Constellation Energy trades like a power company, but its earnings quality increasingly depends on paperwork out of Washington and Springfield, not just electrons. IRC Section 45U — the zero-emission nuclear production tax credit created by the Inflation Reduction Act — pays qualifying reactors a base 0.3 cents per kilowatt-hour (up to 1.5 cents with prevailing-wage compliance) whenever wholesale power prices sag below a statutory floor, effectively putting a government-backed price floor under merchant nuclear output through 2032. Layer on Illinois's and New York's zero-emission-credit (ZEC) programs — which predate the IRA and already kept CEG's Byron, Dresden, Quad Cities, and Nine Mile Point units economically viable — and you get a fleet whose downside is socialized by statute even as the upside rides record data-center demand. The DOE's Civil Nuclear Credit program, which funded PG&E's Diablo Canyon retention, established the template Washington now uses to keep at-risk reactors running rather than let them retire; Constellation's since-renamed Crane Clean Energy Center (formerly Three Mile Island) restart leans on the same IRA credit stack that makes 45U valuable.