Small Modular Reactor Patents: Top Companies & Filing Trends 2026
A data-led view of small modular reactor patents: who leads filings, how fast the field is growing, which IPC branches dominate claims, and where white space remains.
Filing growth = 2021 (19 records) → 2024 (72); 2024 is the last year we treat as complete. Top-5 share = the 5 largest assignees ÷ all 372 records in scope (CR5), not the ranked leaders only.
What the small modular reactor patent record shows
Small modular reactor (SMR) filings cluster around a core group of national utilities and reactor vendors, with South Korea and the United States as the two largest receiving offices by a wide margin. The record spans 2015 through the 2026 cut-off, but the most informative years are 2017-2024, since publication typically lags filing by around eighteen months and the newest years are still filling in. Concentration at the top is real but not absolute — half of all records sit with five assignees, while a further tail of over eighty organisations each hold a handful of filings.
Claim activity is dominated by core reactor design and plant-level integration rather than by adjacent systems such as grid interconnection, shielding or marine deployment, all of which remain comparatively lightly claimed relative to the reactor and plant classes.
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Filing trend and technology composition
Two views of the same 372-record dataset: the pace of filing over time, and how those records distribute across IPC subclasses. Because a single record can carry more than one classification, the technology shares add up to more than 100%.
Filing trend, 2017-2026
Annual filings rose from 10 in 2017 to a peak of 72 in 2024, including a +279% jump between 2021 (19) and 2024 (72). 2025 and 2026 figures will continue to rise as later publications land, so the apparent tail-off there should not be read as a slowdown.
Publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 onwards are still filling in. Growth rates on this page therefore end at 2024; running them to the last bar would understate the field.
IPC subclass composition
G21C (nuclear reactors) and G21D (nuclear power plants) together account for the great majority of records at 85.5% and 35.5% of the 372 records in scope respectively. Smaller shares fall to steam generation, grid power supply, marine vessels, business-process filings tied to reactor operations, thermal power plants and radiation shielding, each under 6% of records.
Shares are the percentage of the 372 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Small Modular Reactor Patent Landscape with Eureka
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Try EurekaRepresentative filing and most-cited prior art
Externally integrated once-through steam generator type small modular reactor
A reactor design places the steam generator along the circumference of the reactor vessel itself, with secondary cooling water running through heat transfer tubes and converting to superheated steam inline. The vessel combines a hemispherical upper head, a cylindrical shell, and a hemispherical lower head, with the core housed inside and the steam generator wrapped fully around the vessel shell — an integration approach aimed at reducing footprint and piping complexity relative to loop-type designs.Filed by KEPCO Engineering & Construction, published 2018-02-01.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US20130336441A1 | Small modular reactor safety systems | 58 |
| 2 | US20100303193A1 | Particulate metal fuels used in power generation, recycling systems, and small modular reactors | 39 |
| 3 | US20120207261A1 | Nuclear Power Facility | 35 |
| 4 | US20190362861A1 | Inadvertent actuation block valve for a small modular nuclear reactor | 27 |
| 5 | US20160329113A1 | SLIMM-Scalable Liquid Metal Cooled Small Modular Reactor | 26 |
| 6 | US20180277260A1 | Optimized nuclear fuel core design for a small modular | 25 |
| 7 | US20210287818A1 | Wind-solar reactor system and working method thereof | 23 |
| 8 | CN104520939A | 小模块化反应堆安全系统 | 15 |
| 9 | CN103928062A | 一种自充压堆芯补水系统 | 15 |
| 10 | US8571167B2 | Particulate metal fuels used in power generation, recycling systems, and small modular reactors | 14 |
Citation counts reflect influence within the searched corpus and favour older filings; a low count on a recent record does not mean it is unimportant.
Patent titles are shown in the language they were filed in, not translated, so that each record stays verifiable against the original filing — a translated title will not match in Eureka or in any national register. Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Four figures from this dataset carry direct implications for where to file, who to watch, and where the claim space is still open.
The top of the field is concentrated, but not closed
Half of all records in scope belong to five organisations, yet the ranking runs to 88 companies with most holding only a handful of filings each. That combination — a concentrated core plus a long tail — usually means the foundational reactor architectures are staked out, while integration, control and deployment details remain contestable.
The field accelerated sharply through 2024
Annual filings rose from 19 in 2021 to 72 in 2024, the fastest three-year run in the dataset. Because publication lags filing by roughly eighteen months, 2025 and 2026 numbers are still incomplete and should not be read as a cooling-off.
Core reactor claims dominate; adjacent systems are lighter
Nuclear reactor design (G21C) and power plant integration (G21D) cover the large majority of records, while grid interconnection, marine deployment, radiation shielding and thermal cycle claims each sit under 6% of the 372 records. That gap is where narrower, defensible claims are more likely to still be available.
Filing activity is led by South Korea and the United States
South Korea and the United States together account for the largest share of receiving-office activity, ahead of Europe, WIPO's PCT route, China and Canada. A filing strategy built only around US and European coverage would miss where a large share of competitive activity is actually being recorded.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to small modular reactor patent landscape, with the prior art for and against each one.
| Assignee | Co-assignee | Shared families |
|---|---|---|
| ENERGIE PROPRE PRODIGY LTEE PRODIGY CLEAN ENERGY LTD | TROJER MATHIAS | 6 |
| NuScale Power, LLC | Curtiss-Wright Flow Control Corporation | 1 |
| ENERGIE PROPRE PRODIGY LTEE PRODIGY CLEAN ENERGY LTD | MATHIAS TROJER | 1 |
| Advanced Reactor Concepts LLC | WALTERS LEON C | 1 |
Co-assignee pairs are rare in this dataset — only 4 identified — with the strongest link tied to a single reactor vendor and a named inventor, suggesting most SMR patent activity is filed by a single organisation rather than jointly developed.
Where to take this analysis
The figures above describe the field as it stands in the record. Turning them into a filing or freedom-to-operate decision means going deeper on specific claims and specific competitors.
Map claim-level overlap before you draft
Run the specific reactor architecture or integration approach you plan to claim against the densest IPC branches identified here to see exactly which limitations are already occupied.
Explore in Patsnap EurekaTrack the concentrated assignees over time
Set alerts on the leading filers identified in the ranking so new publications in core reactor and plant-integration classes surface as soon as they appear.
Set up monitoring in Patsnap EurekaTest white space in lightly claimed branches
Grid interconnection, shielding and marine deployment carry far fewer filings than core reactor design — a good starting point for novelty searches before committing R&D budget.
Run a white space search in Patsnap EurekaCommon questions about small modular reactor patents
The assignee ranking for this dataset covers 88 companies, and the top five together account for 50.0% of all 372 records in scope, with the single leader holding 115 records. That leaves a long tail of organisations each holding only a handful of filings, so the field has a concentrated core but is not closed to new entrants. Anyone assessing freedom to operate should check both the leading holders and the fast-moving mid-tier filers, since the tail is where newer architectural variants tend to appear.
Filings rose from 19 in 2021 to a peak of 72 in 2024, a +279% increase over that three-year span, making it the fastest growth window in the dataset. Publication lags filing by roughly eighteen months, so the 2025 and 2026 figures in any trend chart are still incomplete and will rise as later filings publish. Treat the 2024 peak, not the most recent two years, as the most reliable recent data point.
The great majority of records fall under IPC class G21C, nuclear reactors, at 85.5% of the 372 records in scope, with G21D, nuclear power plants, next at 35.5%. Smaller but still notable shares cover steam generation, grid power supply systems, marine vessel integration, reactor-related business process filings, thermal power cycles and radiation shielding, each under 6% of records. Because a single record can carry multiple IPC codes, these shares add up to more than 100% and should not be read as parts of a whole.
South Korea is the largest receiving office in this dataset at 127 filings, ahead of the United States at 72, the European Patent Office at 51, the WIPO PCT route at 46, China at 25 and Canada at 17. That ordering reflects where applicants have chosen to seek protection, which is shaped by both domestic reactor programmes and export ambitions. A filing strategy focused only on the US and Europe would miss where a substantial share of competitive activity is actually recorded.
The clearest signal in this dataset is the gap between core reactor and plant-integration claims, which together dominate the record, and adjacent branches such as radiation shielding, grid interconnection and marine-vessel deployment, each under 6% of the 372 records. Lightly claimed branches are not automatically easy to enter, since some may be technically harder or commercially smaller, but they carry less prior art density than the core reactor architecture space. A targeted novelty search in one of these branches is a more efficient first step than searching the crowded core.
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Disclaimer. This page is generated from Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent and scientific-literature records, and is provided for general information and reference only.
Patent data carries inherent limitations: recent filings (typically the most recent 18–24 months) are under-counted due to standard publication lag; counts may be reported at either a patent-family or a patent-record basis and are not always directly comparable; classification, applicant-name, and citation data may contain errors, duplicates, or omissions; and the underlying search query defines and constrains the scope shown. As a result, the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
Nothing on this page constitutes an exhaustive prior-art, novelty, freedom-to-operate, or validity search, nor does it constitute legal, financial, investment, or professional advice, and it should not be relied upon as such. Any patent, commercial, or strategic decision should be verified independently and reviewed with qualified patent, legal, and domain professionals. Patsnap makes no warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy, completeness, or fitness for any particular purpose of the information presented.
Machine translation. Assignee and organisation names originally recorded in Chinese, Japanese or Korean have been rendered into English by an AI translation step so that the tables stay readable. These renderings are best-effort and may not match a company’s registered English name; the original name is what the underlying patent record carries, and it is what any Eureka query launched from this page uses.