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The ALPS Nautilus SMR, Nuclear & Technology ETF (SMRF) launched on February 18, 2026. It uses options to generate income from companies building reactors that don't exist yet. The name alone deserves analysis.
Let us begin with the name, because the name is doing a remarkable amount of work.
The original Nautilus was the world's first nuclear-powered submarine, commissioned in 1954, built under the relentless direction of Admiral Hyman Rickover. On January 17, 1955, Commander Eugene Wilkinson sent one of history's most understated messages: “Underway on Nuclear Power.” In August 1958, the Nautilus became the first vessel to complete a submerged transit of the North Pole.
The fund is named after this vessel. The fund also, based on its benchmark index description, may hold leading companies in the artificial intelligence industry.
So: Mamie Eisenhower, the North Pole, and possibly Nvidia. Welcome to 2026.
What Is SMRF, Exactly?
SMRF is an actively managed ETF that tracks the Nautilus SMR, Nuclear & Technology Index while layering a covered-call options strategy on top. It owns nuclear and SMR stocks, sells options on them to collect premium, and sends investors a monthly check. The underlying index covers SMR and nuclear companies, plus and this clause is doing considerable heavy lifting – “leading companies in the artificial intelligence industry.”
That AI addition is, charitably, a creative stretch. Less charitably, it is the index methodology noticing that “small modular reactor” alone is not quite sufficient to attract all the capital flowing toward anything with “AI” in the prospectus. The connection is real; AI data centres need power and SMRs are a proposed solution. It does mean SMRF's benchmark occupies the Venn diagram overlap between “companies building miniature nuclear reactors” and “companies Jensen Huang has mentioned approvingly.”
The Nuclear ETF Problem
SMRF is entering a generously populated space. NLR, URNM, URA, NUKZ, a Korean SMR fund that launched two weeks earlier, and in this very same filing date the Nicholas Nuclear Income ETF (NUKX), which is doing an identical covered-call strategy on nuclear stocks. Two issuers, same idea, same day, presumably without either knowing the other was doing it.
The nuclear ETF ecosystem has reached the point where you need a separate spreadsheet to track the nuclear ETFs.
SMRF's structural tension is the same one present in every covered-call ETF: if you are very bullish on SMRs, you are capping your gains precisely when the thesis is working. If you are less bullish, you probably shouldn't be in SMR stocks to begin with. This contradiction has not prevented any covered-call ETF from collecting assets. Investors, it turns out, really like monthly income.
The Cast of Characters
The SMR space is a fascinating collection of companies united by the shared characteristic that none have yet turned on a commercial small modular reactor in the United States.
NuScale Power (ticker: SMR, which is confusing) has NRC design certification but its first commercial reactor targets deployment in Romania. Oklo, backed by Sam Altman and partnered with Meta, builds fast-fission microreactors that run on recycled nuclear fuel – either a brilliant sustainability story or an extraordinarily ambitious regulatory challenge. BWX Technologies (BWXT) is the most boring and arguably most important: it fabricated components for the original USS Nautilus in the 1950s, generates real revenue from the Navy, and is now building a factory-made SMR specifically for data centres. It is the Ringo Starr of the nuclear renaissance: essential, underappreciated, quietly keeping the whole thing together.
The covered-call layer is particularly interesting in this context. Selling options on stocks that routinely move 15-20% when a tech CEO mentions nuclear power is a generous source of premium. It also means that when Jensen Huang says, “we need small nuclear reactors” and the sector gaps up 20% on a Monday, SMRF's investors have sold that appreciation to whoever bought the calls on Friday. Monthly income, in exchange for capped upside. A legitimate trade-off – just not for investors expecting the nuclear moment to arrive suddenly and dramatically. Which, given the sector's history, is exactly how it would arrive.
The Ticker
SMRF. One searches for a Smurfs reference and finds none in the prospectus. ALPS presumably chose it as a straightforward abbreviation of “SMR Fund.” This is almost certainly true and is not even slightly the most interesting possible explanation, I really wanted to include some reference to Gargamel in this article but it was too much of a stretch…
The original Nautilus was “Underway on Nuclear Power” in January 1955. SMRF launched into a market with at least six competing nuclear products and an index that includes AI companies.
Admiral Rickover would have opinions about this. They would not be polite ones.
The Smurfs were created in 1958, the same year the USS Nautilus crossed the North Pole. This is a coincidence.
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