20 years ago it was just around the corner. In fact, they said the Russians were about to deploy them: container-sized nuclear power plants that were basically maintenance-free and just ran on their own until they shut themselves down. Made by the hundreds from standard pieces. Safe if messed with. Safe after retirement. There were websites and nice diagrams and mock-ups and everything. Tell me how we're in a different phase now.
Without funding it's not going to get moved anywhere. The main design work on them was upscaling them and lowering enrichment + work on reducing any possibility of reusing breed plutonium from them.
If they kept to high enrichment, they could pretty start making and packing container-sized powerplants, but the old designs were designed for 50MW, while the uprated, civilian ones were for min. 100MWe
