TheChek News Flow

A $167 billion power project promotes Chinese self-sufficiency while unsettling neighbors downstream

HONG KONG—China has begun the construction of a giant hydropower project at the earthquake-prone edge of the Tibetan plateau, a spectacular engineering feat that is central to Beijing’s enduring mission to become self-sufficient in critical areas such as energy.

The $167 billion facility will require digging tunnels that plunge through high mountains to harness the power of a river that sharply descends through the deepest and possibly longest canyon on the planet.

If its planners succeed—after shrugging off objections from neighbors—the project could generate triple the output of the world’s largest hydroelectric facility, China’s Three Gorges Dam, which is big enough to power around 40 million Chinese homes.

The endeavor is a dramatic example of China’s determination to become self-reliant in areas of national importance, from technology to food, a yearslong campaign that has gained momentum as Beijing’s rivalry with the U.S. intensifies. China imported nearly a quarter of its energy supply in 2023, a level of dependency that Beijing is working hard to undo.

The plan, slated to be the world’s most expensive infrastructure project, will also plow money into a struggling Chinese economy and bring jobs and business to a remote and sensitive corner of China where Beijing is trying to engineer the loyalty of the Tibetan population. A planned $7 billion high-voltage transmission network will deliver electricity from the site in Tibet to Guangdong province, the economic center on China’s southeast coast, and the cities of Hong Kong and Macau.

But the project on the Yarlung Tsangpo River has stirred accusations that it will give Beijing the power to strangle resources beyond its borders, where the river flows into northeastern India and then south through Bangladesh.

It has also raised fears of environmental damage and potential disaster in the mountainous, seismically active region. The location is one of vast biodiversity, featuring rare primates and a wider range of big cats, from snow leopards to Bengal tigers, than anywhere else in the world.

China has yet to reveal the details, but it is evident that the design aims to avoid the pitfalls of some of the original plans, which included using nuclear explosions to blast a route north.

“It’s super clever,” said Ruth Gamble, an environmental historian at La Trobe University in Australia who studies Himalayan rivers. “I don’t like dams, but as far as dams go it avoids all the wrong stuff.”

The project achieves that because it likely won’t rely on a megadam to generate power.

Instead, according to interviews, online postings by Chinese hydrologists and a review of official statements, the project involves drilling deep tunnels that begin above and emerge below the Yarlung Tsangpo Grand Canyon—essentially cutting across a U-shaped bend that descends nearly 2 vertical miles over more than 300 miles. It is expected to include dams at the top and bottom of tunnels in which diverted water drives turbines.

Chinese Premier Li Qiang, inaugurating the project last month, called it a “project of the century.”

Experts say it appears to emphasize “run-of-the-river” design, using the water’s flow without relying on significant storage behind a dam.

“This dam doesn’t take the water out of the river,” said Mark Giordano, a geography professor at Georgetown University. “It’s a tunnel that reroutes it from one part of the Chinese river, through the tunnel and enters the river again on the Chinese side before flowing to India.”

The bigger issue for China and its downstream neighbors could be the dam’s location in an area with a history of huge earthquakes. In 1950, a magnitude-8.6 earthquake centered about 50 miles northwest of where the Yarlung Tsangpo enters India struck the region, killing more than 4,500 people and setting off hundreds of landslides, including some that blocked rivers.

“It’s a high earthquake zone, so that’s clearly a risk,” said Giordano.

China has carried out extensive hydropower projects in recent decades in an effort to boost its supply of renewable energy. The Three Gorges Dam, which was completed in 2006, created a 400-mile reservoir on the Yangtze River and forced the relocation of 1.3 million people.

Where the Three Gorges Dam aroused skepticism, even within China’s rubber-stamp legislature, the Yarlung Tsangpo project has met with far less resistance, a sign of Beijing’s growing confidence in hydropower construction—and its ability to quash even nominal dissent.

But news of the project has prompted protests from across the border. Pema Khandu, chief minister of the neighboring Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh, has called it a “water bomb” that poses an existential threat to his constituents because untimely releases of water could exacerbate seasonal flooding.

India has responded with plans to build a megadam on the river, in part to control the flow.

Adding to tensions, Beijing claims Arunachal Pradesh as its own territory, referring to it as southern Tibet. The relationship between China and India has been strained by territorial disputes, including a deadly military clash in 2020.

China, India and Bangladesh have no agreement for managing the river, which becomes the Brahmaputra in India and eventually joins the Ganges in Bangladesh.

China has rejected criticism from states downriver, which say they could suffer from changes in the flow of water and sediment. The project will “speed up clean energy development, improve local people’s life and proactively respond to climate change,” said Guo Jiakun, a spokesman for China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

To the east of the Yarlung Tsangpo, where Tibet meets Sichuan province, China is already building a series of dams along the upper reaches of the Yangtze, the country’s longest river. More than a dozen dams are planned for that section of the river, known as the Jinsha, which is now the site of the world’s second-largest and fourth-largest dams by installed capacity.

The Yarlung Tsangpo has been comparatively untouched. A group of Chinese hydrologists estimated in 2022 that the river was generating just 2% of its potential hydropower capacity.

Exiled Tibetans in India say they also have concerns about the work being done in their homeland, and some projects have prompted protests, including the Yebatan dam on the Upper Jinsha, which Tibetans protested last year because some villages and historic monasteries would be inundated.

“When disaster happens, it’s the local Tibetans that face the consequences,” said Lobsang Yangtso, an environmental researcher with the International Tibet Network based in India.

Nvidia, AMD to Give U.S. 15% Cut on AI Chip Sales to China

Unusual arrangement follows Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s meeting with Trump

Nvidia NVDA 1.07%increase; green up pointing triangle and Advanced Micro Devices AMD 0.21%increase; green up pointing triangle have agreed to give the Trump administration a portion of the sales from their artificial-intelligence chips to China, unusual agreements that deepen their relationships with the U.S. government.

The Trump administration will receive 15% of the sales as part of a deal to approve exports of Nvidia’s H20 AI chip to China, according to people familiar with the matter. That could amount to billions of dollars given demand for the H20 chips and is the latest example of the White House employing novel tactics to raise revenue.

The administration has reached the same agreement with AMD for its MI308 chip, the people said. Details of the arrangements and the financial structures are still being worked out.

The Commerce Department began issuing licenses for Nvidia to send its H20 chip to China Friday, following through on a July promise. Over the weekend, the agency started moving licenses for the AMD chip, some of the people familiar with the matter said.

Exports of the H20 and MI308 were halted in April, when trade tensions between the U.S. and China were simmering. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has gone on a charm offensive since then, talking to officials in both countries about the need to do business with one another.

“We follow rules the U.S. government sets for our participation in worldwide markets,” Nvidia said in a statement Sunday. “While we haven’t shipped H20 to China for months, we hope export control rules will let America compete in China and worldwide.”

The revenue agreement came after Huang met with President Trump on Wednesday, the same day Trump announced tech companies that invest in the U.S. would be exempt from new chip tariffs. The Financial Times earlier reported on the agreements.

It is unusual for companies to essentially pay for export licenses. The agreements follow criticism from national-security hawks who fear the chips and other technology will boost China’s AI ecosystem and military.

Nvidia has said its chips don’t get diverted to U.S. adversaries in large quantities. Administration officials say the H20 isn’t a top-performing chip and that they want Nvidia to compete with China’s Huawei around the world.

The Nvidia and AMD licenses are some of the only licenses being granted while the U.S. and China continue negotiating on trade. Access to semiconductors is one of the biggest priorities for the Chinese and advantages for the U.S.

Nvidia developed the H20 specifically for the Chinese market in 2023 after the Biden administration placed export restrictions on more advanced AI chips. The chip uses the company’s Hopper architecture, which allows for tens of thousands of cores, or processing units that can each handle simultaneous computations, and is less powerful than Nvidia’s latest series, known as Blackwell.

The chip isn’t advanced enough to quickly train large language AI models, but is useful for inference functions, or the processes by which models that have already been trained can draw conclusions from new data.

Chinese authorities have raised concerns about H20 chips, cautioning that they aren’t environmentally friendly and could come with security risks. Nvidia said this month that the chips don’t have so-called “backdoors” that allow them to be controlled or accessed remotely.

The Trump administration has made exporting U.S. AI to the rest of the world a top priority, hoping that American chip and model companies become the standard globally.

Chinese models from companies such as DeepSeek and Alibaba are taking hold in many countries, increasing pressure on the U.S. to continue improving its capabilities in that area.

Europe’s space ambitions at risk over dependence on Nasa, agency warns

The bloc relies on Nasa capabilities for as much of half of its exploration budget

Europe must become less dependent on Nasa’s technology and exploration programmes if it wants to keep its status as a major space power, according to the head of the European Space Agency.

The turmoil over proposed severe cuts in Nasa’s funding is a “wake-up call” for Europe, as about half of the ESA exploration budget could be affected by decisions on Nasa funding, director-general Josef Aschbacher said.

“In some domains, we have been too exposed in terms of dependence . . .[on] Nasa,” Aschbacher told the Financial Times. Nasa would always be an important partner, he added, but “the partnership model that we had in the past may not be working for the future”.

The agency’s member states are discussing the impact on Europe’s exploration and science programmes of White House proposals to cut Nasa’s annual budget by 25 per cent, with a near 50 per cent reduction in spending on science. 

They are debating how to reassess funding and international partnerships to make European space missions more autonomous, when they meet in November to set the ESA’s next three-year budget.

Although 95 per cent of ESA’s total €7.7bn annual budget is independent of decisions made in the US, roughly half of the €600mn allotted for human and robotic exploration this year relies on Nasa’s current spending plans, according to Aschbacher. The ESA is expected to request an even bigger budget for exploration at the November ministerial meeting.

The White House has proposed axing several projects important to European space ambitions, including the Lunar Gateway, a space station destined to orbit the moon, and part of the planned Artemis Moon programme — the vehicle for many of Europe’s lunar ambitions. US participation in the ESA-led Rosalind Franklin Mars rover mission, due to launch in 2028, is also under threat.

Congress is resisting the proposals, with both houses proposing maintaining Nasa’s budget at about $25bn. But there are concerns that the government is withholding some already allocated funding, and that Nasa has begun to close down some programmes.

The agency announced last month that roughly a fifth of its 18,000 employees had quit due to redundancy programmes demanded by the so-called Department of Government Efficiency, created by Elon Musk.

Certain technologies and capabilities, such as those being provided to the Rosalind Franklin mission, were vital to Europe if it intended to maintain its position as a major space faring power, Aschbacher said.

“We can call this a small crisis in particular domains,” the ESA boss said. “We do need those technologies, regardless of whether Nasa’s contribution is coming or not because [they] are needed for any exploration mission in future, whether on the Moon, Mars or somewhere else.”

ESA is also exploring closer ties with countries like India, which aims to land humans on the Moon by 2040.

Aschbacher said the agency was making progress on his goal of boosting private investment in the space sector and that it had signed agreements with 72 investment firms to promote European start-ups and technology.

Last year, some €1.5bn in private investment went into European space companies, according to the European Space Policy Institute, double the roughly €600mn in 2021 and a 56 per cent increase on 2023.

Shipbuilder Fincantieri sues US supplier over faulty fire panels

Company allegedly sold ‘fraudulently represented’ and ‘unsafe’ products to Italian group causing over $100mn in damages

Italian shipbuilder Fincantieri is suing a US supplier after allegedly suffering more than $100mn in damages from “fraudulently” certified insulation panels for its ships.

According to a claim filed in Ohio last month, New York-listed Owens Corning’s Helsinki-based subsidiary Paroc sold “fraudulently represented and inherently unsafe” products to the Italian group, which it had fitted into several ships, including Switzerland-based MSC’s luxury cruise liner whose maiden voyage was delayed in 2023 because of the safety hazard.

Fincantieri was forced to halt delivery on ships after Owens Corning and Paroc recalled the faulty panels “to prevent potentially serious injury or death resulting from the sale and use of a defective and unsafe line of stonewool insulation products”.

In 2023 the Financial Times reported that the launch of MSC’s 248-metre-long Explora I luxury cruise ship had been delayed at the eleventh-hour because of faulty fire-resistant panels fitted to the vessel as well as to 45 others belonging to several global cruise operators. Paroc’s insulation panels were designed to resist flames for 60 minutes, as required by EU law, but the revelation that the panels had lost their safety certification following a retest had sent shockwaves across the industry. 

Fincantieri claimed that Paroc, backed by its owner Owens Corning, had initially obtained the safety certifications “under false pretences by submitting altered materials for testing that had been manipulated to better meet the testing requirements” despite the products being different from those which were actually being manufactured for sale.

Tests carried out by Danish maritime authorities in 2023, following a complaint lodged by another panel manufacturer, caused Paroc to lose its safety certifications after it emerged the panels did not meet the standards and could only resist flames for 45 minutes.

Following the delayed launch of the MSC vessel, Fincantieri found another 10 of its ships, including several military ones, some of which already in service, that carried faulty insulation panels. Their replacement caused delivery delays and the payment of penalties, Fincantieri said in the complaint. 

Delivery of the newly completed MSC cruise ship Explora I, which had been set for June 29, 2023, was postponed by 21 days while delivery of another ship Explora II was also postponed, according to the claim, resulting in significant costs and damages. The delay also led to the shipbuilder postponing the delivery of a third cruise ship, resulting in further costs and damages.

“In addition to causing over $100mn in economic damages, the product safety recall has caused Fincantieri to bear the brunt of considerable harm to its reputation and goodwill in the industry making headlines in the Financial Times and elsewhere after launches of new cruise ships that had already been booked [by customers] had to be delayed,” the shipbuilder said in the complaint. 

It also alleged that Owens Corning did not instruct shipbuilders to put remedies in place for the faulty products fitted on the dozens of ships already in service in spite of the outcome of an independent risk assessment it had commissioned which highlighted the “high risk for safety on board the ships”. 

Fincantieri declined to comment on the case. Owens Corning said it was aware of the legal matter involving Paroc, but declined to comment on pending litigation.

Scottish wind farms paid not to generate nearly 40% of potential electricity

Data highlights concerns over the increasing cost of curtailment for consumers

Scottish wind farms were paid not to produce 37 per cent of their planned output during the first half of this year, as the electricity could not be used locally or moved to where it was needed.

The four terawatt hours of curtailed output in northern Scotland would have been enough to power all of Scotland’s households for the entire six-month period, according to research from energy analytics firm Montel.

Wind farms in the area accounted for 86 per cent of the total 4.6 terawatt hours of electricity curtailed across Britain — 15 per cent higher than in the same period last year.

The figures are likely to fuel concern about inefficiencies in the design of Britain’s rapidly evolving electricity system and the impact on all consumers’ energy bills. 

Rising wind farm curtailment volumes in recent years have sparked criticism among some industry leaders and raised questions for politicians.

“Curtailed volumes of electricity are rising on average and may continue to do so as more renewable capacity comes online,” said Fintan Devenney, senior analyst at Montel, urging government and industry to work together to try and solve the problem. 

The increase comes as more wind farms have been developed in remote areas in Scotland, including in the Moray Firth off the north-east coast, where there is little demand for electricity and not yet enough cable capacity to move their output to consumers further south.

Power stations can agree to sell their output into the wholesale market regardless of where they are located, which in the case of wind farms often means they are planning to produce more than can actually be used given grid constraints.

The government’s National Energy System Operator (Neso) steps in throughout the day to make sure generators are not producing more than the local grid can manage and that users receive what they have ordered. 

The operator frequently has to pay wind farms in remote areas to switch off, while at the same time paying gas-fired generators in other parts of the country to increase their output. 

“Chronic under-investment in the grid over the past few decades has resulted in these constraint payments,” said one industry executive. “Grid upgrades will provide the capacity to help transport the power to demand in the south.”

Proposals to erect large pylons across rural Scotland have sparked resistance in local communities, some of which argue against new rural energy infrastructure when Scotland has sufficient generation capacity for its domestic needs.

Neso spent almost £117mn on getting the wind farms in northern Scotland to switch off during the six months, according to Montel, mostly making up for subsidies they would have received if they had generated. Its costs for balancing the network are charged to all consumers’ bills.  

Neso added that it was determined to play its part in keeping the costs of balancing the system as low as possible for customers, and that it had “saved consumers at least £1.2bn over the past two years across the costs within our control”.

The report, shared with the Financial Times, noted that almost 30 gigawatts of additional wind generation capacity was set to be built in Scottish waters following the major ScotWind seabed leasing auction in 2022, potentially worsening the curtailment problem.  

However, subsidy arrangements are being tightened up in a way that may encourage developers to switch off of their own accord during periods of oversupply.

The Department for Energy Security and Net Zero said Neso’s analysis had shown it was possible to produce clean and cheaper power by 2030 even when factoring in constraint payments.

It added it was “delivering the biggest upgrade in Great Britain’s electricity network in decades, which will minimise constraint costs”.

Scottish energy secretary Gillian Martin said. “I have been clear that the current UK energy system is not fit for purpose. Significant investment is required to achieve a clean power system.”

Big Oil heeds call to ‘drill, baby, drill’ as green transition slows

Energy groups are refocusing on exploration in anticipation of the world remaining hooked on fossil fuels for decades

The world’s leading oil companies are stepping up their hunt for new oil and gas reserves, as a slower than expected transition to clean energy sets the stage for stronger fossil fuel demand for decades to come.

Executives from BP, Chevron, ExxonMobil, Shell and TotalEnergies all used recent earnings calls to highlight how they have begun refocusing on securing new reserves after years of prioritising renewables.

Expectations for a rapid energy transition have moderated in recent years, as elevated inflation and interest rates raised costs and slowed development of renewables.

Geopolitical instability has led governments to prioritise energy security over decarbonisation. US President Donald Trump has directed oil and gas producers to “drill, baby, drill”.

Wood Mackenzie estimates a slower transition could leave the world needing about 5 per cent more oil per year than previously forecast from the mid-2030s. The energy consultancy forecasts that the world will require more than 100bn extra barrels of oil and gas from exploration by 2050 to help fill this gap.

The expectation of greater demand is raising concerns that years of under-investment have left the industry unprepared.

Jessica Ciosek, head of Americas exploration research at Wood Mackenzie, said there was a “huge need” for more oil and gas.

“There is a very big supply gap that M&A cannot solve for in the long run. Companies are refilling a pipeline, not just in drill-ready prospects, but in access to the areas where they would consider drilling.”

Ciosek noted the industry was playing catch-up after neglecting exploration earlier in the decade, choosing instead to focus on slashing costs and gearing up for a quick shift to clean energy.

Last year, a total of 5bn barrels of oil were discovered, according to Rystad, another energy consultancy, equivalent to just 19 per cent of the world’s annual production.

The most striking pivot has come at BP, which spent $15bn since 2021 pursuing a clean-energy strategy that alienated investors.

Under pressure to boost profitability and replace reserves, BP announced in February it would sharply increase investment in oil and gas.

The company now plans to drill 40 exploration wells over the next three years and recently made its biggest discovery in 25 years off the coast of Brazil. Speaking to analysts this week, BP chief executive Murray Auchincloss hailed its recent string of 10 discoveries as historic.

Chevron is also changing tack after years of prioritising cost-cutting and shale investments over riskier deep-water opportunities, which reduced its oil reserves to 9.8bn barrels last year, the lowest in more than a decade.

Chief executive Mike Wirth told analysts on an earnings call this month that he was “not happy with the results out of exploration over the last few years”. In May, he said the company had expanded its “pipeline of future opportunities” by adding 11mn new exploration acres since 2024.

ExxonMobil is branching out after spending the past decade focused largely on Guyana, where it has found nearly 11bn barrels. This week the company signed a deal to study four offshore blocks in Libya, and it is preparing to resume exploration activities in Trinidad and Tobago after a two-decade hiatus.

Explaining the moves to analysts this month, Darren Woods, Exxon’s chief executive, said exploration was a “treadmill we have to stay on”.

TotalEnergies and Shell have similarly underscored their commitment to finding new reserves.

Patrick Pouyanne, chief executive of TotalEnergies, said the French energy major had “reloaded the exploration portfolio” by winning new permits in the US, Malaysia, Indonesia and Algeria.

Shell chief executive Wael Sawan promised “some exciting wells” in the next six to 12 months, highlighting the importance of important basins such as the Gulf of Mexico, Malaysia, and Oman.

“There’s an industry-wide sentiment now that while the energy transition is happening, it is not nearly as rapid as we thought it would be,” said Palzor Shenga, senior upstream analyst at Rystad.

“Even by 2050, oil and gas will still account for about half of the energy mix. There’s a substantial gap to be filled,” he added.

Despite this renewed emphasis, exploration spending remains well below the peaks of the 2010 to 2015 boom years. However, BP and Chevron argue that new technologies enable them to step up exploration without a commensurate increase in budgets.

Chevron, for example, is deploying suitcase-sized nodes on the ocean floor, filled with batteries, clocks and other components. They enable the company to track seismic reflections and produce sharper images, helping to locate oil and gas deposits even in complex geology.

Liz Schwarze, Chevron’s vice-president of exploration, said new seismic and artificial intelligence technologies were reducing data-processing times from months to minutes.

BP cited similar technological breakthroughs that recently enabled it to plan and drill a complex well in Azerbaijan in days rather than months.

However, Fraser McKay, head of upstream analysis at Wood Mackenzie, cautioned that oil majors needed to rebuild expertise and a strong portfolio of “drill-ready” prospects.

“Companies want to do more exploration [ . . . ] but there’s a need to replenish the portfolio,” he said. “If you look at their annual reports it looks like they have got entire countries under license, but in actual fact drill-ready prospects are much fewer and far between”.

AI power demand and support from Trump administration has boosted the industry

Three nuclear energy developers are seeking to raise more than $500mn through mergers with special purpose acquisition companies as investors rush to tap into an atomic energy boom.   

Terra Innovatum, Terrestrial Energy and Eagle Energy Metals said the transactions, which they expected to be completed by the end of the year, would accelerate the development of small modular reactors.

Several other companies developing nuclear technologies are considering listings via initial public offerings, including Holtec International and Quantum Leap Energy, a division of ASP Isotopes.

“Investors now realise that nuclear energy is here to stay because it is needed to power the artificial intelligence revolution and this is turbocharging interest, particularly in the US,” said Nick Lawson, the chief executive of Ocean Wall, an investment group advising ASP Isotopes on the QLE spin off.  

Shares in nuclear energy companies surged near record highs last week as optimism about a nuclear renaissance gathered pace owing to AI power demand and political support from the Trump administration. 

Last month Westinghouse outlined plans to build 10 large nuclear reactors in the US at a meeting in Pittsburgh attended by President Donald Trump, who has set a target of quadrupling American nuclear power capacity in the next 25 years.  

“2025 for nuclear technology is what 1995 was for the tech sector,” said Simon Irish, Terrestrial Energy’s chief executive, referring to the start of a 30-year tech growth cycle sparked by Microsoft and Netscape’s promotion of the internet.    

“Many investors have now converged on the unavoidable conclusion about energy choice: we can’t meet surging power demand in an environmentally responsible way without nuclear,” he said. “I’m having conversations with investors now that I wouldn’t have been able to engage three years ago.”

Terrestrial is aiming to raise $280mn through a combination with HCM II Acquisition Corp — whose chief executive Shawn Matthews is the former CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald — to fund development of a nuclear reactor that uses molten salt rather than water as a coolant.

It is one of dozens of companies developing SMRs that typically generate about a third or less of the power of standard reactors.  

Terra Innovatum, which is seeking to raise $230mn, and Eagle Energy Metals are both developing SMRs. Eagle, which also has uranium mining assets, said it had secured a commitment of $30mn from an institutional investor.  

But experts caution the nuclear sector is prone to boom and bust cycles and cost overruns, which increase risk. Nuclear fuel supplier Centrus filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2014 following the Fukushima accident in Japan in 2011. Westinghouse sought protection in 2017 due to cost overruns at Vogtle in Georgia, the last nuclear plant constructed in the US.

In 2023 X-energy was forced to pull a $1.8bn Spac deal because of “challenging market conditions”.     

Spacs have made a comeback in the US this year after a boom in 2021, when billions of dollars flowed into the vehicles to fund commercial space ventures, flying taxi firms and other speculative ventures. The frenzy quickly fizzled out because of a market downturn triggered by rising interest rates.

The median price performance of the 29 private companies that have gone public by merging with Spacs this year is a fall of 67 per cent, according to data provider ListingTrack. The vast majority of those companies also suffered steep declines four years ago.   

Some financiers argue that investors considering nuclear Spac deals should exercise caution.

“[Most nuclear companies’] primary assets are a ticker symbol and a set of glossy renderings. If it sounds similar to the electric vehicle Spacs of barely four years ago, it’s because it is,” said one executive at a medium-sized US hedge fund, referring to a series of EV deals that went on to lose investors millions of dollars. 

Despite the risks, investor enthusiasm for nuclear has roared back following a series of power deals struck between developers and technology giants Google, Amazon and Microsoft to supply internet data centres.

But investors have been frustrated by the limited number of listed public companies, according to analysts.

“There is a lot of investor enthusiasm around nuclear, but only a few public companies to choose from and evaluate — having more options would be a welcome development,” said Marc Bianchi, an analyst at TD Cowen.