China needs weak allies, but not too weak, as the Russian Federation will get out of the war with Ukraine if it is forced to pay reparations. Now China is quite dependent on Russia for energy exports, China needs Russian space technology and some military technology that it has not developed.

The most important are energy and transport

The pressure is centripetal if we analyze imports, and centrifugal in the analysis of exports. If we “adapted” the Boyle-Marriott law to the geopolitical situation, it would sound like this: “in the tendency to equalize pressures, the volume of (natural) gas changes inversely proportional to the change in (geopolitical) pressure.”

The problem needs to be analyzed for more fuels. Natural gas and coal are used in industry and for obtaining electricity, oil is mainly used in industry and in transport, and nuclear fuel is also important for the production of electricity. The increase in demand comes from Asia, where the trend is set by China and to a lesser extent by India. In 2022, China consumed 25% of the world’s primary energy consumption. Let’s start with primary energy consumption. We see a slight downward trend in Europe and North America, including the United States.

The most important resource is oil (31%), followed by coal (26%), natural gas (24.4%) and nuclear energy (4.3%). We conclude that the production of safe energy from coal, gas and nuclear is much more important than the production of intermittent renewable energy, which in total (with hydropower) is only 13.5%.

The EU, USA and Canada are gradually phasing out coal. Australia also has this tendency. Knowing that India and China have an ever-increasing energy demand and that these two countries are not complying with environmental agreements, being the biggest polluters in the world, it is unlikely that the trend of covering energy demand will take into account any pollution norm, so they will import coal from all countries wishing to export. China, the world’s largest energy consumer, has also stopped importing Australian coal after Australia asked it to investigate the outbreak of the Covid 19 pandemic. Russian Federation coal exports go to China, while Australia has focused on India. Natural gas, like coal used in industry and for the production of electricity and heat, has other routes.

Nuclear energy – certain dependencies

Electricity generated from nuclear power is the least polluting energy and is the most cost-effective, with a power factor of over 90%.

Being a source of security, the technologies used do not allow interruptions on demand, cycles of starting and stopping installations that require long periods. Few countries have the technology, but that doesn’t mean they also have the resources and technology to produce nuclear fuel. It is a long way from uranium resources to obtaining electricity. Resources are unevenly distributed and used by those who possess the technologies to clean/reprocess/enrich uranium for nuclear fuel. Also involved are states/companies that possess the technologies to convert nuclear fuel into electricity, that possess the technologies to build nuclear power plants, and recover, store, and destroy or reuse nuclear waste. In other words, a whole expensive industry organized horizontally and vertically.

Russia and China are the main players in the nuclear fuel supply chain, accounting for more than 57% of the market. Today, 11 countries have imported Russian technology, including Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary and Finland. There are countries that are building (Russian) nuclear power plants, such as Egypt, Turkey and Argentina. Of the 439 operating reactors, 38 are located in the Russian Federation, 42 outside Russia, exported using Russian technology, to which we add 15 under construction. It is necessary to sound the alarm, because in thisRussia and China now control 57% of the nuclear fuel supply chainr. We should also note that Ukraine is currently preparing to replace Rosatom in the conversion and enrichment of uranium. The risks of owning these technologies are that one can switch from a peaceful industry to a military one at any time, being able to create nuclear weapons without much difficulty. More details at Contributors.ro