The SMR cohort led a near-uniformly green tape — NuScale up 8%, Oklo up 6% — on commercialization optimism, with no name in the basket falling more than a percent.

This was a one-directional session, and the small-modular-reactor developers set the pace. NuScale led at +7.7% to $9.89, with the move reading as positioning around commercialization milestones rather than current financials: the bull case rests on its NRC design certification, a ~$1.9 billion liquidity buffer, long-lead components already in production, and above all the anticipated definitive power-purchase agreement with the Tennessee Valley Authority that could anchor a 6-gigawatt-plus deployment — what would be the largest SMR program in the country. The reactor-technology chokepoint — a certified design paired with a signed offtaker — is precisely what the market is trying to price ahead of the paperwork. Oklo confirmed the cohort move at +5.7% to $47.01, carrying its Switch/Equinix/Meta-anchored pipeline, and NANO Nuclear added +4.4% to $19.38.

There was no real laggard to speak of, which is itself the story. The steepest decliner in the entire quotable basket was Huntington Ingalls at −0.9% to $327.85 — a rounding-error pullback in the naval-nuclear-propulsion name, not a repudiation of anything. Centrus and X-Energy were essentially flat. When the worst performer in a vertical barely breaks a percent, the read is a sector-wide bid: capital moving into the nuclear-power thesis as the AI-and-datacenter electricity chokepoint tightens and policy support for reactor deployment firms.

The strength ran cleanly through the fuel cycle and the utilities that would host the reactors. The generation-and-grid layer rallied — Talen +4.3% to $357.88, Constellation +2.9% to $278.36, GE Vernova +2.1% to $1,011.88 at the turbine-island choke, and Vistra +1.4% to $144.92 — while the enrichment-and-mining names firmed: NexGen +2.5% to $10.56, Energy Fuels +3.4% to $14.78, Cameco +1.5% to $98.73 and Denison +1.5% at the front end. Brookfield Renewable's +4.8% to $34.23 rounded out a broad power-complex advance. The fuel chokepoint — conversion, enrichment and the HALEU supply that advanced reactors need — held its recent bid without a fresh catalyst.

The near-term calendar is earnings-heavy this week: NuScale and X-Energy both have Q2 prints due in the next two sessions, which will test whether the commercialization narrative survives contact with revenue that remains pre-commercial and thin. Solstice Advanced Materials reports Q2 on September 2, the World Nuclear Symposium convenes in London September 9–11, and the NRC's final Environmental Impact Statement for GLE's Paducah laser-enrichment facility remains a second-half fuel-cycle catalyst. The single most important watch item is unchanged: whether NuScale converts its TVA discussions into a definitive PPA, the event that would turn a certified design into a funded pipeline.