endeavour for its Edged data centers, with first reactors penciled in for 2029. Either side can walk away without penalty.
$93.0M of cash at June 30, 2026, after an IPO at $16 in June and an $80M private placement.
Where it stands:
It missed the DOE’s July 4, 2026 target for reaching criticality. Fuel is not expected on site before 2027, and the company is pointing to the first half of 2027 for its NRC commercial license application.
Q2 net loss was $31.0M, and operating cash use was $42.5M for the first half.
The shares traded between $2.03 and $2.73 on Nov 10, down about 85% from the IPO price. That puts the market value at roughly $120–160M, not far above the cash it held in June.
What could break it: The 10-Q discloses substantial doubt about the company’s ability to continue as a going concern, which points to more dilution. No borehole reactor has been licensed or built. The letters of intent carry no financing or construction obligations.
3. Perma-Fix Environmental ($PESI): the waste processor the buildout can’t skip
The gap: Every reactor, cleanup site and fuel facility produces radioactive and mixed waste that has to be treated before it can be disposed of. Very few licensed facilities in the US can do it. Perma-Fix runs several of them, and investors still tend to file it under environmental services.
What it has:
A role at the Hanford site in Washington. Perma-Fix Northwest takes liquid effluent from the Direct-Feed Low-Activity Waste (DFLAW) program and has started receiving DFLAW dry waste. Volumes are expected to rise as DFLAW ramps up, under an interim arrangement expected to last about 10 years.
A seat as one of three subcontract holders under a master contract with a ceiling of about $4.4B through 2041. The ceiling is shared, nothing has been awarded to Perma-Fix under it yet, and task orders are not guaranteed.
A second-generation PFAS destruction unit, due to begin commissioning in Q4 2026 and to operate in the first half of 2027.
Where it stands (Q3, reported Nov 5):
Revenue $17.9M, up 2.8% year over year. Services rose 46% to $6.3M. Treatment fell 11.5% to $11.6M, after a Hanford waste stream was held up until late-August approvals.
Treatment backlog $19.6M, up 25% in the quarter and 65% from year-end 2025. Price increases began in August.
Net loss $3.5M. EBITDA was a loss of $3.1M for the quarter and $15.9M for nine months.
Cash $14.7M, with about $19.9M of total liquidity. The PNC credit facility has been extended to May 2030.
Market value about $327M at $15.40 on Nov 10.
What could break it: Hanford timelines have slipped before and can slip again. The company is losing money, and its 10-Q discloses going-concern doubt that management says has not been alleviated.
4. ONE Nuclear Energy ($ONEN): a developer, not another reactor design
The gap: Most listed small reactor companies sell a reactor design. Very few develop the projects those reactors need: the land, the grid connection, the water, the permits and the customer. ONE Nuclear’s model is to win sites and customers now with natural gas and battery storage, then add small modular reactors on the same platform.
What it has: a 5 GW Louisiana portfolio, announced Sept 10, 2026.
Project Amberjack: a multi-unit SMR campus targeting up to 1 GW, near the Mississippi River and a major transmission corridor. The company has site control and has started vendor-neutral reactor screening. It says plainly that this is not an NRC approval or license.
Project Cayman: a 2.88 GW natural gas plant with 700 MW / 2.88 GWh of battery storage and a potential data center campus.
Project Barracuda: a 1.2 GW gas plant with 300 MW / 1.2 GWh of storage, designed around about 1 GW of data center capacity.
Where it stands:
Public since Sept 24, 2026, through its merger with Hennessy Capital Investment Corp. VII. The deal used a $1.0B base purchase price, which the filing says is not a valuation.
Before the merger closed, the operating company had $2,588 of cash at June 30 and a members’ deficit of $2.7M. Final cash proceeds from the closing have not been disclosed. A forward purchase agreement covering about 5.0M shares and an equity facility with B. Riley are its stated funding routes.
No reactor vendor, gas turbine supplier or data center customer has been named.
Market value about $179M at $1.65 on Nov 10.
What could break it: Funding. Every project is subject to financing that is not yet in place, the pre-merger financials carry going-concern language, and an equity facility usually means steady dilution.
5. Deep Isolation Nuclear ($DBHL): an answer to the question every reactor raises
The gap: The US holds about 95,000 metric tons of commercial spent fuel at plants in 28 states, adds about 2,000 tons a year, and still has no permanent repository. Deep Isolation’s approach is to put that waste in deep horizontal boreholes drilled with standard oil and gas equipment, rather than in one national mine.
What it has:
A full-scale, non-radioactive demonstration at the Deep Borehole Demonstration Center at Halliburton’s facility near Cameron, Texas. Collaborators include Halliburton, Amentum, NAC International, Occlusion Nuclear Solutions and Westinghouse.
A position in contracting with ARPA-E for up to $20M to field-test its Universal Canister System. The award has not been finalized.
Selection in July 2026 as the sole industrial partner on three DOE Project GENESIS grants led by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of South Carolina.
$19.4M of cash at June 30, 2026, after an oversubscribed $33M private financing.
Where it stands:
Trading on the OTCQB since July 2026.
Q2 revenue was $1.3M, down from $1.6M, as 2025 projects finished. The net loss widened to $3.0M.
Market value about $98–104M at $1.70 on Nov 10, against a 52-week high of $9.00.
What could break it: No borehole disposal method has been licensed for spent fuel in the US, and the regulatory path runs through Washington, not the company. Revenue is small and falling, and the stock trades very thinly.
What comes next
Our full model and analysis on each of the five follows. For each company we will publish:
The cash runway, quarter by quarter, and how much new money it is likely to need
The milestones that actually change the value, with dates and the evidence behind each one
A base, fast and slow case for each timeline, built from how long comparable projects have really taken
The specific filings and events to watch through 2027