Research positions do not become practice in journals; they become practice in review processes. For small modular reactors, one of those processes is unusually visible: a joint early review in which several national safety authorities examine a single design's safety options together, in phases, with public reports at the end of each. The pilot phase closed in 2023, a second phase summary was published in December 2025, and a third opened in January 2026 with eight European regulators participating. That is a live, multi-national, documented venue where a design's safety approach is examined by the people who would license it. An argument that an autonomous plant should be evaluated on certificates, replayable twins and independently rooted receipts has a natural home there, and nowhere near as good a one in a conference proceedings. The lesson closes the course on that point: the work is only finished when it reaches the room where the decision is made.