This article perpetuates a common misunderstanding about radioactive half-lives, which is that shorter ones are better because the waste isn't dangerous as long. Actually, isotopes with short half-lives are undergoing radioactive decay very quickly, and are thus much more highly radioactive than substances with longer half-lives. There are radioactive isotopes in dirt, vegetables, etc., but they pose us no risk because their half-lives are so long as to not radiate significantly enough for it to matter. Fission byproducts with 300-year half-lives are actually super dangerous.

Interestingly, most thorium proponents point to this danger inherent in the thorium fuel cycle as a selling point, because it makes thorium waste so difficult to handle as to be a hindrance to proliferation.

In general, even speaking as someone who's generally pretty excited about thorium power, I'm not a huge fan of this article because I don't get the sense that this author has a super-solid handle on the science.