I suspect that this person wasn't talking about PWRs vs. BWRs, but rather, PWRs vs more-exotic gen-IV-ish designs (molten salt cooling, gaseous helium cooling, etc. etc.).
What is the biggest Gen-IV design ever built, in MW terms? Is it the 200MW Pebble Bed reactors in China that just started powering lights at the very end of last year? Given how difficult it has been to build the much more well-understood PWR reactors, I can understand the skepticism for trying to build a Gen-IV design.
Yeah, there are steep hurdles, but the hope eventually with at least some of the smaller gen IV designs is that a design can be approved once along with any requirements for siting, etc., and that then at each site where they're to be installed, installers will only need to show that the site meets the already-approved siting requirements rather than starting a whole new process from scratch, which should seems like it at least has the potential to make the regulatory burden more sane. The NRC is already working on a revised approval process that aims at this goal, and is set to be ready in 2024. Who knows if it'll pan out, but there's at least the possibility of change.
