Perhaps you were working with people who don't feel the need to talk about how great nuclear is all the time because you all work in the industry and understand that already.
Essentially everyone has forgotten the arguments of the nineties: nuclear weapons proliferation, waste dumping, and covering the entirety of western Europe in a thin layer of airborne radioactive particles. As well as the more practical cost overruns. Personally I think it would be worth someone giving SMR a go, but in a different country from me and at their own expense.
Also, this is why people are reluctant to let some of the world's larger carbon emitters, the oil states in the middle east, build nuclear reactors. Iran has a small, heavily monitored fleet.
The enthusiasm is largely for newer nuclear designs that address the FUD that gets thrown around whenever nuclear is mentioned.