The SMR-platform chokepoint led as risk appetite returned, with NuScale up 5% and the enrichment names bid, while stretched Curtiss-Wright gave back.

NuScale led the desk, up 5.1% to $9.74, rebounding as risk appetite returned across the small-modular-reactor complex on the broad NVIDIA-led tape. NuScale sits at the SMR-platform chokepoint with a claim no rival matches — NRC clearance on two designs (a 50 MWe Design Certification and a 77 MWe Standard Design Approval) — and Thursday's move rode incremental progress signals: it is deploying nuclear-specific AI tools (Nuclearn and NPX's AtomAssist) into its engineering workflow and signed Paragon to finish design and verification of its Highly Integrated Protection System. After shedding roughly a third of its value this year, the stock remains the highest-beta expression of the licensing chokepoint, so a return of risk appetite hits it hardest.

Curtiss-Wright was the laggard, off 2.3% to $605.49, with no fresh company headline. CW anchors the forgings-components and instrumentation-services chokepoints — sole-source AP1000 content plus the reactor-protection and radiation-monitoring lines added with the Ultra Energy deal — but after a roughly five-fold run over five years and an all-time high near $793 in early July, it trades at a stretched multiple. Thursday's dip reads as valuation-driven profit-taking in a crowded defense-and-nuclear name, not a change in its sole-source position.

The rest of the fuel-cycle basket was firm. On the enrichment-and-HALEU choke, Centrus rose 3.8% to $194.78; among the miners, Uranium Energy added 3.7% to $13.62 while Cameco slipped 1.0% to $106.33. Nano Nuclear gained 4.0% to $19.24 and Oklo 2.2% to $42.53 alongside NuScale in the SMR platform layer, with Fluor +4.0% to $54.10 on the EPC side and BWX Technologies +1.8% to $155.85 in fuel and components. The utility-restart names were mixed-to-soft — Talen −0.6% to $304.58, Constellation +1.0% to $282.41 — as capital rotated toward the higher-beta developers.

The calendar builds through September. Solstice Advanced Materials reports Q2 on September 2, and the World Nuclear Symposium runs September 9–11 in London — the industry's main read on fuel supply and new-build demand. On the enrichment front, the NRC's final Environmental Impact Statement for GLE's Paducah laser-enrichment facility is expected by month-end, a gating step for domestic HALEU capacity. BWXT's Q3 print (November 2) is the next hard fundamental checkpoint for the components chokepoint.