Different from the original time and space, the scale of China's metal minerals and energy minerals in this plane is very small, which is completely disproportionate to the huge industrial output, and the development of minerals in various places is very slow, and the output is far from meeting the industrial demand, and most of the minerals rely on imports.

Although China's mining development seems to be slow compared to the development rate of other industries, it is not the case to say that China's mineral industry has no scale at present. Iron ore and coal are two exceptions to the large-scale mining industry, because both of these minerals are used in large quantities and it is unrealistic to rely solely on imports. Leaving aside the issue of capital and foreign production, capacity constraints alone are enough to dispel this idea.

In addition, there are non-metallic minerals such as limestone, quartz, clay, kaolin, etc., and the mining scale of these things is also very large. On the other hand, there are so many of these things that they are all over the world, so there is no need to keep them.

However, the scale of other mineral industries is very small, for example, in the history of the original time and space, tungsten ore, which was regarded as the main export product during this period, was completely restricted from exporting in this plane. Only a few have been developed in Jiangxi, Hunan and the Korean Peninsula, and the production is also limited to very low, and it has to import from the United States and Canada every year to meet its own needs.

Even the coal and iron ore that are mined in large quantities in China are still imported in large quantities, because although there is no shortage of coal and iron in China, there are few high-quality minerals. In particular, more than 10 million tons of high-quality iron ore and more than 30 million tons of high-quality coal were imported last year.

As for minerals such as copper, rare earth, bauxite, nickel, chromium and other minerals, it mainly relies on imports, although some similar mines have been developed in China, but they are mainly used as technical reserves, and the output is not to be expected. Anyway, according to the current guiding ideology, "if you can use foreign mineral resources, you will never use domestic ones, and if you can use the mineral resources of new territories, you will never use core territories." ”

In addition, Wen Desi also made a series of measures formulated, such as geological surveys must be organized by the state, and at the same time, the mineral resources in the survey results cannot be fully disclosed, and must be reviewed before they can be selectively published. In addition, in various media and school textbooks, it has been repeatedly reiterated that "we are a resource-poor country, most of the mineral resources are very scarce, and the per capita occupancy is extremely low...... and so on.

In any case, China now has very strict control over domestic minerals, especially non-ferrous metal minerals and oil and gas resources, and absolutely does not allow private development. On the contrary, the Chinese government strongly encourages private individuals to develop minerals abroad and import them domestically. In addition, China not only imports a large amount of resources every year, but also builds a large number of resource reserve warehouses in sparsely populated and dry climate areas such as Northwest China and Outer Mongolia, and transports a large number of smelted non-ferrous metal ingots to these warehouses every year.

And in energy minerals, the situation is similar. In addition to coal mines, which are in great demand, oil and gas development is extremely high. For example, crude oil, last year's domestic production was only 880,000 tons, which still includes the production in the new territory, while the actual use was 15.5 million tons, and the extra 10 million tons naturally had to rely on imports to solve. In recent years, China has imported a large amount of oil and liquefied natural gas from the United States, Mexico, Persia, Russia and other places, and last year it imported 15 million tons of oil, with the import volume of liquefied natural gas reaching 9 million tons and liquefied petroleum gas exceeding 5 million tons.

Since China put gas liquefaction technology into practical use in 1910, it has begun to use these technologies to set up wholly-owned or joint-venture factories in various producing areas, or to invest in local factories through guò technology, etc., to establish many gas liquefaction plants to produce liquefied natural gas and liquefied petroleum gas in large quantities.

This technology is undoubtedly a big hit in the producing countries. In the past, these gaseous products were inconvenient to transport, so they had to rely on pipeline networks for transportation. However, the construction of the pipeline network is time-consuming and labor-intensive, and it is difficult to repair it abroad. Therefore, in the past, many oil fields were limited by transportation conditions, and the extracted natural gas and LPG could only be burned in vain.

But now with liquefaction technology, it's different. The volume of gaseous and liquid is very different, each ton of liquefied natural gas can be converted into 1450-1500 standard cubic meters of gaseous natural gas, and each ton of liquefied petroleum gas can be converted into about 510 standard cubic meters of petroleum gas. The most important thing is that with China as a big customer, the liquefied products do not have to worry about finding buyers at all.

In this way, the gas that was previously burned in vain becomes a commodity that can be sold for money, the capitalists who control the oil fields have significantly increased their incomes, and China also gets the gas it needs.

Although China imports a large amount of oil, only a small part of it is used as fuel, and the vast majority is used as a chemical raw material. This is because China has planted a large number of diesel trees, which last year provided more than 25 million tons of refined oil, which is enough to meet domestic fuel demand. As for the imported natural gas and liquefied petroleum gas, most of it is used as fuel.

Many cities in China have now begun to popularize gaseous fuels, natural gas, liquefied petroleum gas and coal gas have entered homes in large quantities, and coal and firewood, two traditional fuels, have gradually withdrawn from the market. Even in rural areas, biogas and coal gas are gradually becoming more popular, and coal and firewood are no longer used directly as fuel, but are converted into gas through guò gas generators and then delivered to households.

Moreover, China is now conducting research on the industrialization of coal-fired gas, and this technology is not difficult, but the difficulty is how to reduce costs. If this technology is made a breakthrough, even factories and enterprises will no longer need to directly use coal as fuel.

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In addition to the astonishing speed of industrial development, the development of agriculture is also very gratifying, especially after the start of the war in Europe, the development of agriculture is on the fast track.

Last year, China's grain output exceeded the 600 million ton mark, reaching 6. 300 million tons, and the population of China at this time was 5. 3.5 billion people. That is, more than 1170 kg of food per capita. This is unprecedented, and China has never produced so much food since history.

Naturally, the Chinese cannot eat enough grain, and even if they can eat it, they can't eat 1,170 kilograms of grain a year. In general, a country with 400 kg of food per capita is quite enough. In addition, in recent years, China has had bumper grain harvests every year, and the strategic grain reserves in various places, the granaries of governments at all levels, enterprises, and private individuals have been filled.

Therefore, after everyone replaced the stored grain in the granary with new grain, a large amount of old grain and surplus grain were used for other purposes, or exported to foreign countries, or used as feed, or as raw materials for winemaking, or used for deep processing into various foods.

Last year, China's meat production reached 25.78 million tons, which was not only used for domestic consumption, but also made into canned food and other products and exported to Europe in large quantities, and now canned luncheon meat from China has become the main meat food for both warring sides. Moreover, China also imports large quantities of meat from Argentina, the United States, Australia and other places, importing more than 5 million tons last year.

In the past few years since the war in Europe, the living standards of the Chinese have improved rapidly, not to mention the grain, which cannot be eaten at all, and vegetables, fruits, chickens, ducks, and fish have also entered the dining table of every household. In terms of nutrient intake, it has reached the level of the first few years of the 21st century. In particular, the "infant nutrition subsidy" and "nutritious meal plan" that are mandatory in China have enabled the next generation of young people, especially those born after the founding of the People's Republic of China, to completely get rid of the label of "malnutrition".

Therefore, in the eyes of the majority of Chinese, there is nothing wrong with fighting in Europe, especially those who have made a fortune from it, and they wish that those white-skinned people would fight for another hundred years. As for the death of people in war, what is it? Anyway, other people's children will not die.

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Wen Deji put down the Wen Jiàn in his hand, frowned and said: "Last year, uranium mines in Australia and South Africa reduced production again?"

Gu Xiaolan said: "Yes, since the war in Europe, not only the places directly involved in the war such as France and Austria-Hungary, but also the uranium production in the British colonies such as Australia, South Africa, Canada, India, and Russia, as well as Russia, have been reduced, because a large amount of manpower has been requisitioned into war-related industries. Something like uranium that they don't understand, it's natural to be the first industry to give up. African colonies such as Niger and Namibia have also been severely affected by the war. Only a handful of mines in the United States and Brazil are still producing at the same time. ”

"Well, whoever made uranium ore the origin of such a thing, most of them were involved in the war. This can be regarded as a negative effect......" Wen Deji said with some depression. Although this European war has made China a lot of money, it is not entirely a good thing, for example, the plan formulated by President Wen to search for the world's uranium mines has been affected by this war. There is no way, the places with the most uranium mines are basically in the war.

"How much uranium do we have collected now?"

"It's about 350,000 tons, all of which are treated concentrates, and the uranium content is above 10%. In addition, there are 3,200 tons of yellow cakes......" Gu Xiaolan replied.

In fact, the uranium ore raid went smoothly and better than Mr. Wen expected, because with the new mining and beneficiation equipment provided by the Guò Vest Company, the output of uranium ore in various places far exceeded that of the same period in the original time and space. As of last year, about 3.7 million tonnes of uranium ore had been collected from around the world. However, the uranium ore bought by China is only primary ore with an average grade of about 1%.

After being sent to China, it is selected to make a concentrate with a content of more than 10%. These natural uranium ores are then crushed, extracted and precipitated by a variety of solutions, and then made into "yellow cakes" (uranium octaoxide) and sent to sealed warehouses for storage. In fact, the name "yellow cake" comes from the color and shape of the non-pure finished product produced according to the original production process, and the "yellow cake" produced by modern advanced technology is not actually yellow, but brown or black.

Wen Desi searched the uranium mines all over the world so hard, and it was certainly one of the goals to make a mass killing weapon earlier, but his purpose was not only the atomic bomb. He plans to build a nuclear power plant as much as possible, which is extremely important in terms of energy. In addition, with nuclear reactors, China's aircraft carriers and submarines can also be replaced sooner. Besides, in order to protect the environment, if you can, you naturally have to do your best to reduce carbon emissions, and Mr. Wen is a person who pays attention to environmental protection.

In fact, China's first real reactor and supporting nuclear power plant were officially put into operation on October 1 last year.

Mr. Wen has collected so much uranium ore, but it is not good to put in the warehouse. China's nuclear program began to take off in 1911 when the first yellowcakes were refined.

China's nuclear program is very different from that of the United States in the original space-time, and the United States in the original space-time was afraid that Germany would build an atomic bomb first because of the pressure of war, so it used a very cheating method. In their rush to build an atomic bomb, they would need weapons-grade uranium at 90 percent, so they would need to build tens of thousands of centrifuges or diffusers to operate for several years, and they would need to use the Lawrence electromagnetic method and the gas diffusion method, which consumes 60 times more energy than gas centrifugation, to separate uranium. As a result, the Manhattan Project in the United States uses more than 10% of the electricity in the United States, which is very expensive, and the main expenditure of the plan is for energy consumption, in addition to the repeated construction of refinery plants.

China on this plane is completely different, because there is no pressure of war, so there is no need to use this astonishingly expensive method to catch up. China uses a step-by-step approach, and the most economical method used to refine uranium is gas centrifugation. The first is to use thermal power plants to drive hundreds of gas centrifuges, which are connected to refine uranium fuel with a concentration of about 4%. The first generation of reactors was used to build critical reactors, and then the second generation of practical reactors were developed, and more centrifuges were started to be driven to refine weapons-grade uranium and plutonium.

As a result, the initial energy consumption of China's nuclear program was only 10,000 times that of the Manhattan project in the United States, and the size of the plant was much smaller. Although the energy consumption increased later, it was enriched uranium in the reactor instead of oil or coal that was consumed.

Because China is using the most optimized low-cost approach, without time pressure, and with ample computer power, it can make full use of uranium energy and collect data incidentally, which is quite low. In the six years since the beginning of the entire nuclear program in 1911, the total investment has not exceeded 300 million Chinese yuan, and a complete set of nuclear material refining system and a nuclear power plant have been built.