Less Paperwork, More Power: Challenging Nuclear’s Over-Documentation Culture

In the nuclear and high-reliability energy sector, we pride ourselves on meticulous documentation of performance, reliability, and safety. But are we spending more time documenting these qualities than actually improving them? This is a hard question we must ask, because a culture of over-documentation – however well-intentioned – might be holding us back.

Safety First, But at What Cost?

Safety and reliability have always been paramount in nuclear energy, for good reason. Decades of strict regulations and thorough paper trails were born from hard-learned lessons. Every procedure, every test, every anomaly gets recorded to ensure accountability and prevent accidents. This has created an industry culture where no detail is too small to document. The intention is noble: to ensure nothing slips through the cracks. However, this approach can breed an environment where progress is painstakingly slow. Industry insiders often joke (with a hint of frustration) that a nuclear project can generate more paperwork than concrete poured.

Even regulators recognize the issue. The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) — historically known for a cautious, prescriptive approach — has faced criticism for being “too rigid and too slow” in licensing new reactors. In response, initiatives like the 2024 ADVANCE Act explicitly push for efficiency, even using the word “efficient” over twenty times in the legislation to drive the point home. The message is clear: we need a cultural shift from paperwork to performance.

When Policy and Funding Are in Place…

We now have unprecedented policy support and long-term financing for advanced nuclear projects. In the U.S., for example, the Inflation Reduction Act poured hundreds of millions of dollars into nuclear energy development and supply chains. Globally, many governments are backing new reactor designs. The U.S. Department of Energy even launched a milestone-based fusion development program to fund fusion startups as they hit performance targets, with eight companies already receiving $46 million in initial awards. This public-private partnership is explicitly structured to pay for results, not reports.

Yet even with money and policy lined up, projects can stall if the mindset remains the same. It tellingly took over a year to finalize the fusion milestone contracts after winners were selected, due largely to negotiating details like intellectual property. Meanwhile, small modular reactor (SMR) developers enjoy significant support and investor interest, but still no SMR is fully powering a grid anywhere. The first-ever SMR design was just certified by the NRC in 2023 after a four-year review process, and experts don’t expect the first SMRs to be commercially deployed before the 2030s. The licensing process remains extensive and onerous, often cited as a reason these supposedly “ready” technologies are slow to hit the ground.

Driving Innovation Over Documentation

To be clear, no one is suggesting we cut corners on safety or reliability. We can maintain our high standards while also embracing more efficient, innovation-friendly approaches. This means valuing results over reports. It means regulators moving toward performance-based standards (something the NRC has begun doing that focus on whether a system actually works, rather than enforcing a checklist of thousands of prescriptive requirements. It means leveraging modern testing, simulation, and iterative prototyping to prove safety in practice, not just on paper.

In the fusion arena, milestone-based funding is a great example of encouraging rapid innovation – investing in teams that demonstrate progress, not just those that write great proposals. In fission, we see new reactor startups urging for faster pilot projects and test reactors so they can learn by doing. We should enable that. Paperwork must support progress, not supplant it.

A Call to Action for the Industry

If the nuclear and high-reliability energy industry is to grow effectively and efficiently, we must challenge the old mindset. Let’s document less, and build more. Our goal should be to shorten the feedback loop between design and deployment, without compromising safety. This can be done – other high-tech sectors have shown that rigorous testing can go hand-in-hand with rapid development.

The world is watching. The public, investors, policymakers, and developers are all eager for clean, reliable energy solutions. They’ve given us the policy support and capital to make it happen. Now it’s on us, the industry insiders, to ensure our culture and processes don’t squander this opportunity. It’s time to replace excessive documentation with a bias toward action.

In the end, the safest and most reliable reactor or fusion plant is the one that gets built, tested, and improved – not the one that languishes as a perfect idea in a binder on a shelf. Let’s move from paper confidence to power on the grid.