Such that over years of successive improvements, there is an active downward pressure on price and upward progress in features / improvements / utility.
The promise of the SMNR is really the closet-sized ORNL reactor. Of course that doesn't involve lots of chemical processing support systems, but the reactor wasn't that big. And yes getting a Brayton cycle turbine attached and combined cycle generators to max output won't fit in a closet.
But ... still, it would be the path forward to the biggest challenges to nuclear:
1) actual cost
2) reliably delivering on budget
As the comment above you points out, the ship sailed on nuclear ten years ago when the window of it being competitive with wind/solar was open. Now it's been buried.
As it stands, we are left with China to possibly figure it out.