With a few SMR projects built and operational at this point, and more plants under development, the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis (IEEFA) concludes in a report that SMRs are “still too expensive, too slow to build, and too risky to play a significant role in transitioning away from fossil fuels.”
I wouldn’t go that far, but it’s fair to say that small nuclear is unproven, both in terms of operational reliability and safety, and also in terms of its economic viability. The economic viability of large nuclear generation plants is also questionable, once you remove all the explicit and implicit subsidies that have kept the industry alive since its start.
It’s a more competitive if you remove the fossil fuel subsidies.
Also the thing with nuclear power is, that all those experts that build our older generators are now dead. There isn’t really any expertise on how to realise nuclear generators. Different country’s are building new power plants, but they are all over the estimated costs and delayed by years. When they are done with building they will produce the most expensive energy you can think of.