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Nuclear stocks slide as regulators shift to speed new projects
The International Energy Agency forecasts data center electricity demand will roughly double by 2030, keeping long-lead nuclear buildout in focus even after share pullbacks.
Nuclear shares have fallen again in 2026 after spending much of last year near their highs, leaving investors to question whether the long-term nuclear power thesis has already played out. MarketBeat Ratings points to analyst Kuran Francis, host of the FinTek Channel, who argues that the selloff in share prices and the sector's improving fundamentals are separate stories right now.
Francis ties the fundamental outlook to power demand growth from data centers, citing an International Energy Agency projection that electricity demand from data centers will roughly double by 2030, with AI-specific demand rising even faster as AI infrastructure expands across the United States. Because nuclear reactors take years to build, he frames the recent price weakness as a timing reset rather than a thesis break.
The analyst also highlights a regulatory change at the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, where the mandate is shifting from mainly restricting and slowing new nuclear development to actively facilitating new nuclear capacity. Francis says that posture could shorten some approval timelines, though a standard reactor still typically takes about six to eight years to come online, and smaller small modular reactors could begin commercial operation as soon as 2027, with most timelines pointing to the early 2030s.
MarketBeat Ratings says the pullback has been especially hard on smaller companies, which can swing sharply in both directions, citing Oklo Inc. and NuScale Power as examples that surged late in 2025 before giving back much of those gains this year. It also notes Constellation Energy as a key anchor for Francis's nuclear stock picks, placing the sector's long-lead fundamentals against a market that had moved ahead of near-term revenue expectations.