New Nuclear, Atomic, & Plasma Battery Technologies

Seriously!

We all know about atomic RTG power packs used in deep space exploration by NASA, but what is the latest nuclear battery technology? I have done some research and see that billions in grant money has been fed to Sandia Laboratories, Princeton Plasma Lab, Purdue, Stanford, MIT, and NASA's research. What do they have to show for all this money and research?

Since Harvard Professor Ramon Khanna first published his work in 1998 (See this link) below, the only other plasma battery work I see that resulted in any working prototype was the patented work of Aries M. DeGeus.

http://adsabs.harvard.edu/full/1998MNRAS.295L...6K

http://www.rexresearch.com/degeus/degeus.htm

Surely for half a billion dollars of research money over the last ten years, there simply be must more progress. I see that Stanford has been tinkering with Thorium. The pdf file was too large to attach, so here is the link:

ATOMIC BATTERY BASED ON ORDERED DUST-PLASMA ...large.stanford.edu/courses/2012/ph241/kumar1/docs/500208p.pdf

What do you know that you can share with us Greg? Can the Thorium 232 isotope be harnessed and packaged in a battery? By the way, keep up the great work here. This forum has become my sanctuary for knowledge lately.