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Transcript of Henry Tillman: China’s Thorium Revolution – 60.000 Years of Cheap Energy

Here is the full transcript of a conversation between Prof. Glenn Diesen and Henry Tillman, the CEO of Aiyana Advisory and Research, on “China’s Thorium Revolution – 60.000 Years of Cheap Energy”, April 23, 2025.

Introduction

GLENN DIESEN: Hi everyone and welcome. I am joined today by Henry Tillman, the CEO of Aiyana Global Advisory and Research, who is deeply engaged in energy and infrastructure projects. So welcome to the program.

HENRY TILLMAN: Thanks, Glenn. It’s always an honor to be with you.

GLENN DIESEN: Access to energy has always been a foundational pillar of civilization, be it from human energy, coal and steel, oil, electricity, nuclear power. But we seem to be close to a major revolution of energy that could transform human civilization. I’m not sure if that’s an exaggeration, but it’s now said that China could have cheap energy for the next 60,000 years fueled by thorium.

So this is considered often to be this holy grail of nuclear power. And indeed we now have news reports of the first working thorium reactor in the Gobi Desert of China. Can you explain what this is and why it’s so significant?

The History of Thorium Energy

HENRY TILLMAN: Sure. First of all, the words you chose are the words I chose to present in October 23rd at the Arctic Circle Forum, Thorium Revolution in front of 25 countries. So I did agree with this a couple of years ago.

But the story is thorium goes back to the 1830s in Norway as a rare earth, basically. And it was by 1941 in the US at Berkeley, where I went to school later on, of course, both plutonium and thorium were in the mix for the Manhattan Project. But thorium is not explosive on its own. So the choice was made for plutonium.

By 1959, Edmund Teller, as part of the Eisenhower for Safe Nuclear, had developed thorium as a nuclear reactor and presented it to the first US oil company in 1959, saying we have a problem with CO2 and here’s the solution for it because it’s clean burn and it’s non-explosive.

From 1962 to 1972 the US ran the first cargo ship on thorium for 10 straight years, no incidents. And then it also was run at Oak Ridge onshore from 1965 to 1969 for about 13,000 hours. It was sporadic, but in 1972 led by US Admiral Rickover, who was quite a character with Nixon, the ultimate plan was not to use thorium going forward, but they’d use plutonium in the nuclear program.

So from 1972 to 2011, the US backed by the UK had locked down the formula for the use of thorium. Then Fukushima happened. By the time Fukushima happened, the US had decided, we have to go back in time. At some point around 2011, the US opened up that technology to many universities and many governments. It was also led by the research I’ve done by two US senators, one from Utah and one from Nevada, Harry Reid, to say, let’s open this up. If you use this, you have to give the IP back. So they gave this to Jiang Jimen’s son, literally from China in 2011, but it also went to Russia and a number of other countries.

China’s Thorium Development

What I find interesting about this is because in the 1950s, thorium was also used a little bit in a project called Candu in Canada, and it was also used in France. So there was some knowledge of this. And of course China had some knowledge of what was happening in Canada back in the 50s and 60s. So China had knowledge of this back in the 50s, 60s and 70s.

So when it came to the point where it became open to use, China jumped all over it, and so have other countries. But China has been the lead behind this and made a strategic decision as a country to get behind this. So they’ve accelerated the use of technology in nuclear, first of which was non-thorium, in Gen 3 nuclear and then into thorium, which you’re talking about here.

And you’re right that it started in 2011. They started putting money into it by 2011. It became functional in this last year. And then of course, the big highlight, the reason we’re asking the question now is in the last few days they topped up the reactor. Yes, so it’s a functional reactor and they’re on course by building a major onshore reactor and functional by 2029/2030.

But even closer to that, China is also using LingLong1, which will be functional next year. So from an SMR perspective, they’re probably at least five years or maybe 10 years ahead of the rest of the world in this, and they’re certainly 10 years ahead of using thorium for the rest of the world in a larger reactor.

Global Distribution and Potential

Now, thorium itself, back to your question, is spread throughout the world, nobody controls this. India has the largest component of it. Turkey has the largest component of it. China has a piece. Norway, your country, has a piece. I’ve talked to your former energy minister and Norway considered using thorium back in 2008-09 but couldn’t figure out how to make it work.

So it’s broadly around the rest of the world, it’s a lot cheaper, it’s a lot more powerful and safe. The SMR that’s coming out is a Gen 3 SMR and thorium is Gen 4 SMR and the older stuff is Gen 2. So the later the generation, the more safe they are and the more powerful they are.

It can be used around the world, but it takes a lot of time to build it, a huge amount of focus on building it and a huge amount of government backing to build it. So China has gone from 400 million to probably 6 billion into it. They’ve gone from a few employees to over 400 employees into it.

But the power of this, as you rightfully point out, will be huge into the Belt and Road countries.