I know land vs sea is different, but after decades of nuclear submarines working beautifully it's just so sad to me we don't have abundant SMRs by now.
When that is combined with deregulation (or an anti-regulatory mindset) where things like insulation on water intake is deferred or ignored because it impacts the economics of the power plant, then building one becomes difficult.
In a civilian plant, you can have multiple reactors and refuel them on a rotating schedule to avoid downtime, having a larger reactor vessel isn't a problem, and all of that is also going to be less expensive - which is a huge factor.
Some new SMRs are planning on using >5%.
But SMRs can still be useful for small towns, remote communities, district heating, process heat for nearby industry and so on.