https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-09-06/china-building-thorium-nuclear-power-station-gobi/104304468
I've posted many times on this subject in the past; potential nightmare for the West. China could power Africa with thousands of these reactors and in return harvest evermore raw materials.

China to build first-ever thorium molten salt nuclear power station in Gobi Desert

By Will Jackson

• Topic:Nuclear Energy

22h ago

Monetizing the thorium in monazite could change the REE mining game. Depends entirely on how quickly the Chinese can prove the principle and popularize aka modularize it. I would be surprised if it came to nothing. Thorium nuclear power is very interesting, imho.

I thought India would be the first to build a reactor, since they have extensive monazite sands and a long-standing thorium reactor research history and little if any interest in sustaining current primacy of uranium in nuclear power. Sadly, they rarely seem to be first at anything. China announced its intentions several years ago, but India remains paralyzed by partisan identity politics promulgated by advantaged incumbent vote-buying with promised extra benefits to ever new sub-groups and "minorities". Sound familiar? Not a problem for the CCP.