Quick Read
Sprott Uranium Miners ETF (URNM) — up 119% in one year on pure uranium price leverage with concentrated miner exposure.
VanEck Uranium and Nuclear ETF (NLR) — diversifies across the full nuclear value chain, including utilities and reactor builders.
AI data centers and power purchase agreements are driving nuclear demand, with supply constraints tightening uranium inventories.
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Uranium miners have run hard into 2026. The Sprott Uranium Miners ETF (NYSE:URNM) is up 26% year to date and 119% over the past year, while the VanEck Uranium and Nuclear ETF (NYSEARCA:NLR) has gained 18% YTD and 98% over the same stretch. The two funds have become the default vehicles for investors trying to express a nuclear view, and they do it in very different ways.
The thesis behind the move is straightforward. Hyperscaler data centers need baseload power that solar and wind cannot deliver alone, and global data center electricity use is expected to double or triple by 2030. Microsoft, NVIDIA, Google, and Amazon have all signed nuclear power agreements tied to AI infrastructure, and the Trump administration is planning executive orders aimed at quadrupling U.S. nuclear capacity by 2050. Layered on top of that is a uranium supply deficit that already has existing inventories tight. That combination, demand pull from AI plus a constrained fuel market, is what the two ETFs below are built to capture.
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URNM: The Pure-Play on Uranium Itself
URNM is the closest thing U.S. investors have to a direct bet on the uranium price. The fund tracks the North Shore Global Uranium Mining Index and puts at least 80% of assets into miners, explorers, developers, and physical uranium holders. That last piece matters: 18% of the portfolio is allocated to physical uranium, primarily through the Sprott Physical Uranium Trust. When the spot price moves, URNM feels it directly rather than through the diluted lens of a utility that happens to run reactors.
The portfolio is concentrated. Cameco sits at 21%, Sprott Physical Uranium Trust at 14%, and NexGen Energy at 13%. Those three names alone drive roughly half the fund. Geographically, 65% of assets are tied to Canadian-listed miners, with 15% in Australia and a smaller 5% in Kazakhstan through Kazatomprom. The fund carries $2.1 billion in net assets and a 0.75% expense ratio, and on April 30, 2026 its benchmark is being rebranded as the VettaFi Global Uranium Miners Index without methodology changes.
Sprott CEO John Ciampaglia has argued that miners are well-positioned to benefit from growing demand tied to AI electricity consumption, and the numbers behind URNM reflect that view playing out. The tradeoff is volatility. A Sahm Capital note in late 2025 flagged the fund’s non-diversified nature and the inherent volatility of the uranium market, and URNM pulled back 3% in a single session on April 23, 2026 after running hard into the print. Concentration in Cameco and exposure to Kazakh jurisdictional risk are the structural costs of owning the purest version of this trade.
NLR: The Value-Chain Approach
NLR tracks the MVIS Global Uranium & Nuclear Energy Index and spreads its exposure across the full nuclear value chain. The fund holds uranium miners like Cameco, but the heavier weight sits with reactor operators and utilities such as Constellation Energy, plus reactor technology and services names like BWX Technologies. That makes NLR less of a commodity bet and more of a bet on the economics of nuclear electricity generation itself, particularly the hyperscaler power purchase agreements driving utility valuations.
The fund ran 48% YTD through August 2025 and carries a market capitalization in the $4.5 billion range. Its $0.6140 annual distribution declared in December 2025 reflects the utility tilt, since operator dividends flow through the portfolio in a way uranium miners cannot match. BWX Technologies alone has pulled in work from NASA’s target of placing a 100-kilowatt reactor on the Moon by 2030, illustrating the kind of infrastructure and defense exposure that sits inside NLR but not inside a pure miners fund.
The utility weighting dampens upside during uranium spot rallies, which is visible in NLR’s 98% one-year return versus URNM’s 119%. The tradeoff running the other direction is diversification: utilities with mixed generation stacks give NLR a floor miners do not offer. Seeking Alpha’s Ian Bezek warned in December 2025 that the nuclear rally appears to be over and flagged pre-revenue developer exposure inside NLR as a risk if sentiment cools, a reminder that the broader portfolio still carries speculative names alongside the regulated operators.
Choosing Between Them
URNM is the tool for investors who want direct leverage to the uranium price and are willing to accept concentrated mining equity risk to get it. NLR is the better structural fit for investors who believe nuclear electricity demand from AI and data centers will keep rising but would rather own that through utility cash flows and reactor builders than through a commodity. Owning both is largely redundant, since they share Cameco as a top position and are both driven by the same underlying thesis at different points along the value chain.
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