Imagine very safe, 50-100 megawatt MSR's built closer to cities so they provide power without having to run thousands of miles of long-distance power lines. And these small MSR's could be built on assembly lines like we assemble diesel-electric locomotives. Just that could make it possible to do even more amazing things like generate enough power to purify seawater on a truly massive scale, turning hundreds of millions of acres/hectares of now arid desert into arable farmland. The now-literal dirt-poor countries of the Sahara region of Africa could suddenly become fabulously rich as their deserts suddenly bloom in large scale farming from fresh water processed through desalinization.
That is for bulk power transmissions. Data, basically bits, can be switched and routed without a problem over thousands of miles. But don't conflate that with power transmission.
Likewise, most central generating stations are located near their end users now. That's not to say modular MSRs would not be a good idea. They probably would be, but their use, at least initially, would be as generating assets on a regional grid. The current fleet of LWRs are often sited close to major use centers, IPEC for NYC, and Palo Verde for Phoenix and other Southwestern cities, for example.
When is the last time a nuclear power plant was built in the United States? What are best industry estimates for the next nuke plant to go online here in ye olde homeland? It is very frustrating to me that this incredibly powerful, cheap and safe technology is being ignored - in favor of costly alternatives of dubious value.
Serious progress on those ideas will occur, the kickoff will be November 8, and groundwork in 2017.