Preparing For Disaster - Does Nuclear Cleanup Have Lucrative Potential?

Hello all and welcome back to Nolan's Investment Notion for blog post number twelve! This is going to be quite an interesting one, as we discuss unique sectors, such as military defense, nuclear cleanup, and nuclear power. In this post, we're going to walk through a few different scenarios and the corresponding investments that could make you a ton of money, ranging from very unprobeable to very probable, such as Iran sneaking a dirty bomb into major locations like New York or Washington, U.S.A continuing bombing efforts on Iran, and a few other scenarios as well. We are going to cover a variety of different investments from individual companies, to sector specific ETFs, and discuss the different situations where these investments could be very lucrative opportunities.

First, let's start with an obvious sector, individual military defense stocks. There are a few more specific scenarios that cause specific companies to surge more, but in general for military defense companies it is a bullish sign during geopolitical uncertainties (which we are far from short of right now), rising military budgets, or actual conflict like war. To get some skin on the front lines... with your money at least, there are a couple good companies to choose between, starting with Northrop Grumman Corp (ticker NOC). These guys have been a hot topic as of recently because they actually manufactured the B-2 Spirit stealth bombers used in Operation Midnight Hammer (June 21-22, 2025), which was the U.S mission to take our Iranian nuclear facilities. This mission was an 'amazing success' according to Trump, so the company has been doing well since, and has a bright future. Next company we have to mention, is Lockheed Martin (ticker LMT). If you are trying to position yourself in a well rounded and relevant military stock, LMT is the way to go. They hold GLOBAL dominance in the manufacturing of fighter jets, being the maker of the F-35 Lightning II, the most advanced and widely used 5th gen stealth fighter. They have over 1000+ jets delivered to NATO, U.S.A, and tens of other countries. LMT has a huge contract backlog of $160+ billion, they are a missile defense leader, as well as an absolute dividend aristocrat, with over 20 years of historical dividend increases. All of this, coupled with the fact they they are perfectly positioned within the current geopolitical tensions, LMT is a no brainer. To wrap this section off, if you want a well diversified and relevant military ETF, I would say iShares U.S. Aerospace & Defense (ticker ITA) is the way to go, also having NOC and LMT in their top holdings. All of these companies are very lucrative opportunities in affairs related to Iran and U.S. tensions heating up, or even other wars like Russia and Ukraine.

I now want to shift gears a little and talk about a very interesting investment opportunity that could be potentially profitable if some extreme scenarios arise from the current geopolitical tensions. Let's think for a moment about one of the absolute worst possible scenarios that could arise from this tension between Iran and the U.S.A... nukes. Now, I know that we think Operation Midnight Hammer took out all of Iran's nuclear capabilities... but what if it didn't? What if they were able to sneak some enriched uranium out of there before the missiles touched down? Or even if we did take away their nuclear capabilities, what if they are able to sneak a dirty bomb into major U.S.A cities and blow up extremely population dense demographics like New York. These are very unlikely (hopefully) situations, but still plausible non the less. So, if something absurd like Iranian forces sneaking a dirty bomb into major American cities happens, what does that mean for the market, or for you, financially? Well, someone's gonna have to clean that up, right? There are companies dedicated to nuclear waste cleanup, as well as more versatile waste management companies that also happen to deal with nuclear waste. Veolia (ticker VIE) is a global leader in nuclear and hazardous waste treatment, radiological decontamination, environmental remediation, as well as water and air purification under crisis conditions. Companies like Veolia and competitors alike (Clean Harbors, AECOM, Jacobs Solutions) could benefit economically during a disaster such as this, not in a celebratory or optimistic sense, but rather through an increased demand for their specialized services. To also note, if Trump were to get trigger happy and drop a nuke on Iran, a lot of these companies would also see economic benefits, as they are world wide suppliers. There are also a couple ETFs you could get into if you want a more diversified look into this opportunity, such as EVX (VanEck Environmental Services ETF) or NLR (VanEck Uranium & Nuclear Energy ETF), however I wouldn't necessarily suggest this approach, as this type of event would most definitely shrink the market as a whole out of fear, and the gains would be extremely localized to only the specific companies that receive contracts for the cleanup or whatever services they provide. Due to this, I would suggest a better bet is to get into the specific industry leaders like Clean Harbors (ticker CLH) or Veolia (ticker VIE).

Before I wrap this post up, I would like to just quickly mention a strategy idea that could make millionaires overnight if sh*t hits the fan, and the idea was actually utilized by Cornwall Capital, one of the very few people or firms who predicted the 2008 financial crisis, who were called the Brownfield Fund in the movie "The Big Short". The way Cornwall Capital made their millions when starting out was by betting that very bad things which were very unlikely to happen, would happen. The way you can do this is through options contracts. For example, in this situation of betting that Iran will sneak a dirty bomb into the U.S.A, you could buy put contracts on the SPY that are WAY out of the money, with a very long time till expiration. the idea here is the contracts will be dirt cheap since they are so far out of the money, so the risk is low as you don't lose too much if the unlikely never happens, however the reward is extremely high if the unlikely does happen and your put contracts go flying towards the money as the market tanks from the disastrous event. Cornwall Capital turned $100,000 into $30 million in only 4-5 years from Jamie Mai's garage, using this exact asymmetric strategy, and betting on these 'black swan' events.

Thank you all very much for reading another post, I hope you all learned something or at least found the topics interesting. Obviously, we do not hope for any of these terrible events to occur, and war will always be bad for all parties, however it is good to be prepared and informed to make the most out of any situation. I will talk to you all in the next post!

Nolan Kushnir.