This is a 2 MWt research reactor. The US operated a 7.5 MWt molten salt thorium fueled reactor at ORNL from 1964-1969; I wouldn't consider the technology new.
It used U-235 then switched to U-233 bred from thorium in a separate reactor (but still partially testing the thorium fuel cycle). They did this to simplify the design by not needing to incorporate the breeding elements into a novel new reactor design so they could focus on measuring the reactor's performance. I think it's fair to say it was thorium fueled, just in two separate stages (U-233 only comes into existence by breeding thorium).
The long term plan was to next make a breeding version of the reactor and use thorium directly but development was cancelled.
Well I suppose the characterization as thorium-fueled is debatable. In any case, it was certainly designed to study the prospects of an actual liquid fluoride thorium reactor. The current reactor can be viewed as an application or successor to that experiment, and it's based on the same design with modern improvements; TFA did point this out.
