루마니아가 NuScale의 Doicești 핵전력 데이터 센터 프로젝트의 구조 및 프로젝트 이행 방식에 도전하는 정부 감사를 발표했다.
Romania's state-controlled nuclear utility has published a government audit challenging the corporate structure, state-aid process, and timetable behind NuScale Power's proposed 462-megawatt plant at Doicești. The document does not question NuScale's reactor design or declare the site unsafe. For investors, the nearer risk is whether the project can clear a new layer of legal and financing work before NuScale receives its next substantive contract.
The disclosure arrived at an awkward moment for NuScale. Its NYSE-listed shares closed Friday at $8.61, down 15.7%, after a separate UBS sell rating intensified concern about valuation and commercialization. The Romanian findings should not be presented as the cause of that move—they are an additional weekend development affecting one of NuScale's most advanced international opportunities.
Nuclearelectrica shareholders voted on September 11 to release the Prime Minister's Control Body report. Shareholders representing 93.0% of the company backed publication unanimously. That vote made the 69-page audit public; it did not, by itself, endorse every conclusion.
The audit said the second front-end engineering and design phase finished 20 months later than the timetable set in 2022. It also found that correspondence with Romania's Competition Council indicated a need to notify the European Commission about the joint venture formed to develop the plant, but that notification had not occurred. The report recommended that the Energy Ministry test whether the arrangement meets market conditions and European and national state-intervention rules, with the aim of removing a risk that a competent authority could later invalidate it.
The sharpest criticism concerns RoPower Nuclear, the project company owned equally by Nuclearelectrica and private energy group Nova Power & Gas. Auditors said the equal-share partnership lacked a documented comparative assessment of other possible private partners, while the rights and risks were not symmetrical. They also recommended that Nuclearelectrica examine costs rebilled to RoPower and consider whether to seek cancellation of the rebilling agreement. These are governance and transaction-structure findings, not nuclear-safety verdicts. Although the audit questioned why Doicești was chosen after ranking second in an earlier site study, it also recorded that an International Atomic Energy Agency review found the site suitable from a nuclear-safety perspective.
Nuclearelectrica set out a detailed countercase in its July response to the preliminary findings. It said the schedule was an estimate rather than a binding deadline and argued that 20 months was not a significant deviation for a first-of-a-kind nuclear project requiring special licensing and international financing. The utility also pointed to successive IAEA reviews, including a 2024 follow-up mission that it said confirmed the site-selection recommendations had been addressed. On the partnership, Nuclearelectrica cited a private-investor analysis concluding that a commercial investor could have chosen a similar structure and said consultations with the Competition Council had taken place.
This disagreement is important. The published audit creates work for ministries, shareholders, and the project company, but it is not a cancellation order. In February, Romania approved the final investment decision for a plant using six 77-megawatt NuScale modules. Nuclearelectrica later said that some conditions needed for the next phase could not yet be met and that it wanted additional technology and economic comparisons before committing more capital.
NuScale's own June-quarter filing makes the dependency unusually clear. It calls RoPower the company's only international customer, says NuScale completed its subcontracted work on the second engineering phase in late 2025, and does not expect RoPower to enter a pre-engineering, procurement and construction contract until financing for that work is secured. NuScale said it would resume work after that agreement is signed.
Four dated developments are now more useful than any near-term price target: a formal resolution of the European-notification question; the Energy Ministry's review of the 50-50 joint venture; RoPower's financing package; and a signed pre-EPC contract. Progress on all four would support NuScale's claim that an approved design can move from studies into a bankable European build. Further slippage would reinforce the market's concern that commercial deployment remains distant even when regulatory technology milestones are real.
The strongest counterargument is that the audit targets Romanian governance decisions rather than NuScale technology, and that the government can cure documentation or notification problems without changing the reactor supplier. That is plausible. But after Friday's share decline, the burden of proof has shifted from endorsements to funded contracts. Doicești now has to demonstrate both.