Editor’s Note: A few days ago, my wife and I returned from a two-week trip to Italy. Fortunately for us, the weather was nearly perfect, and we suffered no unexpected snags during our journey.

As much as I enjoyed touring the ancient cities of Milan, Florence, and Rome, I am happy to be back home. Living out of a suitcase gets old after a while, and eating restaurant food every day is not good for my waistline.

But now that it’s over it’s time to get back to work. A lot has transpired over the past two weeks, and this summer promises to be anything but uneventful for the stock market.

Going Nuclear

One news item that caught my attention was an executive order issued by President Trump on May 23. Its intent is to greatly increase nuclear power generation in the United States by the year 2050.

According to a fact sheet released by the White House, this executive order “directs the NRC (Nuclear Regulatory Commission) to complete rulemakings within 18 months to comprehensively revise its regulations and guidance documents, with a focus on balancing safety concerns with the benefits of nuclear energy for our economy and national security.”

The press release further opines, “Unleashing American energy will create jobs and economic prosperity, improve the United States’ trade balance, help our country compete with hostile foreign powers, strengthen relations with allies and partners, and support international peace and security.”

The Future is Now

I am not surprised by this development. In fact, I all but predicted it in this space five months ago (“The Future of Nuclear Energy is Written in the Stars”) when I said, “What could be a significant source of clean energy a lot sooner than that is nuclear power. True, there are considerable risk factors that must be ameliorated. But the upside potential is so great that I believe it is only a matter of time until nuclear power is once again a key element of our domestic energy policy.”

In that article, I highlighted electric utility Constellation Energy (NSDQ: CEG) as an example of how nuclear energy is starting to get Wall Street’s attention. At that time, Constellation had just signed a $1 billion contract with the U.S. General Services Administration to provide power generated by nuclear energy to government facilities.

At the time, that deal was viewed as an outlier. Although there was talk of similar deals to come, Wall Street wasn’t willing to bet on it. And given the constantly shifting nature of the Trump administration’s approach to implementing policy, the future for nuclear energy was still in doubt.

Tip of the Iceberg

Turns out, the GSA deal may have been the tip of the iceberg. Earlier this week, Constellation announced a 20-year deal with Facebook’s parent company Meta (NSDQ: META) to provide nuclear power to the company’s artificial intelligence (AI) data centers in Illinois.

Shortly after that news hit the wires, Constellation’s share price jumped 7 percent. Since trading below $162 on April 7, CEG has nearly doubled in value as shown in the chart below.

Uranium Find

Of course, there are still significant risks to investing in the nuclear energy sector. Perhaps the winner of the next presidential election in 2028 will reverse Trump’s executive order and divert resources back to renewable sources of energy.

I don’t think that is likely to happen. The driving force behind the current surge in demand for nuclear energy is the tech sector, which usually gets its way. Especially when the future of AI is at stake, which is now deemed as being a national security issue.

For that reason, I like the Global X Uranium ETF (NYSE: URA) as a diversified play on the nuclear energy sector. Since uranium is what powers a nuclear reactor, it is viewed as a proxy for the entire sector.

Although its share price is up 50 percent over the past two months, that has only gotten it back to where it was a year ago. The difference now is that nuclear energy is a priority for the current occupant of the White House, where power is the name of the game.