Despite the recent cancellation of a next-generation US nuclear plant, backers of the carbon-free power source remain hopeful new projects will come on line by the end of the decade. Late last year, the US energy company NuScale announced it was pulling the plug on a small modular reactor (SMR) project in the western state of Idaho. The project — the sole SMR design yet to be approved by the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission — faced exploding costs that took the estimated price from $5.3 billion up to $9.3 billion. The “collapse of NuScale’s project should spell the end for small modular nuclear reactors,” MV Ramana, a professor at the University of British Columbia, predicted. But according to Mason Lester, an analyst at S&P Global Commodity Insights, there are “a lot of positives that have been coming over the last year” for US nuclear prospects.