COMMENTARY | BUILDING ON WHAT WORKS


Building the SMR supply chain


In the power-hungry AI era, small modular reactors (SMRs) continue to hit the


headlines as a potential route forward. However, while there are many advantages to this approach it will require the right network of suppliers to keep all parties on board.


By Luc Todo, President of EMEA Strategic Projects in Nuclear for IMI Process Automation


GE Vernova Hitachi’s BWRX-300 small modular reactor design is based on the previously licensed Economic Simplified Boiling Water Reactor (ESBWR). Source: US DoE


WE’VE LONG BEEN PROMISED a nuclear renaissance. And now it seems to have finally arrived. The reasons for this shift in public opinion will be familiar. In April 2025, Europe experienced its most serious and extensive power cut in decades, leaving millions of people in Spain and Portugal without electricity. With the cause still largely unexplained, attention has naturally turned towards the grid and its ability to cope with a range of different challenges that will emerge as significant influences in the near future, not least climate change and the ongoing electrification of society. But there’s another, arguably more pressing challenge on the horizon: highly power-hungry AI. It’s well known the high-density server racking required for this type of computing demands far more energy to keep data halls cool. Yet grid infrastructure is unable to keep pace


102 | April 2026 | www.neimagazine.com


with the industry’s seemingly unlimited growth, leaving almost everyone open to a world in which access to secure and reliable power is far from guaranteed. Given this situation, it’s unsurprising to find


governments touting small modular reactors (SMRs) as a route forward. The UK government, for example, has announced plans for a ‘large nuclear expansion’, calling on tech firms to support the development of SMRs to help meet the huge demand AI has and will place on the country’s aging transmission network. This is a strategy of reinvention – it’s about taking a


technology born of the 20th century and reimaging it for an industry very much tied to the 21st. Given there is already a great deal of development taking place within this space, many of these plans seem odds on for success. Reaching this point, however, will require much closer


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