Trump’s Nuclear Ambitions: What Investors Need to Know

President Trump’s nuclear ambitions were finally revealed last week. 

This wasn’t a secret. It wasn’t some hazy, cigar smoke filled backroom dealing between a few elites sitting around a poker table. In fact, this was the most anticipated moment for individual investors like us… and I’ll touch on why a little later. 

I told you earlier this month that President Trump was about to drop an n-bomb soon. After watching the extraordinary failure in Spain’s power grid at the end of April, the topic of reliable energy security was fresh on our minds. 

Actually, I almost started to question how frequently we were talking about nuclear energy here in our investment community…. Almost. The truth is that we’ve been discussing the inevitable push toward traditional and next-gen nuclear power for well over a decade here on the pages of Energy and Capital.

And you know what? 

We were right — again.

So what happened?

Last Friday, President Trump issued several new executive orders aimed at bolstering U.S. nuclear power capacity and developing next-gen nuclear technology. 

Just when it seemed like America had resigned itself to a second-tier seat in the global nuclear renaissance, President Donald Trump dropped his policy trifecta that, if executed, could jolt the U.S. nuclear sector out of its multi-decade coma.

In a sweeping set of executive orders aimed squarely at reviving domestic nuclear energy production. Not content with the usual red-tape tinkering, these orders go for the jugular: they target the Department of Energy, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, and the broader industrial supply chain of America’s nuclear complex. 

It was a bold move, to be sure.

How bold? Let’s just say that one of the President’s goals is to boost U.S. nuclear generation capacity to 400 GW by 2050.

For the record, the 94 active nuclear reactors pumped out around 97 GW of power last year. We control the world’s largest fleet of commercial nuclear power generation, and that gap is about to dramatically widen with Trump’s nuclear ambitions. 

It’s exactly the kind of sledgehammer approach the industry has been muttering about behind closed doors for years.

So, what do these executive orders actually do? 

Well, one executive order directs the DOE to streamline its reactor testing processes, ensuring that advanced nuclear designs don’t get lost in a bureaucratic limbo. It mandates faster approvals, more flexible test-bed access for private firms, and an overhaul of how experimental nuclear technologies are evaluated. 

Essentially, it opens the gates for companies developing new reactor concepts — particularly SMRs and microreactors — to test, fail, and iterate more quickly.

Then, there's Trump’s executive order overhauling the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC), long considered the slow-turning battleship of U.S. energy policy. This order on the NRC reforms the agency by expediting licensing timelines, clarifying approval pathways, and improving coordination between federal agencies and private developers. 

It also mandates that the NRC work more closely with state governments and utilities to remove duplicative reviews and modernize outdated regulatory frameworks that were designed for the light-water reactors of the 1970s, not the generation-IV reactors and fusion concepts of the 2020s.

But perhaps the most consequential is his executive order targeting the industrial base itself. The order reads like a blueprint for restoring America's supply chain muscle, and directs federal agencies to identify vulnerabilities in the domestic nuclear supply chain, promote uranium enrichment and fuel cycle development, and invest in workforce training for nuclear engineers, welders, and fabricators. 

The directive calls for increased cooperation with national labs and the Department of Defense to align nuclear energy development with national security goals.

Make no mistake, dear reader, the White House is pulling no punches. President Trump isn’t just pitching nuclear just as an energy source, but as a cornerstone of U.S. economic independence and military preparedness. 

We’re talking about utilizing advanced nuclear technologies to power military bases, space missions, and remote installations. 

It positions nuclear power as the linchpin in America's quest to decouple from foreign energy dependencies — a message that lands particularly well in the post-Ukraine, post-Pandemic geopolitical landscape.

And for all the usual noise around climate goals and carbon neutrality, it’s important to remember that nuclear energy is the ONLY source of energy that can provide clean, reliable, baseload power at the immense scale we need. 

This is about bolstering grid resilience, projecting power, and making sure that America doesn't have to rely on enriched uranium from Kazakhstan or reactor components from South Korea: Its energy policy as national defense.

And individual investors like us would do well to pay close attention.

You see, the U.S. nuclear industry has long been considered a slow-moving backwater compared to the flashier green-tech darlings like solar and wind. 

But when national security meets energy policy, the upside isn’t just ideological — it’s downright profitable. 

If you’ve been paying attention to my nuclear ramblings lately, then you knew a few days before President Trump announced his executive order that there was only one immediate nuclear trade for all portfolios. 

Yes, it’s true that the news sent every nuclear stock roaring higher, especially the next-gen nuclear companies involved with developing SMR technology. Nuscale (NYSE: SMR) surged over 21% on the news, while Oklo Inc. (NYSE: OKO) shares ran as high as 16%.

These smaller players in the U.S. nuclear sector are going to finally receive the attention they deserve going forward. But the truth is that even with President Trump’s accelerated plan to develop our nuclear capacity, we’re still years behind China and it’ll be quite some time before we see SMRs officially deployed. 

That leaves individual investors like us with one option. 

And it’s time you learned the details behind the nuclear stocks that will be the ones to come through for both President Trump and Big Tech’s thirst for more clean power. 

I strongly suggest you take just a few minutes out of your day and see this opportunity for yourself right away.