Solar power has begun to transform the world’s energy system

> cheap energy is will power the next AI boom

This is already happening, that and the crypto boom from a few years ago.

> and lift the poor and middle class up

But this is not happening; the ones doing AI stuff, crypto stuff, energy stuff have no interest in lifting any classes up. Energy prices are not going down, because demand is going up alongside supply, to the point where in some places the energy grid can't keep up. At-home solar and EVs are putting strain on the residential grids, even the newly built ones that have been reinforced 4x compared to the power grid of 10, 20 years ago.

Thorium reactors will cost billions and decades to build, even if you can find a location, get past the legal hurdles, the societal outrage, NIMBYism, etc. Meanwhile, you can get solar panels from your local DIY store, or order a pallet of them off the internet for cheap. Anyone with roof or field space can build themselves a solar farm, but nuclear or thorium reactors are huge, nationwide and political investments.

You also only need to buy the panel once. Fuel is free

While that may be true - I can invest in home solar and have zero or near zero electricity costs at reasonable prices with a 5 to 7 year payback period. Near me solar farms run at a profit here in England, and yet I don't believe any nuclear power plant has run at a profit without government assistance, or subsidies, and none are yet expected to fund their own decommissioning and clean up - society will bear these costs.

No paywall for me here in the UK. Maybe they consider us an economically behind country too.

Not sure where you're getting "at best 15x", the best panels from 2013 were found to have a 30x EROI: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13640...

And from a more recent study:

"This work has shown that the EROI of fossil fuels drops considerably when moving from a final stage (approximately 8.5) to a useful stage analysis (approximately 3.5). The low overall EROI value at the useful stage, however, hides large differences across fossil fuel groups and end uses, with average useful stage energy returns being much higher for heating compared with mechanical end uses. In addition, we find that fossil fuel useful-stage energy returns have remained fairly constant on average over time (except for fossil gas) and may even have slightly increased. Such findings contradict the conventional narrative according to which fossil fuels present very high, although rapidly decreasing, energy returns.

Next, we find that the EROI equivalent value for which electricity-yielding renewable energy systems deliver the same net useful energy as fossil fuels is as low as 4.6, due to the substantially higher final-to-useful efficiency of electricity compared to those of fossil fuel-based energy carriers. This value is, however, highly variable across the fossil fuels and end uses considered. We also find that most literature-sourced EROI values for electricity-yielding renewable energy technologies are higher than the EROI equivalent we have calculated, even when adjusting the values for the implications of intermittency using a wide range of energy transition scenarios. This result suggests that renewable energy may deliver more net useful energy than their fossil fuel counterparts for the same amount of final energy invested."

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13640...