SMR have large issues with much larger waste generation due to small size / bad efficiency.
Geopolitical and commercial which is it, either it is state, or it's commectially viable. In the latter case, go ahead.
France nuclear had like almost half of them down during the Ukraine first year, contributing a lot to the extreme prices and costing EDF billions. Rotational mass in all honour, but Sweden has like had 10 or so sudden nuclear stops, and they stop producing in minutes, providing the biggest threat to shutoffs, and saved by the systems put in place for renewables - the irony. Other ways of providing actual stability exist, gas turbines can fire up really quickly, produce massive power (same as in nuclear plants really that are turbines too) and can run on e.g. hydrogen produced during periods of high wind. H2 doesn't make much sense decentralised due to massive infrastructure costs, but it does make sense centralised to provide exisiting energy infrastructure, i.e. electricity generation.
Nothing against keeping the nuclear plants in existance , but just saying new ones, riddled with problems often, aren't necessarily sound solution commercially, can take ages to build (recent one in finland was 20 years delayed).
State should clearly regulate the framework so needs are supplied, actual generation should be commercial because otherwise there is a real risk we're doing something that isn't viable for decades...
That's my current take anyway.
How does this relate to electric cars. Well not so much, the generation power needed to run an electric fleet is quite low and could even be negative with V2G as cars are 95% stationary, the actual energy GWh consumption is a few percent at national level if all cars are 100% electric. Consumption grows for other reasons, but if China can build 60GW power generation in 9 months, UK can build 20 in 30 years.... (similar story elsewhere)