China sits on a virtually unlimited energy reserve. Only the Bayan Obo mine, in the Interior Mongolia region, could contain about 1 million tons of Torio, sufficient to meet the country’s energy needs for 60,000 years.
In interior Mongolia. While the world, with China at the head, looks for alternatives to fossil fuels to complement the intermittent supply of renewables, the answer could be resting under our feet.
More specifically, under the ground of Interior Mongolia, the Autonomous Region of China that limits the north with Mongolia. According to South China Morning Posta newly declassified 2020 study has revealed that Bayan Obo’s site could contain enough Torio to supply all the energy needs of China for millennia.
Virtually unlimited. Only five years of mining waste in the largest field of rare earths in Interior Mongolia contain both Torio and the demand for US homes for the next thousand years, according to the study of China Geological Review magazine that CMP quotes.
If it is exploited to the fullest, Bayan Obo’s mining complex could produce 1 million tons of thorium. We would be talking about enough production to supply China for 60,000 years, the article suggests.
Context. The thorium is a radioactive element that is estimated between three and four times more abundant than uranium in the earth’s crust. Until recently, the official figures placed the Chinese reserves around 100,000-300,000 tons, in themselves of the largest in the world.
With a potential of 1 million tons, Bayan Obo would go from being the largest rare land mine on a virtually unlimited Torio source. Some geologists described the finding as a change of play that would give China the worldwide control of the production of the material.
Not so fast. In most cases, the thorium is obtained as a byproduct in rare earth processing (specifically, monacite) or uranium mining and phosphates. China is already the main producer of rare earths, and therefore manages large amounts of minerals containing Torio. Why don’t you exploit it commercially on a large scale?
Because the thorium is a radioactive residue of delicate management. Its extraction, either by acid or alkaline digestion of Monacita, or as a recovery of mining tails, complicates waste management with the use of alkaline acids or metals that generate toxic and radioactive wastewater.
Perspectives These challenges are not insurmountable, but require a regulatory framework and an important investment for the thorium to be competitive in front of Uranium in the Obtaining safe nuclear energy. And especially in front of renewable sources, which have been cheaper thanks to the exponential growth of the Chinese supply chain.
However, the thorium can end up being key to reducing fossil fuel dependence (after all, renewables need batteries to offer continuous supply), and China already has Torio reactor testslike the TMSR-LF1 of 2 MW and its future scaled 10 MW version that could be ready in 2030. If the results are positive, China could end up making the jump to the first 100 MW Torio nuclear power plants.
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