Before the Drill Rigs Arrive at America's Largest Conventional Uranium Deposit, the Permitting Work Is Already Moving -- and Eagle Nuclear Just Made That Operationally Public

Issued on behalf of Eagle Nuclear Energy Corp.

Companies mentioned in this commentary include: Eagle Nuclear Energy Corp. (NASDAQ: NUCL), NuScale Power Corporation (NYSE: SMR), Nano Nuclear Energy Inc. (NASDAQ: NNE), BWX Technologies, Inc. (NYSE: BWXT), Uranium Royalty Corp. (NASDAQ: UROY).

NEW YORK, May 7, 2026 /CNW/ -- USA News Group News Commentary -- There is a difference between announcing a uranium project and operating one. The space between the two is measured in years, in consultant invoices, in field days walking wetlands with a biologist, in archaeological surveys conducted with Tribal Nations engagement, and in baseline meteorological data collected by a 10-meter station that has to be permitted, procured, installed, and run before a single air-quality permit can even be filed.

Eagle Nuclear Energy Corp. (NASDAQ: NUCL) just put that operational machinery into motion at the Aurora Uranium Project -- and the timing is worth pausing on.

The Company announced this morning that it has launched a comprehensive environmental baseline studies campaign at Aurora, the flagship project on the Oregon-Nevada border, ahead of the previously announced 27,000-foot Pre-Feasibility Study related drill program scheduled for July 2026. Aurora is described by the Company as the largest conventional, measured and indicated uranium deposit in the United States -- 32.75 million pounds Indicated and 4.98 million pounds Inferred U3O8 (SK-1300 TRS), with the adjacent Cordex deposit offering further expansion potential. BBA USA Inc. authored the August 2025 Technical Report Summary supporting the resource estimate.

What is unusual about today's announcement is the operational specificity.

The 10-meter MET station is permitting and procurement now, install by early June. Once operational, it collects ambient weather data -- wind speed in horizontal and vertical axes, wind direction, temperature, relative humidity, barometric pressure, and solar radiation. That dataset is the prerequisite to the air-quality permit, which is itself the prerequisite to a great deal of what comes after. Eagle is starting at the foundation.

SLR International Corporation is the lead permitting manager. Through SLR, the Company has commenced detailed delineation of wetlands and other jurisdictional aquatic resources across the drill program footprint. Field teams will identify and map wetland boundaries, streams, and other waters, and assess functional characteristics, hydrologic connectivity, and ecological value. The data feeds compliance with both the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (federal) and the Oregon Department of State Lands (state).

Native-X, Inc. is the archaeological consultant. A full-service firm operating extensively across Oregon, Nevada, and California. Native-X has commenced cultural and archaeological baseline studies across the Project area to identify historical properties or cultural resources, support engagement with relevant agencies and Tribal Nations, and inform project design.

Hydrology, hydrogeology, surface and groundwater quality, flora and fauna, and geochemistry consultants are in active negotiation. Most or all are expected to commence work in advance of, or during, the summer drill program.

The framing quote from Eagle's VP of Operations, Vishal Gupta: "Initiating environmental baseline studies marks an important milestone in the responsible advancement of Aurora toward a PFS. These studies are designed to collect critical environmental data across multiple disciplines… Once collected, this data will support environmental impact assessments, mine design optimization, and future permitting activities at Aurora."

Here is why this matters at the macro level.

Uranium spot is sitting at approximately $86.55 per pound, up roughly 24% over the past year. TradeTech's monthly Long-Term Uranium Price Indicator climbed to $93.00 per pound on March 31, 2026 -- its highest level in more than 18 years. The U.S. consumes nearly 50 million pounds of uranium annually to fuel its 93 operating commercial reactors. Domestic production sits at approximately 1 million pounds in 2026. The arithmetic gap is filled by imports, with Russian enriched uranium now subject to U.S. sanctions. Uranium was reinstated to the U.S. Geological Survey's Final 2025 List of Critical Minerals.

The International Energy Agency's 2026 Global Energy Review reports 78 GW of nuclear reactor capacity currently under construction across 15 countries against an installed base of 420 GW. Thirty-eight nations signed on at the Paris Nuclear Energy Summit in March 2026 to triple global nuclear capacity by 2050. Meta has signed agreements for up to 7.8 gigawatts of nuclear capacity to support AI services. Microsoft has signed agreements to renew old reactors that exclusively supply over 800 megawatts for AI datacenter operations. The U.S. government has committed an $80 billion package for new AP1000 reactor builds in partnership with Cameco and Westinghouse. And on April 14, 2026, the White House issued National Science and Technology Memorandum 3, directing federal deployment of nuclear reactors in space -- orbital systems by 2028, lunar surface by 2030.

This is the environment Aurora is being permitted into. Not a soft market hoping for prices. A market where the prices are already in place, the demand is already contracted, and the regulatory pathway has already been politically endorsed at the federal level.

The peer set is racing toward the same opening.

NuScale Power Corporation (NYSE: SMR) -- the only NRC-approved SMR design in the United States. NuScale's 77-megawatt small modular reactor design is the first and only SMR design to have received Standard Design Approval from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The Company is currently performing front-end engineering work for Romanian energy company RoPower in preparation for Romania's first SMR power plant. RoPower's go/no-go decision on full plant construction is expected in mid-2026, which would mark NuScale's first commercial deployment if affirmative. NuScale's regulatory moat -- the only NRC-approved design in a market the U.S. government has identified as a strategic priority -- is the kind of competitive position that the rest of the SMR field is years away from replicating. The link between SMR deployment and domestic uranium fuel demand is direct: every NuScale plant brought online represents a multi-decade contracted call on uranium supply that does not currently exist at domestic scale.

Nano Nuclear Energy Inc. (NASDAQ: NNE) -- microreactor developer with a DOE GAIN voucher and a White House space mandate behind it. Nano Nuclear is developing portable, transportable microreactor concepts targeted at extreme environments -- remote industrial sites, defense installations, and now, following the April 14 White House mandate, space and lunar deployment. In April 2026, the Company received a U.S. Department of Energy GAIN (Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in Nuclear) voucher to support development of its KRONOS MMR microreactor, focusing on reactor design analysis for uncertainty and sensitivity modeling. The space-deployment thesis is no longer hypothetical: the federal directive is in place. Nano Nuclear is one of the names being marked-to-market on that thesis in real time, and has been one of the higher-conviction speculative positions in the advanced-nuclear corner of the U.S. small-cap universe over the past 12 months.

BWX Technologies, Inc. (NYSE: BWXT) -- the legacy heavy of the U.S. nuclear-component industrial base. BWX Technologies manufactures and sells nuclear components in the United States, Canada, and internationally, with a deep operational history in naval nuclear propulsion and a sizable position in nuclear medicine and advanced reactor components. The Company's industrial footprint -- heavy-forging capacity, NRC-licensed facilities, and decades of relationships with the U.S. Navy and the Department of Energy -- is the kind of capability that takes a generation to build and cannot be quickly substituted. As advanced-reactor and SMR procurement moves from the design-approval phase into the construction phase, BWX Technologies is positioned as one of the few domestic manufacturers with the certified facilities and skilled workforce to actually deliver the components. BWXT is meaningfully larger than the other names in this peer set and trades as the established blue-chip exposure in the U.S. nuclear industrial complex.

Uranium Royalty Corp. (NASDAQ: UROY) -- the pure-play uranium royalty and streaming exposure. Uranium Royalty Corp. is the only publicly traded company purely focused on uranium royalties, streams, and physical uranium holdings. The Company holds a portfolio of royalties on advanced-stage uranium projects across multiple jurisdictions and maintains a position in physical uranium that provides direct exposure to the spot price. The royalty model is structurally compelling in a tightening uranium market: the Company captures upside on producing royalties without bearing operating cost inflation, and it provides leverage to the same supply-demand dynamic that makes development-stage assets like Aurora strategically valuable. UROY's existence as a discrete asset class -- a uranium royalty company on the NASDAQ -- is itself a signal that the uranium investment universe has matured to the point where institutional capital is willing to underwrite specialized fuel-cycle exposure.

The question every nuclear investor is asking right now.

The U.S. policy environment has committed to nuclear at a scale that has not been seen in 50 years. The reactor designers are advancing through the regulatory pipeline. The fuel-cycle infrastructure is being rebuilt with $2.7 billion in DOE contracts. The space-nuclear pathway is now a federal directive. And the AI-data-center demand layer has put enormous, contracted, multi-decade pressure on baseload electricity generation.

The one thing the United States does not have, in sufficient scale, is the uranium itself.

Eagle Nuclear Energy Corp. owns the largest conventional, measured and indicated uranium deposit in the country, has engaged a world-class permitting team, has commenced the environmental baseline work that turns a deposit into a permit-ready development project, and is approximately eight weeks away from spudding a 27,000-foot drill program that is designed to advance Aurora toward a Pre-Feasibility Study targeted for the second half of 2027.

The peer set is moving. The macro is moving. The U.S. uranium development universe has, until very recently, not had a candidate of Aurora's resource scale to pair with that macro. It does now.

For more information on Eagle Nuclear Energy Corp. (NASDAQ: NUCL), visit usanewsgroup.com/nucl-profile/.

Article Source: https://usanewsgroup.com/nucl-profile/

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Cautionary Note Regarding Forward-Looking Statements

This publication contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements are based on the current expectations of the management team of Eagle Nuclear Energy Corp. and are inherently subject to uncertainties and changes in circumstance and their potential effects. There can be no assurance that future developments will be those that have been anticipated. These forward-looking statements involve a number of risks, uncertainties or other assumptions that may cause actual results or performance to be materially different from those expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. These risks and uncertainties include, but are not limited to, (i) market risks; (ii) the effect of the Company's previously completed business combination with Spring Valley Acquisition Corp. II (the "Business Combination") on Eagle's business relationships, performance, and business generally; (iii) failure to realize the anticipated benefits of the Business Combination; (iv) the inability to maintain the listing of Eagle's securities on NASDAQ Capital Market or a comparable exchange; (v) the risk that the price of Eagle's securities may be volatile; (vi) fluctuations in spot and forward markets for uranium and certain other commodities; (vii) restrictions on mining in the jurisdictions in which Eagle operates; (viii) laws and regulations governing Eagle's operation, exploration and development activities; (ix) Eagle's ability to obtain or renew the licenses and permits necessary for the operation and expansion of its existing operations; and (x) risks and hazards associated with the business of mineral exploration, development and mining. The foregoing list is not exhaustive. You should carefully consider the foregoing factors and the other risks and uncertainties described in filings made with the SEC by Eagle from time to time, which may be found on the SEC's website at www.sec.gov.

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