That just means he was an idiot. The problems of the design were well known. The potential failure points were well known and are part of the design. This is no

That just means he was an idiot. The problems of the design were well known. The potential failure points were well known and are part of the design. This is nothing new and has been understood for a long time. A good initial design eliminates many of the complicated failure mechanism. A molted salted liquid fueled Thorium reactor simply does not have these problems. Coming up with a scenario where it would fail at such a high level is hard to even imagine.