Rich Smith, The Motley Fool
5 min read
In This Article:
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President Trump wants to promote nuclear power use in the U.S.
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The president signed multiple executive orders Friday to facilitate uranium mining and enrichment and power plant construction.
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Valuations in the sector remain stubbornly high.
Nuclear stocks of all stripes hopped higher in unison on Tuesday. As of 10:40 a.m. ET, mini-nuclear-reactor start-up Oklo (NYSE: OKLO) is up 2%, while rival small modular reactor maker NuScale Power Corporation (NYSE: SMR) is doing even better, up 8.6%. Canadian uranium miner Cameco Corporation (NYSE: CCJ) stock is also up a solid 5.8%.
You can thank investment banker Goldman Sachs for this in large part, and President Trump in the other part.
On Friday, President Trump signed multiple executive orders aiming to accelerate the development of nuclear power plant construction and nuclear power adoption in the United States, as TheFly.com reports today. Commenting on the developments, Goldman Sachs highlighted two stocks in particular as benefiting from the series of executive orders, which cover everything from promoting domestic uranium mining and refinement to removing regulatory obstacles on nuclear power plant construction and the restarting of existing plants that have been idled.
Those two stocks are Cameco and NuScale Power.
As for Oklo stock, Goldman didn't highlight that one (but it's a pretty obvious corollary play on the Goldman note). Instead, Oklo is getting its own boost today after announcing that it has signed a memorandum of understanding with Korea Hydro & Nuclear Power whereby Oklo and Korea Hydro will jointly advance development and verification of Oklo's planned Aurora powerhouse at the same time that Korea Hydro develops its own "innovative domestic advanced nuclear technology, the i-SMR."
Oklo already plans to run a 75 megawatt Aurora powerhouse at the Idaho National Laboratory site, and "intends to submit a formal Combined License Application (COLA) later this year" to the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The company says it also has more than 14 gigawatts of nuclear power plants in its "growing order pipeline."
The company has not yet received licenses to build these plants, however.
Reading between the lines, Oklo's press release this morning leans "fluffy" to me, describing more of a continued research and development status for the start-up, albeit now in cooperation with a big player in the industry. It's relatively good news for the stock, as Korea Hydro boasts an $11 billion annual revenue stream (versus Oklo's annual revenue of zero), which can help support Oklo's R&D efforts as it works toward commercialization of its technology.
