SMRs and enrichers bounced off deep 2026 losses after the House passed the Ratepayers Protection Act, tying data-center power to Big Tech.

X-Energy (XE) led, up 12.1% to $16.33, at the front of a nuclear rally that followed the House's passage of the Ratepayers Protection Act — legislation that would shift the cost of grid upgrades for large new data centers from ratepayers onto the tech and data-center companies driving the load. The read-through is direct to the chokepoint this vertical maps: if hyperscalers must fund their own power, dedicated behind-the-meter generation — small modular reactors above all — moves from optional to economic, and X-Energy's TRISO-fueled Xe-100 sits squarely in that thesis. Context matters, though: this was a bounce off a brutal year. OKLO climbed 11.3% to $39.65 but remains down roughly 49% in 2026, and XE, SMR, and Centrus have all shed 40%-plus year-to-date. The session was a policy-driven reversal, not a new leg.

ATI Inc. (ATI) was the laggard, down 3.2% to $183.64 — a give-back in the specialty-alloy supplier that maps the reactor-materials rung — with the naval-and-defense primes flat to soft (Huntington Ingalls −0.3% to $277.14, Curtiss-Wright −0.5% to $567.45). None of this reflected reactor-program news; it was rotation away from the cyclical-metals edge while the developer and fuel names ran.

The strength spanned the full fuel-to-build stack. NuScale (SMR) rose 8.9% to $9.04 and NANO Nuclear (NNE) +8.5% to $16.97 on the developer tier; the enrichment chokepoint ran with Centrus (LEU) +7.8% to $149.85 and enCore Energy (EU) +10.2% to $0.9713; and the heavy-forging bottleneck showed up in Japan Steel Works (JPSWY) +10.5% to $25.31 in its Tokyo session — one of the few suppliers of large reactor-pressure-vessel forgings. Lightbridge (LTBR) added 5.4% to $6.82 on advanced fuel, Fluor (FLR) +3.7% to $54.96 as NuScale's EPC partner, and Cameco (CCJ) +2.1% to $92.80 anchored the front-end uranium supply. The pattern is consistent: the policy catalyst lifted the names that gate whether SMRs get fueled and built, not just the utilities that would offtake them.

The catalysts ahead are regulatory and contractual. The NRC's final Environmental Impact Statement for GLE's Paducah laser-enrichment facility is due around quarter-end — a step toward domestic HALEU supply that the whole SMR fleet needs. X-Energy's Xe-100 construction permit hits an NRC 18-month review milestone December 16, and definitive Westinghouse/US-government agreements replacing the binding term sheet are expected in the second half. BWXT reports Q3 on November 2. Further out, the Russian LEU import waivers terminate in 2028, hard-coding demand for the domestic enrichment capacity today's move rewarded.