> but it certainly isn't without downsides

Neither are the alternatives. Governments, and civilians alike, should carefully weight the advantages and disadvantages. What I mainly know about it is from memory from elementary school. Because this is precisely what we did. Each group was tasked to use pictures/photos from magazines, papers, etc to make a collage and a list of the + and - of each of these sources.

That said, can someone ELI5 why Thorium is the future for nuclear energy? What are the advantages and disadvantages?