I come from the aerospace industry (former spx, built a company serving rocket companies afterward) and SpaceX did some interesting things in the early days to overcome these revenue issues. Initially, they had large amounts of cash down on a fixed price launch, which gave them money to run on. I repeated this strategy for my startup. Later, they just had so much momentum from delivering that there was investor money galore to eat the lumps between delivery cost and revenue. All of that to say, I think that there are many advantages the nuclear legacy companies have, but I think it's rare to build $6.8B plant. Someone in the SMR world will crack the code using upfront but fixed pricing and COTS components, is my bet.
I come from the aerospace industry (former spx, built a company serving rocket companies afterward) and SpaceX did some interesting things in the early days to overcome these revenue issues. Initially, they had large amounts of cash down on a fixed price launch, which gave them money to run on. I repeated this strategy for my startup. Later, they just had so much momentum from delivering that there was investor money galore to eat the lumps between delivery cost and revenue. All of that to say, I think that there are many advantages the nuclear legacy companies have, but I think it's rare to build $6.8B plant. Someone in the SMR world will crack the code using upfront but fixed pricing and COTS components, is my bet.
No fall back. Shoot for the moon!