When a sitting administration’s top science advisor invokes Eisenhower’s 1953 Atoms for Peace speech to frame a present-day policy move, investors should pay attention. That is exactly what happened at the Operation Gigawatt Summit, where Michael Kratsios, Chief Science and Tech Policy Advisor to President Trump, anchored the case for a structural reordering of US energy policy.
Kratsios’s framing was unambiguous: “The signing of those executive orders last year was probably the most consequential day for civil nuclear power in this country, since the atoms for peace speech in 1953.” He then pointed to the capital response, noting “We had over 3 billion dollars investment across the country in nuclear energy in last year alone.”
What Actually Changed
The executive orders signed roughly a year ago compressed regulatory timelines, opened federal land for siting, and put the Department of Energy in a coordinating role for fast-tracked builds. Utah Governor Spencer Cox laid out the on-the-ground impact: “We’re going to advance nuclear from a ten year time horizon for new nuclear down to 4 or 5 years.” Cox added that at least three SMRs are expected to go critical within 14 months, with one Utah reactor projected to go critical before July 4th.
Cox’s philosophy on execution was equally direct: “We get it done by mostly getting out of the way and letting the entrepreneurs build.” Combine that with elevated fossil-fuel pricing (WTI crude is sitting at $112.25 per barrel, in the top 2% of its trailing-year range) and the dispatchable-power thesis writes itself.
The Pure-Play: NuScale
NuScale Power (NYSE:SMR) is the cleanest expression of this thesis, holding the only NRC-approved SMR design in the US. The stock trades at $11.40, down 55% over the past year and 20% year to date, even as policy tailwinds intensified. Q1 FY26 revenue collapsed 96% year over year to $565,000, against a $57.5M operating loss. Liquidity remains a buffer at $1 billion, and the ENTRA1/TVA program for up to 6 GW of NuScale capacity is the largest US nuclear deployment program on record. See the Q1 10-Q for the full picture. Analyst consensus target sits at $15.36.
The Scaled Utility Play
NextEra Energy (NYSE:NEE | NEE Price Prediction) offers the opposite risk profile: existing nuclear fleet, regulated cash flows, and Q1 FY26 adjusted EPS of $1.09 with a backlog near 33 GW. The stock is up 11% year to date and 36% over the past year, trading at 22x earnings against a $98.50 analyst target.
The Hyperscaler Demand Side
Nuclear policy is only consequential because somebody needs the electrons. Three hyperscalers have already moved. Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) signed the Three Mile Island Unit 1 restart PPA with Constellation. Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOGL) inked an SMR deal with Kairos Power. Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) acquired Talen Energy’s nuclear-powered campus and committed to X-energy SMRs. AWS Q1 grew 28%, Microsoft’s AI run rate cleared $37 billion, and Google Cloud backlog doubled to over $460 billion. These are the customers funding the buildout.
The Broader Energy Setup
Even adjacent infrastructure is rerating. NextDecade, the Rio Grande LNG developer, is up 61% year to date as the same permitting posture extends across the energy stack.
The investable thesis from Kratsios’s remarks is structural. Permitting timelines compressed by half. $3 billion of private capital mobilized in twelve months. Three SMRs going critical inside fourteen months. Whether 1953 turns out to be the right historical analog or an oversold one, the policy plumbing has clearly shifted, and the cap-table for the next decade of dispatchable power is being written now.
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