Adapted by:
Matías S. Zavia
WriterAerospace and energy industries journalist at Xataka.
Karen Alfaro
WriterCommunications professional with a decade of experience as a copywriter, proofreader, and editor. As a travel and science journalist, I've collaborated with several print and digital outlets around the world. I'm passionate about culture, music, food, history, and innovative technologies.
China has virtually unlimited energy reserves. The Bayan Obo mine in the Inner Mongolia region alone could contain about 1 million tons of thorium—enough to meet the country’s energy needs for 60,000 years.
Location. While several countries, led by China, seek alternatives to fossil fuels to supplement intermittent renewable energy, the answer could be right under our feet.
Specifically, it’s beneath the soil of Inner Mongolia, an autonomous region of China bordering Mongolia to the north. According to the South China Morning Post, a newly declassified 2020 study revealed that the Bayan Obo deposit could contain enough thorium to meet all of China’s energy needs for millennia.
Virtually unlimited. A study in the Chinese journal Geological Review found that just five years’ worth of mining waste from Inner Mongolia’s largest rare earth elements deposit contains enough thorium to meet the energy needs of U.S. households for the next 1,000 years.
If fully developed, the Bayan Obo mining complex could produce 1 million tons of thorium, enough to supply China for 60,000 years.
Context. Thorium is a radioactive element three to four times more abundant than uranium in Earth’s crust. Until recently, official estimates put China’s reserves at 100,000 to 300,000 tons—already among the world’s largest.
With a potential 1 million tons, Bayan Obo would shift from being the world’s largest rare earth elements mine to a virtually unlimited thorium source. Some geologists call the find a game-changer, one that could give China global control over the material’s production.
Not so fast. Thorium is typically obtained as a byproduct of processing rare earth elements, specifically monazite, or from uranium and phosphate mining. China already leads the world in rare earth elements production, so it processes large quantities of thorium-bearing ores. Why isn’t it exploiting them commercially on a large scale?
Because thorium is a radioactive waste product that requires careful handling. Extracting it—either through acid or alkaline digestion of monazite or by recovering it from mine tailings—complicates waste management. The process generates toxic and radioactive effluents, adding to environmental and regulatory challenges.
Outlook. These challenges aren’t insurmountable, but overcoming them will require a regulatory framework and major investment to make thorium competitive with uranium for safe nuclear energy production. Thorium also faces competition from renewable sources, which have become cheaper thanks to China’s growing supply chain.
Still, thorium could be key to reducing dependence on fossil fuels, especially since renewables require batteries to provide a continuous power supply. China is already testing thorium reactors, such as the 2 MW TMSR-LF1 and its future scaled-up 10 MW version, which could be ready by 2030. If successful, China could eventually launch the first 100 MW thorium nuclear power plants.
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