In fact, no reactor can burn thorium. It’s hard to turn thorium into bombs, sure, but it’s also hard to power a reactor with it. Here’s Terrestrial Energy explaining why their molten-salt reactor will be powered by uranium instead of thorium:

Liquid thorium fuels are the nuclear fuel equivalent of wet wood. Wet wood cannot be lit with a match; it requires a large torch.

What is this large torch? Why, it’s our old friend, enriched uranium. A thorium breeder requires intense and sustained neutron bombardment (over a period of several years, IIUC) from burning enriched uranium, in order to transform the thorium into enough Uranium-233 fuel to replace the U-235 fuel that was used to transform the thorium in the first place. Once converted, the U-233 must be separated from the thorium and moved to the reactor core for burning. Obviously, this is a lot harder than simply burning enriched uranium directly (and throwing away the excess neutrons)*.

I’m a big supporter of research into Molten Salt Reactors (MSRs) including thorium breeder reactors, but without a supportive president like Andrew Yang (who recently dropped out of the race) I can’t imagine that the necessary R&D will happen fast enough to stop climate change. Instead we will have to build simple uranium-based MSRs first, and then hope that enough research dollars are allocated that we can switch to thorium later. On the plus side, Moltex plans to use our high-level nuclear waste stockpiles as fuel in its first reactor design.**

* Note: Thorcon plans to use a reactor with 75% thorium fuel, but it is not a breeder: only a minority of the actual energy generated by the reactor will come from the thorium, the majority still coming from uranium.

** High-level waste includes plutonium, which can be burned in a fast-spectrum molten-salt reactor.