The missing point is that today's hype surrounds molten salt (fluid) fueled reactors which work very nicely with thorium (thorium allows breeding with thermal neutrons while fluid fuel allows online removal of fission product poisons). Most of the efforts discussed in this article relate to trying to use thorium in traditional solid-fueled reactors, which really does appear to be a bad idea for the reasons quoted.

Fluid fueled reactors could get around lots of those problems, but of course they have some new ones of their own. You can find some thorium as it relates to molten salt myth-busting elsewhere: http://www.whatisnuclear.com/articles/thorium_myths.html

The stupidity level of the article is stunning.

It's nice to have a summary of prior efforts, but the conclusion is so stupid that it almost completely negates the rest.

The summary as I see it: Because the US lost some thorium derived uranium that means we must never again use thorium for anything.

Could not agree more, just FUDbait. Thorium has great promise and India for one is betting big on it.

A recent article in The Economist is up-beat on Thorium: http://www.economist.com/node/21600656 .

Did anyone get any technical argument out of that? I'm perfectly ok with skepticism towards the latest fad (it's even slightly suspicious when something only have upsides, and the technology would be kept under wraps by a conspiracy), but here I don't see any real debunking here.

The comment thread on this is troll city.