Nabil Fares
1 min readMar 1, 2024

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China imports about 11 million barrels a day. 0.1 million "barrels a day equivalent" is way below 50%. China imports about two-thirds of its oil needs.

However, in terms of total energy use, coal constitutes about 67% (Chinese source) or 70% (US source), oil 6% (Chinese source) or 8.4% (US source) of the total energy mix. Significantly, renewables plus nuclear constitute 20% (Chinese source) or 15%+3%=18% (US source) of the total. The renewables and the nuclear are on a steep upward trend in China.

In particular, in terms of solar power, China generates power as much as the rest of the world combined! Just last year, it increased its solar power generation by more than the total that the US currently produces!

Finally, there's Thorium reactors. China has the largest and first full-scale Thorium (molten salt) reactor. This is a mostly clean (fission) nuclear reactor that is also safe and is very hard to use to produce weapons (dubbed “low weaponization potential”). That last fact is the reason Thorium reactors were not developed following World War II in favor of Uranium reactors. Thorium also doesn’t need a water body like a lake, river or sea to provide continuous cooling. In fact the Chinese reactor is built in the middle of the Gobi desert. Thorium is quite plentiful in every country. The US alone has enough “to power the country at its current energy level for over 1,000 years”. China about 40,000 years!

Thorium is a very hopeful technology, much more important than new large oil or gas discoveries.

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