Fair enough. But although the most dangerous words in history are "this time is different", there are reasons to believe things could be different this time:

Fair enough. But although the most dangerous words in history are "this time is different", there are reasons to believe things could be different this time: 1. the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. NuScale got the design approval from them. That means this design is as good as frozen. The NRC is an extraordinarily conservative organization. If NuScale, or anyone who licenses their technology, will try to diverge from the approved design by a bit, ..., well that's not even a possibility, why should we think of consequences. So this design, by the time is in production, won't be heavier, more complex, or narrower in scope, because it will be this exact design. It may be more expensive, late, in fewer numbers than expected, however. 2. Conservativeness of the design. This reactor is just a pressurized water reactor design. The most widely used today. It's in a small form factor and modular, but otherwise there's nothing revolutionary or radical about it. 3. History. After about 70 years of reactor operation, the NRC has seen lots and lots of failure modes. The number of new failure modes to be discovered is not zero for sure, but it asymptotically approaches zero. The reason for a lot of past construction delays was the moving of the goalposts by the NRC, but that was due to the discovery of new failure modes, not to any malicious intent. The goalposts may still move between now and 2029, but much less. 4. Politics. In the past few decades, at least in the US, the left was against nuclear power, and the right was for it. Now it appears a large number on the left have embraced nuclear power, so some form of bipartisanship has been achieved. This is quite unprecedented. Will it last? Probably not forever, but it might last a few election cycles, and this could be enough for this SMR design to achieve some escape velocity.