The US House of Representatives passed the Ratepayer Protection Act on September 17, 2026, requiring large data-center customers to fund their own power infrastructure rather than spreading the cost across regulated utility ratepayers. Nuclear reactor developers rallied on the news: Oklo (NYSE: OKLO) closed up 13% at $40.37 and NuScale Power (NYSE: SMR) jumped 10% to $9.14, while the SPDR S&P 500 ETF (SPY) rose about 1%.
Why nuclear surged and uranium didn't
The bill flips the incentive structure for hyperscale power procurement. If Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Meta cannot backdoor grid costs onto local ratepayers, they have to sign long-dated bilateral supply agreements — the kind of 20- to 40-year procurement that small modular reactor developers need to hit financeable capacity factors. "A bill that pushes hyperscale power costs onto hyperscalers themselves makes that kind of long-dated procurement easier to justify," one strategist framed it. Uranium miners, tracked by the Global X Uranium ETF (URA), rose only 4%, suggesting the market believes deal signings will come faster than actual reactor construction.
Oklo's book of intent behind the move
Oklo is the most directly leveraged to the setup. The company already carries a 12-gigawatt master agreement with data-center operator Switch and a 500 MW letter of intent with Equinix — commitments that require first commercial power by late 2027 or early 2028. Both are exactly the kind of hyperscale contracts the House bill now makes cheaper to sign at scale.
NuScale's TVA optionality
NuScale ended Q2 2026 with $1.9 billion of cash on the balance sheet — a rare position of strength in the SMR cohort — and is in advanced discussions with the Tennessee Valley Authority and ENTRA1 Energy on up to 6 gigawatts of dedicated capacity. Even without a signed PPA, a bill that helps big-tech customers pass through infrastructure costs into their own capex line makes the pending TVA transaction easier to price.
Still down for the year
Both stocks are still deep in the red year-to-date: Oklo is off 44% and NuScale is down 36% in 2026, reflecting the reality that neither is yet producing commercial electricity. The Ratepayer Protection Act is one leg of the reset; investors are waiting on the other — a signed hyperscaler PPA of scale — to close the credibility gap.
Related coverage on The Robotics Media: DOE, TVA and Holtec $400M Tier-1 SMR awards, Curio, NuScale, Framatome SMR fuel-cycle MOU, and Paragon, NuScale HIPS SMR safety contract.
Reporting based on coverage from 24/7 Wall St., Foreign Policy Journal and issuer disclosures.