Yes, I was mostly just pointing out that the "Ooh! 16 million years! Scary!" attitude is bothersome, but you're right that I'm over-simplifying. My recollection was that the thorium cycle produces a mix of very-short-lived, deadly, gamma-emitting isotopes (U-232, I think? and possibly others) and very-long-lived, low-risk stuff, with less intermediate-half-life transuranic material left over, which made it rather preferable to the uranium fuel cycle as far as waste disposal was concerned, but I may be misremembering. Either way, the Guardian article doesn't deal with the issue in much depth or in a way that makes it sound like they know what they're talking about, so I don't trust their assessment of the relative merits of LFTRs vs. conventional uranium LWRs.