Why is this an either/or scenario?
Seems to me that there is plenty of room to go full steam ahead with both thorium AND solar research and dissemination to see what wins out in the "real" world. We're not talking about either approach being fatally flawed by any means, rather it is a discussion of comparative advantages: as one technology develops and is refined, so will the other one, and only time will tell who gets the upper hand in the long run. My guess is that both have a place in our future, and both are hugely advantageous over the centralized pressure water reactors that use uranium, processed plutonium and other insane fuels whose benefits are greatly exceeded by their risks. If more countries took the path of Germany and Japan, we'd all have more resources to mature these technologies and be better off.
