That's a massive over-simplification, if not actually completely false. A lot of the benefits of the Thorium reactors that are being envisaged are because they

That's a massive over-simplification, if not actually completely false. A lot of the benefits of the Thorium reactors that are being envisaged are because they are a molten salt design, not because they use Thorium. Molten salt reactors can't cause a meltdown, simply because they are already molten. Traditional reactors have the potential to explode because they are cooled by superheated pressurised water, not because they use Uranium. You can run standard Uranium through a molten salt reactor and get the safety benefits, and you can burn Thorium in more traditional reactors. Likewise, you can make self-regulating reactors that aren't molten salt reactors - it's just that molten salt reactors have one particular really neat mechanism for self-shutdown. Thorium does have some inherent advantages, two of which are plentiful supply and proliferation resistance.