Holtec Is The Real Deal

This pure-play nuclear company is about to go public. It’s making money, has a promising SMR design, and is close to restarting Palisades. Here's what you need to know.

The Palisades Power Plant in Covert, Michigan, was shut down in 2022. Holtec is now refurbishing the 800-megawatt plant. When it begins producing power, Palisades will be the first-ever restart of a shuttered nuclear plant in the US. Credit: Holtec.

Holtec Nuclear Corporation is the antithesis of Hadron Energy.

As I reported here last month, Hadron Energy, a startup that aims to build a 10-megawatt light-water reactor, went public on May 26 via a SPAC merger. The IPO quickly made the company’s founder, Sam Gibson, a 25-year-old who graduated from the University of Nebraska with a degree in mechanical engineering in May of 2023, a centimillionaire, or at least it did on paper. The company’s website includes photos of Gibson on the university campus and informs us that he “brings midwestern values of putting others before himself.”

Gibson’s selfless attitude may be admirable, but Hadron isn’t a business; it’s little more than a business plan.

Hadron hasn’t begun serious regulatory engagement with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, it hasn’t begun fabricating a prototype reactor, and it’s approximately 2,432 miles behind the 41 other US companies that are trying to develop, license, and deploy small modular reactors. (The US now has eight publicly traded pure-play SMR companies that have a combined market capitalization of about $21 billion.)

But Hadron’s IPO — and Deep Fission’s on June 18 — provides yet another example of the froth and hype that are hallmarks of today’s SMR sector. Like many of their SMR competitors, Hadron and Deep Fission are riding the wave of AI-related excitement. On its website, Hadron says it aims to provide juice to “defense installations, AI and hyperscale data-center campuses” and “remote industrial sites and communities.”

The turbine hall at Palisades in late 2025. Credit: Dustin Dwyer/ Michigan Public.

Now compare Hadron to Holtec, which filed its S-1 with the SEC on July 10. If Hadron represents the hype, froth, and foam of the current moment, Holtec is the beer — a stout beer. While Hadron is a rank SMR startup that will soon be running out of cash and prospects, Holtec is a 40-year veteran of the nuclear sector that is generating hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue and boatloads of cash.

I’ve been digging into Holtec’s 400-page S-1. What I found was a successful company that is generating lots of cash — and, due to its strong balance sheet, huge backlog, and long-standing position in the nuclear sector — it could generate even more cash in the years ahead.

Let’s take a look.