Wind energy costs approach nonrenewable levels

How about this?!

Wind energy and other renewables can now supply electricity at highly cost effective levels—and it's happened so rapidly that public perception is yet to catch up

Here's the rest of the story. user link on phys.org

Though that might be worth a read.

Good! Slowly but surely, wind and solar make progress as viable sources of energy. There's still a long way to go (solar panels are very non-green to produce) but things are looking better.

Let's just not shut down the coal powered plants before it's completely ready. Filthy, filthy coal-based electricity will eventually go the way of... that which produced the coal... (get it, the dinosaur? No? My jokes are bad) but I don't think we should jump the gun, resulting in a lowered standard of living.

Yes to clean, sustainable energy and reduced pollution, no to extreme measures that ruin the quality of life and centralize control over the world population.

/rant

I just want to see more nuclear power. We've got enough uranium in the planet to keep everything running for some time, but there's a lot of stigma and fear still associated with what is a relatively clean power source. Zero carbon emissions from the plants themselves, next to no radiation emission when they're running properly. And while uranium itself is non-renewable (though you can recycle the plutonium produced in running a reactor), it is still the most efficient when one considers the energy yield. Put another way, with the energy yield in one truckload of uranium, you can get a LOT more uranium than the equivalents for fossil fuels, or solar, etc.

...Which is actually the biggest problem with solar, if I remember. It's not that efficient, and that's particularly bad when it comes to things like production of more solar panels.

Yeah; nuclear is relatively safe but when there's an accident, it's BAD.

I've heard some talk about thorium reactors but the discussion on that seems to have died down a lot in recent years. Is there some major roadblock preventing thorium from being a viable source of nuclear power? Are the power plants just too expensive to build?

Nuclear engineering and plant design aren't really things I'm too up on myself. But, I'm pretty sure there are some design issues for getting a thorium reactor going, or it may relate to thorium having lower fission cross sections or neutron yields than U235. I'm not sure on the details, although I think there are some designs that should work out there. I'm not sure if any "thorium-burning" plants have been built, is all.

It may well be that the issues are more the practical things such as cost and getting permission to build.