I've never heard that before. I don't think politics would stop a fleet of small 50-100MW replacing a 1GW reactor, and that's certainly not the opposition to SM

I've never heard that before. I don't think politics would stop a fleet of small 50-100MW replacing a 1GW reactor, and that's certainly not the opposition to SMRs now. It's actually both economic and technical: the technical side makes smaller reactors less economic in terms of efficiency. Thermal generation benefits massively from being really really big.