[Luis Dias]

666, your economic analysis is far from the truth. CSP still costs somewhere around 3 bucks per watt, and that's not really comparable to, say, gas or coal prices per watt, since in solar this "price" is about the maximum wattage possible, which is never really achieved, and goes somewhere around 20% (due to environmental constraints, like solar inclination, dust in the air, clouds, nighttime, etc.)

The 3 bucks per watt is comparable with the price of coal, but the difference is its efficiency and lack of intermittency, which just give it a far too big an advantage.

Before even reaching this reasoning, though, you should just have asked yourself why wasn't solar so much more popular in the industry if it were that "cheap"? The energy industry doesn't care about coal or oil. It cares about profits. If it profits more from solar, it will use solar, even despite all the conspiracy shenanigans. If it isn't using solar, it's because it is not cheaper. And it isn't, far from it.

It will be, but we will have some decade or two to wait for it.

[BlueFlames]

My first thought was, "Oh, my buddy wrote a paper about the viability of that technology in grad school."

So what was his conclusion? Because from what I am reading lately on teh internetz, LFTRs seems to be able to satisfy all of humanity energy needs (at least in theory). Some claim we wont even need fusion if LFTRs deliver.

He's pretty enthusiastic about the technology, though it's a little more tempered than, "We won't need anything else evar!"  It's a technology that can be deployed today; proliferation risks are lower than with conventional nuclear, and it markedly reduces our fossil fuel demand.

Realistically, though, switching from fossil fuels to fission is trading one finite set of resources for another finite set of resources, so fission can only be a stopgap measure.  Of course, there's a lot more hope of developing a properly renewable energy supply before fissible materials run out than doing so before fossil fuels run out.