Yeah, I personally blame The Simpsons, more than any other bit of media, for scaring people away from nuclear power. I actually did a paper on that in my undergrad, just to get through a writing course.One of my colleagues has been looking at this class of system and for land use it seems to have a fair level of potential. The problem is that it has a major disadvantage in that it is one of those "ebil nooklir def mashines" that will kill us all. It's almost impossible to get any nuclear things built in the USA right now and unless there is a fundamental change in how people think, its going to be a long time before we see any appreciable in new technologies reaching commercial acceptance. This is a huge pity because nuclear is actually just about the "greenest" technologies there is. At least where carbon emissions are concerned. Personally I think the end of nuclear was just about the worst mistake that has been made from an environmental point of view. But, it illustrates the basic accuracy of Rickover's belief that one nuclear accident will kill an entire industry.
It's worth noting that SSBNs tend to use gravity-fed cooling systems on their reactor to cut down emitted noise (most of the noise from a nuclear power plant comes from the cooling system). So its quite possible that we'll see some of the technology being developed here vanishing into the maw of the military-industrial complex.
And when I did nuclear power as a subject for a class in my MEM program, I actually directly asked how many people got their first impression on nuclear power from The Simpsons, and about 1/3 of the class (including the professor) raised their hands.