The title is misleading. They only test thorium in an already built conventional reactor. Meanwhile in Germany they developed a conceptionally more safe reactor type powered by thorium, built a test reactor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVR_reactor) and an industrial reactor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/THTR-300). They're both shut down now, partly because of safety concerns: Water leaking into the cooling circuit can lead to explosions (which happened in small amounts)
So I guess only time will tell if new reactor types really are better than current ones.
So I guess only time will tell if new reactor types really are better than current ones.