Famous climate researcher and speaker Bjorn Lomborg made a good point recently: China remains a fossil-fuel-powered industrial economy, just as the rest of the world does. But that is only half the story.
The equally important story is the speed at which China is adding nuclear capacity and positioning itself across the entire advanced-nuclear technology landscape.
China is not merely building conventional reactors. It is developing a broad portfolio that includes:
– Hualong One and CAP-series pressurised-water reactors
– High-temperature gas-cooled reactors
– Sodium-cooled fast reactors
– Liquid Fission Burners (aka Molten-salt reactors)
– Thorium-fuel-cycle research
– Closed-fuel-cycle and reprocessing technologies
– Nuclear heat, industrial steam, hydrogen, and other non-electric applications
China’s conventional nuclear fleet has expanded dramatically. By early 2026, China was operating approximately 58 reactors with about 56 GW of installed capacity, while more than 30 additional reactors were under construction. China has also approved ten or more new reactors annually for several consecutive years.
This is not a theoretical program. In December 2023, China’s HTR-PM at Shidao Bay entered commercial operation. It is a high-temperature gas-cooled, pebble-bed reactor generally classified as a Generation IV system. The plant combines two reactor modules with one turbine and is designed to provide both electricity and high-temperature process heat. Follow-up work has included district heating and industrial-steam applications.
China is also advancing sodium-cooled fast reactors. The CFR-600 project at Xiapu represents a major step toward fast-spectrum reactors and a potential closed fuel cycle. The CFR-600 is promising whilst still at demonstration-stage technology. Its initial fuel supply has involved Russian fast breeder expert cooperation.
In the Liquid Fission Thorium Burner space is China’s TMSR-LF1 at Wuwei in Gansu Province.
This is a 2-MW-thermal Liquid Fission experimental burner developed by the Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics. It achieved first criticality on October 11, 2023, and reached full power in June 2024. In October 2024, Thorium was added to the operating liquid fuel. In November 2025, the Chinese research team announced that it had obtained experimental evidence of Thorium-to-uranium conversion inside the reactor. How many units do they have now, they are not saying.
China’s next stated step is a 100-MW-thermal demonstration project, with demonstration applications targeted for 2035 and commercialisation by 2040. Expect China to shorten those timelines dramatically. China appears to be the only country currently operating a Liquid Fission molten-salt burner that has incorporated Thorium and reported Thorium-to-uranium conversion success.
This is why Jeremiah Josey’s September 2023 presentation at the CLSA/CITIC Securities investors forum in Hong Kong was so prescient. Speaking to a large Chinese investment audience, he argued that China’s nuclear opportunity extended beyond the construction of today’s pressurised-water reactors. The presentation placed China’s reactor buildout, advanced nuclear research, fuel-cycle strategy, and Liquid Fission Thorium development within one investment and industrial framework. The event materials describe an audience of approximately 1,600 investors and featured the thesis that China was moving from imported and conventional designs toward technological self-reliance and advanced reactor systems.
You can see the the full presentation here:
The comparison with France is also important. China is not the first nation to demonstrate that a large nuclear buildout can transform an electricity system. France carried out its own exceptionally rapid nuclear expansion during the 1970s and 1980s, weaning it’s self entirely off fossil fuels.
Fossil fuel to France is what wind and solar are to everyone else: a fringe power supply.
The French example proves that a country can replace a large share of fossil electricity within a decade when nuclear construction is treated as a national infrastructure program.
China is now pursuing that same basic logic on a much larger industrial scale—but with a broader technology portfolio. France standardised around pressurised-water reactors – their own incredible safe design.
China is building—also their own desgin—pressurised-water reactors at scale while also developing high-temperature gas reactors, fast reactors, molten-salt systems, and Thorium-cycle technologies.
The conclusion is that China has created the world’s most serious national test bed for nuclear scale-up. And they are doing it in earnest.
China is simultaneously:
1. Building conventional nuclear reactors faster than any other major country.
2. Operating the first commercial Generation IV reactor.
3. Developing fast reactors and fuel-cycle infrastructure.
4. Operating Liquid Fission machines.
5. Re-proving the conversion of Thorium into uranium-233.
6. Planning larger demonstrations for industrial heat, hydrogen, and electricity.
7. Combining state financing, domestic manufacturing, centralized planning, and a very large internal energy market.
China may still burn enormous quantities of coal, oil, and gas today. That does not make its nuclear strategy irrelevant. It makes the strategy more important. China’s immense energy demand is precisely why it is pursuing every scalable source of reliable power—including coal, renewables, hydro, nuclear, and advanced nuclear technologies.
The investment and technological question is therefore not whether China is already “green.”
It is whether China’s combination of nuclear construction speed, industrial capacity, advanced-reactor research, and long-term energy demand will allow it to become the first country to commercialize a new generation of nuclear systems at meaningful scale.
That is the question Jeremiah Josey put before Chinese investors in Hong Kong in 2023. The subsequent progress of HTR-PM and TMSR-LF1 clearly demonstrate that the question was not misplaced.
We think it’s a moot point.