SMR reactors make sense for remote locations without a large scale grid. The Koreans have the right idea. First and foremost stop the greens from using lawfare to inflate the costs of nuclear plant build out. Second standardized the design and build then again and again with per approved regulatory licences see point one. Once the design is fixed and standardized no suing to stop a licence from being granted. A combined build and operate licence at that. Third build out large reactors in a energy plant arrangement multiple reactors at the same location so they can share infrastructures like fuel pools, cooling lakes and rail yards plus security forces.
The Koreans and the Chinese are absolutely kicking our butts in the nuclear world. Korea can put up a nuclear plant cheaper than we can put up gas turbines and the power they produce is half the cost of gas turbine power here. They also reprocess their spent fuel so the only materials going to the geological storage are fission products that represent only 6% of the mass of spent fuel.
I was a pipefitter back when WPPSS killed off their plans to build 5 nukes in Washington State, completing only 1 unit.
They had 3 designs; Plant 2 was a standalone GE BWR, Plants 1&4 were next door to Plant 2 at Hanford and were Westinghouse PWR units, and Plants 3&5 were also Westinghouse PWR units in Satsop (Aberdeen).
Plants 1 & 3 were fraught with re-design and cost overruns. By the time they broke ground on 4&5 they had those issues resolved and construction on those units was outpacing their twins. But it was too late. WPPSS defaulted on $25 billion in bonds, and they were doomed.
Only Plant 2 (this was actually the 1st plant started) survived and was completed in 1984.
I also worked on Palo Verde which built 3 identical plants outside of Phoenix. They had the same issue with their Plant 1 but the next two were each completed faster than the one before it.
Why the US decided to have virtually all of their nukes designed as 1-off custom units was stupid and at the end of the day was part of the public perception problem. Cost + Danger (real and fabricated), killed it