Nuclear Stocks Rally as Google's Reactor Deal Lifts the Sector: NANO Nuclear Energy and Oklo Jump 8%, NuScale Power Gains 7% - 24/7 Wall St.

Google signed a deal to purchase power from small modular reactors (SMRs) operated by Kairos Power, a private nuclear developer. The announcement lifted stocks in the SMR sector, with NANO Nuclear Energy and Oklo rising 8% and NuScale Power gaining 7%. The deal signals corporate appetite for firm, zero-carbon electricity at scale and adds momentum to SMR commercialisation efforts in the United States.

Where this fits

This is evidence that firm, dispatchable nuclear power is now treated as essential infrastructure by a major technology company facing real demand for reliable electricity. Google's purchasing commitment bypasses the policy gridlock that has stalled nuclear investment for decades and shows the market is pricing in the cost of grid reliability: you cannot run a data centre on weather-dependent power. For Australia, the story is what is absent. Australian law bans nuclear energy outright. While the US SMR sector attracts capital and corporate offtake agreements, Australia remains locked into a renewable-plus-gas firming pathway, at higher whole-system cost and under perpetual supply-chain dependence on China for panels, batteries and inverters.

What it means

Australia's electricity grid faces a firming problem that nuclear solves directly: firm baseload output, no weather dependency, minimal material footprint per megawatt-hour, and no foreign supply-chain chokepoint. Google's deal shows that private capital sees nuclear as cheaper over the whole system than the alternative. The ban on nuclear technology in Australia is not a barrier to "dangerous" energy; it is a policy choice to accept higher costs, greater transmission overbuild, deeper China dependence, and more gas burning for grid stability than the next major economy will tolerate.