Document Management at the Heart of Small Modular Reactors (SMR) Innovation
From Blueprint to Breakthrough
By Chris Brighouse, Product Director, Idox.
As part of the โNew Nuclearโ phenomenon, Small Modular Reactors (SMR) are increasingly viewed as a vital component in the response to the rapid escalation in energy demands. With a global SMR market projected to be worth $150ย billionย betweenย 2025ย andย 2040, both governments and private investors are looking to achieve a safe, repeatable SMR model that can be deployed at pace.
In the drive to attain technology innovation, power companies must not overlook the complexity and necessity of document management excellence. The goal is not simply to ensure files are saved or information is accessible. Good document control and records management is a fundamental component of a repeatable, secure and compliant SMR model.ย
Escalating Energy Demand
The step change in global power consumption is transforming energy production. With the International Energy Agencyโs (IEA)ย World Energy Outlook 2025ย forecastingย electricity demand growth of 40%-50% to 2035, governments globally are concerned not only with meeting demand but also the need to fundamentally improve energy security. And while natural energy sources such as wave and solar are key to both increasing capacity and reducing carbon emissions, these sources do not provide the reliability and resilience demanded by critical infrastructure.
Nuclear technology is now recognised as having a key role to play in scaling up energy production. Given the extraordinary escalation in demand, however, there is no time for the two-decade design and delivery processes traditionally required for nuclear power stations. The small modular reactor (SMR) model promises not only to get a new nuclear power station up and running within 3-5 years, but the repeatable nature of the SMR concept should enable multiple identical SMRs to be deployed at speed.
As such, SMRs are now fundamental to the energy strategies not only of nations globally but also set to fuel individual mega data centres, such as the Colossus data centre in the US, which is expected to demand 2-Gigawatt of power to support AI. Private companies, including Google, are investing in New Nuclear providers with a view to achieving power security and resilience.
Repeatable Model
The evolution from one-off nuclear power stations to a repeatable SMR model is a significant shift, one that requires not only nuclear innovation but also a far more consistent design, delivery and operation model to enable scale at pace. While companies are currently focused on delivering the First of a Kind (FOAK), the success of the SMR concept is predicated on the ability to quickly roll out Many of a Kind once the baseline has been proven. Success will require new levels of collaboration and cooperation between suppliers, with many components built off site and assembled on site.
This repeatable model also demands a consistent approach to document management. From document control to security standards, roles and responsibilities, information lifecycles and review processes, organisations cannot afford to underestimate the complexity of document management requirements within the nuclear industry.ย
Growing numbers of power companies are leveraging a document management template designed specifically for the nuclear industry to accelerate the process while reinforcing best practice. This gold standard baseline for Nuclear documentation leverages extensive nuclear experience and expertise to enforce compliance with nuclear regulations, as well as supporting the specific security and role-based access required.ย
Gold Standard Template
The template approach transforms the efficiency and accuracy of document management throughout the lifecycle, from licensing to first concrete, cold tests to first criticality, and through to commercial operation. The result is both a compliance-first approach to document management and a document model that supports the innovative and repeatable SMR design and delivery concept.
By supporting nuclear terminology, the approach ensures all document and drawing resources, are understood and accessible. Furthermore, data can be quickly extracted from diverse format types, including 2D drawings, 3D models, PDF documents, Word documents, spreadsheets and chemical specifications, enabling AI insights to ensure that information is both accessible and readily available.
In addition to supporting nuclear-specific terminology, the use of AI can enable individuals less familiar with the industry to use natural language to quickly access and understand information. Given the skills shortage throughout the power sector, the large number of start-up companies in this area and the modular approach to design and build, many individuals lack nuclear knowledge and understanding.
The ability to use conversational language is therefore important in ensuring consistent access to information and improving understanding throughout the entire lifecycle, including component assembly and configuration.
Nuclear Security
The use of AI is, however, a key security issue to consider. To comply with regulatory requirements and critical infrastructure security demands, all nuclear systems must be run on premise, in a private data center, rather than in the cloud. In addition to ensuring document management solutions can support the on-premise model, it is essential to understand the implications for AI usage: the use of public AI tools for sensitive nuclear data would be a compliance breach and significant security risk.
Nuclear specific AI tools, however, trained on trusted, secure data, have a key role to play in streamlining SMR development. Using AI as a document control gateway to automate the review of any documentation provided by suppliers will transform the speed with which problems are highlighted and, therefore, redressed. This process not only improves operational efficiency but can also play a key role in compliance anomaly detection, reinforcing regulatory compliance while also holding suppliers to account and ensuring they take full responsibility for deliverables.ย
By using nuclear specific, on-premise, managed Large Language Models (LLM), organisations can maximise the value of AI to support innovation and operational efficiency whilst reinforcing security and rapidly highlighting the best suppliers to further accelerate the delivery of SMRs at scale.
Conclusion
Energy demand is driving unprecedented innovation within the nuclear industry. The opportunities are compelling, with the latest NEA Small Modular Reactor (SMR) Dashboardย identifying 127 SMR designs and a significant increase in investment. Delivering a working FOAK SMR is, of course, key. But it is the repeatability of the model that will prove the differentiator between these diverse SMR designs.ย
Ensuring optimal document management processes from day one is also key to this process. With the correct, secure, on premise and nuclear specific document management model, organisations can ensure regulatory compliance while also attaining the visibility, control and operational efficiency required to rapidly scale up SMR production.