Nuclear engineer here.

The thorium fuel cycle has obvious advantages, but it takes so long to transition from uranium to a pure thorium cycle that I doubt I will see it happen in my lifetime.

There seems to be a lot of confusion about thorium. It isn't thorium that makes LFTR so great, it is type of reactor that makes all the difference. Molten salt reactors can run on any fissile material. The only advantage of using thorium over uranium in an MSR is in the fuel cycle.

(Full disclosure: I'm a founder of a startup (http://transatomicpower.com) that is designing a molten salt reactor to burn spent fuel.)