What about Kirov style CONAS with IEP? Use a SMR instead of diesel or low pressure steam for hotel load and cruise, turn on full fossil boilers for dashing.Do we even know for sure this ship uses IEPS? I know the PLAN research group working on EMALS was also working on electric drive but I never heard confirmation of the IEPS being used in the carrier.
The thing with nuclear reactors is typically the bigger you make them the cheaper they will be. Since you will need to produce less components. So using a bunch of smaller nuclear reactors from a submarine really isn't feasible. At least not on a carrier of this size.
The Charles de Gaulle is the only active nuclear carrier with reactors from submarines. But it is a large reactor from a large strategic submarine.
Steam doesn't care about heat source since there's no contact between fuel and turbine, all it needs is heat source. SMR can be built on fundamentally different design than larger reactors optimized for modularity and ease of maintenance.
Fossil carriers have high uptime, it took Kitty Hawk only 6 months for refurbish at the most and can repair within 1 week. CVNs go down for 18+ months every 2 years.