The litany of contradictory or bad information on thorium reactors (and nuclear in general) is astounding. That's probably a function of both how polarizing nuclear energy is as a topic, and how nuanced the science actually is.

First off, note that thorium is not the fissile material - it's the fertile material. Thorium 232 is transmuted into something else like Uranium 233 via a breeder reactor, so saying that these reactors use thorium "instead" of uranium is about like saying your gas powered automobile burns crude oil.

As others have pointed out there's also a ton of bad information in this about fuel cycles and half life being the biggest driver of clean vs dirty nuclear, but lest I perpetuate more bad information...

Here's a detailed look at the science: http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and...

Thorium or otherwise, it's tilting that the public perception of nuclear energy is based on dated technology. Almost as tilting as electric cars being marketed as zero emission. We as a society have to figure out better answers to power production. When you sell bad science or buzz words to people who really take them as such without realizing that the power still has to come from somewhere, there's less support for funding the research that gets us end-to-end clean power.

Also, FWIW, the only reference I found to "war time politics" being the main driver was http://discovermagazine.com/2014/june/3-ask-discover. I'm guessing the full history was far more complex and nuanced than that.