Compute buyers, industrial heat users and grid utilities are now signing for firm output years ahead of first power. An offtaker commitment is the earliest visible signal that a project will order anything at all, which makes it the demand end of the same model that carries data center build-outs.
What that demand meets is a vendor base optimised for three decades of keeping an existing fleet running. SMR developers in particular are assembling supply chains from companies that have never done nuclear work, which turns qualification into a programme risk rather than a procurement formality.