NuScale and Centrus led a nuclear surge Thursday — an NRC safety milestone and a Centrus–Oklo HALEU supply LOI hit the fuel-enrichment chokepoint — while newly-public X-Energy slid.

NuScale (SMR) rose 13.5% to $11.74, the basket's top gainer, after awarding Paragon a contract to finalize its Highly Integrated Protection System — the safety-instrumentation backbone for NRC-certified NuScale Power Modules and future multi-module plants. For this vertical that sits at the SMR-platform chokepoint: licensing and the safety case, not steel, are what gate first deployments, so a HIPS milestone is a real de-risking step rather than a headline. Nano Nuclear (NNE +11.5%) and Oklo (OKLO +4.0%) rode the same advanced-reactor momentum.

The session's more structural story was the fuel chokepoint. Centrus Energy (LEU) jumped 12.4% to $191.39 after signing a Letter of Intent to supply high-assay low-enriched uranium (HALEU) to Oklo — enough for multiple reactor cores across up to five Aurora powerhouses at Oklo's planned 1.2 GW Ohio campus, beginning 2029, sourced from Centrus's American Centrifuge Plant in Piketon. HALEU is the single tightest bottleneck in the advanced-reactor supply chain: without domestic enrichment, the deployment timelines under every SMR name are paper. A named offtake LOI from a US centrifuge plant is exactly the catalyst this chokepoint trades on. Uranium Energy (UEC +5.2%), Mirion (MIR +5.4%) and Energy Fuels (UUUU +8.2%) extended the move up the fuel cycle.

The outlier was X-Energy (XE), down 5.8% to $21.56 — diverging from the rally with no fresh catalyst, extending the post-IPO derating that has run since its April listing as the market questions profitability and the capital intensity of its TRISO-fuel and reactor build-out. It is a reminder that "fuel-fabrication chokepoint" and "investable at any price" are different claims. Huntington Ingalls (HII −3.9%) also lagged, caught in Thursday's broader defense-prime rotation as oil fell on the interim US–Iran peace deal.

The calendar turns to execution and policy. The DOE reactor-pilot-program criticality deadline — its target for first advanced reactors to go critical — sits at July 4, the nearest hard catalyst. Then the prints: Centrus Q2 on August 4, X-Energy's first full quarter as a public company on August 6, Oklo on August 10 and NuScale on August 12. Further out, the Russian LEU import waivers terminate in 2028 under the Prohibiting Russian Uranium Imports Act — the structural demand pull that makes the Centrus–Oklo HALEU deal a template, not a one-off.