That was the hope with Westinghouse's AP1000. We shall see if this actually reduces costs. I'm skeptical it will though, as it appears that most of the cost is actually in construction, and not as much in the R&D. If there are specially constructed parts that benefit from producing a dozen at a time rather than one at a time, then perhaps there will be some savings there. At least in the US, large construction projects are expensive, and not getting cheaper. Battery-based storage and renewable energy is getting cheaper. Within 10 years I would expect that solar/wind with 30-50% of the production stored in batteries will be cheaper than nuclear. It also deploys more quickly, in smaller amounts, and therefore poses less financial risk.

I would love to see a full breakdown of the budget on some nuclear power plants, but I have not yet seen anybody provide evidence that R&D or unnecessary regulations are significant enough of a cost burden that reducing them by a factor of 10 would make nuclear more cost competitive.