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Welcome back to the Rundown for another weekend deep dive. Today we are talking about nuclear energy and the companies capitalizing on the nuclear boom. Thanks to the insane power demand of AI data centers, a handful of nuclear stocks have caught the attention of investors. And some of these companies have little to no revenue. Yet their stock price has surged over 1000%. So in today's episode, we're going to break down why AI is creating a new energy crisis and how the Trump administration is rolling out the red carpet for the nuclear renaissance. And we'll look at three stocks that have been riding this incredible nuclear wave. We got a great show for you today. Let's dive in. The explosion of generative AI is on the verge of creating an energy crisis. Tech giants are spending billions of dollars to build AI data centers and stack them with Nvidia GPUs to meet the demand of all of us using AI training. These massive AI models like GPT5 requires thousands of GPUs running around the clock for months. And the bigger long term problem is inference. Inference is when people use AI applications like ChatGPT. You know, every time you ask ChatGPT a question or generate an AI image on Google's Gemini, that process runs through the GPU sitting in these AI data centers, which requires a ton of energy. In fact, according to some estimates, each ChatGPT query uses roughly five times the energy of a standard Google search. And There are already 800 million people using ChatGPT every week asking billions of queries. And more and more people are hopping onto these applications and that's going to require more and more power down the line. Right now in the U.S. data centers already account for about 4% of total electricity use. And by the end of the decade, that might nearly double to 7% of according to Bloomberg. And if you look globally, the International Energy Agency projects that by 2026, electricity demand from data centers will be greater than the entire power consumption of Japan. So in order for AI to continue booming, it's going to require a lot of power. In fact, power might become the bottleneck of the AI boom. And that's where nuclear energy enters the picture. Nuclear energy is suddenly back in the spotlight and this time it's being billed as the fuel for the AI revolution. Now, nuclear energy was pre popular in the US back in the 1960s and 70s, utilities companies saw nuclear power as a clean and cost effective source of energy. But then public support collapsed almost overnight after a series of high profile accidents. Here in the US there was a nuclear accident at Three Mile Island. In 1979, it was a partial meltdown at a Pennsylvania power plant. No one was killed, but the cleanup took 15 years and cost over a billion dollars. And then a lot of people know about the Chernobyl disaster that happened in the Soviet Union in 1986. So the public got freaked out about nuclear energy. And from that point on, nuclear became politically toxic. But now, almost 50 years later, nuclear is getting a second chance, thanks to AI because nuclear produces massive amounts of electricity with a fraction of the land of solar or wind. And it runs 24, seven even on a cloudy, windless day. And the biggest catalyst for nuclear's comeback might be the Trump administration's full embrace. See, back in May, President Trump signed four executive orders designed to jumpstart America's nuclear industry. The plan sets an ambitious goal to quadruple US nuclear capacity to 400 gigawatts by 2050. The biggest change is loosening regulations to fast track reactor approvals by directing the Nuclear Regulatory Commission to green light reactors that have already been tested by the Department of Energy or Defense. As you can imagine, there's a lot of red tape when it comes to getting approval for nuclear plants, and this new executive order is trying to make that easier. The White House sees this not just as an energy initiative, but as a national security project. And leading the comeback is a new generation of small modular reactors, or SMRs. See, when most people think of nuclear power, they think of these giant conclave structures. But this next generation of nuclear power isn't that way. There are many reactors that can be mass produced in a factory and assembled on site, making them cheaper than, faster to build and safer than the giant plants of the past. And the companies working on this innovation has caught the attention of Wall Street. The following three companies have seen their stock price go nuclear. No, no pun intended. The first company on our list is oklo, ticker symbol oklo. And its stock has been on an absolute tear up more than 1,000% in the past year. Oklo is building a new generation of fast forward efficient power plants designed to deliver clean nuclear energy at scale. The company is also innovating in nuclear fuel recycling, which could turn radioactive waste into a reusable energy source. Which sounds pretty cool. And I think what makes investors really excited about OKLO is that they have a powerful list of people behind the company. Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, helped take the company public through a SPAC, and he served on the chairman of the board recently as well. The current US Secretary of Energy, Chris Wright, was previously on O's board as well. And and their current CEO and founder Jacob DeWitt was in the White House when Trump signed the nuclear executive order earlier this year. So Auckland is working on some cool stuff and they got a list of heavy hitters back in the company. OCLO says that their first commercial system, called the Aurora Powerhouse, is being developed in Idaho right now and could go live by 2028. The Aurora powerhouse is part of the Department of Energy's new reactor pilot program, which could help the company avoid some of the lengthy red tape that usually slows down nuclear projects. OKLO doesn't have to go through the Nucle Regulatory Commission's traditional licensing process, so that could accelerate the approval for their reactor. But I think the bigger story for OKLO might be their plan to build the first privately funded nuclear fuel recycling facility in the US. It's a project that could cost up to $1.7 billion, which in the grand scheme of AI spending doesn't sound like that much money. The goal of this project is to convert used nuclear fuel into new metal fuel for OCLOS fast reactors. To put that into perspective, the US currently stores more than 94,000 metric tons of spent nuclear fuel. If that material was able to be recycled, it could generate energy equivalent to 1.3 trillion barrels of oil, which is nearly five times Saudi Arabia's current reserves. Now, Auckle's approach could not only reduce nuclear waste, but also strengthen the US's domestic fuel supply chain and drive down long term energy costs. Now let's talk about another company, NuScale Power. NuScale is the first and only company in the US to receive federal approval for a small modular reactor design, giving them an early edge in the nuclear comeback. You know that they're the OGs because their ticker symbol is literally smr. But you know, despite the head start, NuScale has had some setbacks. The company's first major project in Idaho was canceled last year after cost nearly doubled. But the company is making a comeback. They recently announced a deal with the Tennessee Valley Authority, which is the nation's largest public power supplier. The Tennessee Valley Authority announced a 6 gigawatt SMR agreement with NuScale. It's the largest global SMR agreement and the largest US nuclear agreement on record. This deal could end up representing $10 billion in revenue to NuScale over a multi year period and could spark a domino effect of future deals. New Skill stock has gone up nearly 200% in the past year. But you know, that is nothing compared to the third company, Nano Nuclear. This stock has gone up nearly 1000% since going public in 2024. Nano is a very unique company because they have no revenues, no operating plant. Yet investors have pushed the company's valuation to about $2 billion. The company is developing an even smaller micro reactor designed to power everything from data centers to space missions. Their flagship design is called Chronos. It can generate up to 1 gigawatt of power, which is enough to supply about 750,000 homes. They also have a portable Zeus reactor, which is designed to be transported like on a truck. And they have a Loki reactor, which is designed to be used in space. So the company obviously has big ambitions here, and they recently signed a deal to build a Kronos reactor at the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign. The company also secured a deal with the US Air Force to explore deploying its reactors for defense applications. But, I mean, it's still early and their technology is still unproven. But investors are jumping into the stock, hoping the technology pans out. But while investors are piling into these nuclear stocks, not everyone is convinced this boom will go smoothly. Bank of America is sounding the alarm on some of these nuclear stocks. They recently downgraded both Oklo and NuScale, saying that their current stock price are built on unrealistic assumptions about how quickly, quickly these companies can deploy their reactors and scale production. And beyond just investors. On Wall street, some scientists are raising serious safety concerns, especially about Oklow's plan to recycle nuclear waste. Part of oclo's plan involves reprocessing spent nuclear fuel and decommissioned warheads into fresh reactor material. Critics argued that the same process can also produce weapons grade plutonium. A former senior advisor at the Department of Energy warned that the technologies being used today with are the same problematic ones from decades ago, but are now just being rebranded with misleading narratives. You know, India successfully built a nuclear weapon in the 1970s using a reprocessed plutonium from spent fuel rods. So the technology that Oklo wants to use could pose some serious risk. So what's my takeaway here? Well, if this AI boom is real, we're gonna need a lot more power to power these AI data centers. And nuclear seems to be a good fit for that. So I can see why investors are rushing into these nuclear stocks to cash in on the boom. But the success of these nuclear companies hinges on an unproven technology. And while the regulatory rules have been relaxed with this Trump administration, it's hard to know what future administrations might do. Personally, I'm a proponent of nuclear energy, and I like that the AI boom has increased the sense of urgency around power and resulted in more investments going towards nuclear. But I'm just skeptical of some of the rushed timelines from these up and coming nuclear companies. A ton of these companies are already sitting at really high valuations, which is what makes it hard for me to jump in. But who knows? I mean, with all the billions of dollars being spent on AI infrastructure, if more money goes towards nuclear, we might have a mini nuclear reactor powering these AI data centers in the not so distant future. Well all right guys, that's it for today's weekend Deep dive. Hope you guys enjoyed that one. If you did and you have like 8 extra seconds, consider giving a 5 star rating on Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen to your podcasts. And if you are listening on Spotify or YouTube, let us know in the comments of what you think about the nuclear comeback. If you're planning to invest in some of these nuclear stocks, or if you think this nuclear hype might be just another bubble. By the way, if this is your first time listening to an episode of the Rundown, just a heads up, we post an episode every day during the week giving a 10 minute breakdown of everything that's happening in the market. So if you're new here and want to stay in the loop of what's happening with stocks, crypto and corporate drama, make sure to hit that subscribe button. Thank you guys so much for listening, watching and commenting. Shout out to Mike and Connor for all the work behind the scenes and we'll see you guys back here tomorrow.