Throttling a reactor makes no sense when the fuel is dirt cheap, which it is for nuclear. It's not clear given the choice of providing the same amount of power with thousands of SMR's worth a few MW's each or a handful of traditional nuclear plants, that SMR's are inherently the better choice. SMR's make obvious sense as a distributed source in cases where power transmission is itself costly and the density of power use is low, but not obviously otherwise.

The wear and tear and fuel costs are non-zero.

Which is why old paid off nuclear reactors are today are being forced off the grids when renewables bring sustained low prices.