“Prioritize the development of nuclear power plants!”

When returning to Chang'an, Xijing, Li Weiguo personally issued an order to Xu Shou, ordering him to notify the nuclear physics engineering research team of the Imperial Academy of Sciences that, without affecting the nuclear weapons program, priority should be given to the development of nuclear power plants.

The reason for issuing such an order was also the decision made by Li Weiguo after listening to Tesla's report.

Since the meaning of the twelve special characters on the Moon Gate has been determined, it is a set of devices similar to telephone dialing. Before finding the correct address combination, it is necessary to start the Moon Gate's energy supply system.

This Moon Gate requires huge amounts of energy, which ordinary power plants cannot provide. After Tesla's calculations, it is not enough to use all the power generation of the Three Gorges Project to supply the Moon Gate to start.

Of course, the power generation of the Three Gorges Project here is far less than that of later generations. Due to the limitations of industrial technology, the power of each generator in the Three Gorges Dam is only 10,000 kilowatts, and the total of all 14 generators is only 140,000 kilowatts.

Tesla tested it once and gave the Three Gorges power collection ** to the Moon Gate, but it only caused one of the characters to flash twice, and failed to activate the entire Moon Gate.

That's why Tesla asked Li Weiguo to build a more powerful power station, and even asked to connect all power stations across the country to supply the Moon Gate to start.

But Li Weiguo obviously rejected this proposal. You should know that one minute of power outage in the Chinese Empire will lose millions of yuan. If you really want to do that, people across the country will cause trouble.

However, if a large-scale thermal power station is built around Mount Li, the problem cannot be fundamentally solved, and it will even cause larger fiscal expenditures and fiscal waste. Moreover, too large number of power stations are built together in a concentrated manner, which will cause a large number of parallel power grids. Once thunderstorms are encountered, it will be a catastrophic consequence.

The Moon Gate is a project that once opened, it will not end in one or two days, so a stable energy supply is needed.

According to the pictures in Qin Qing’s tomb, it is indeed necessary to start the Moon Gate, but I don’t know where this device goes.

So, Li Weiguo thought of a nuclear power plant and needed to build a huge nuclear power plant.

Although nuclear power plants also involve nuclear physics knowledge and equipment, they are much simpler than manufacturing nuclear weapons. Because the purity of the nuclear fuel required to manufacture nuclear power plants does not need to reach more than 95% of the weapon level, but only needs to reach 30% to be used to generate electricity.

The biggest technical problem of nuclear power plants is to prevent nuclear leakage, but for the current Chinese Empire, it is not difficult to do it. You only need to build a reinforced concrete shock-proof and explosion-proof building with sufficient thickness, a radiation protection device completely enclosed with lead metal, and one or more high-performance steam turbine devices.

For the Chinese Imperial Academy of Sciences, the technical difficulty is S level, but it can be completed, which is much easier than developing nuclear weapons. After all, the accuracy of centrifuge equipment is not high at present, and it is very difficult to purify more than 95% of enriched uranium, but it is relatively easier to purify more than 30% of nuclear fuel.

The Chinese Imperial Academy of Sciences has no technical problems, the biggest problem is the cost.

Fortunately, Li Weiguo did not require large-scale construction of nuclear power plants, and the development of nuclear weapons is not so urgent. Therefore, with the current financial capabilities of the Chinese Empire, it is still not stressful to build a large nuclear power plant near Mount Li.

However, this cannot be completed early and overnight. At least uranium mining and uranium enrichment require time. Most of the high cost and expenses basically come from the two steps of uranium separation and uranium enrichment.

At present, the uranium mineral resources in the mainland of the Chinese Empire are very scarce. Although several provinces can provide uranium mining, the uranium mineral quality is not high and the mining cost is expensive.

But around the world, uranium mineral resources are still relatively abundant, especially in Australia, where uranium mineral resources account for 83% of the world's total reserves.

The Chinese Empire discovered a large number of uranium ore in northern Australia. The uranium ore is of high quality, many types, and the ore is shallow buried, and most of them can be mined open-pit.

Since the day the Chinese Empire announced the launch of the nuclear engineering project, a nuclear fuel mining base has been established in Australia. The nuclear raw material factory that was put into production that year is planned to mine 1,400 tons per year. After preliminary purification, 968 tons of uranium can be obtained. This step requires an average cost of RMB 130 per ton.

Then, the high separation is obtained by centrifuge and enriched uranium with a purity of more than 30%, which can obtain about 720 tons of nuclear fuel for power generation in nuclear power plants. This step is the highest cost, with an average of RMB 200,000 per ton.

In other words, the Chinese Empire needs to consume at least 150 million yuan to obtain 720 tons of nuclear fuel at 40% concentration every year.

This is just the cost of nuclear fuel. If a nuclear power plant is built and the installed power reaches 1 million kilowatts, it is impossible to do without 200 million yuan.

For nuclear power plants, it means that the initial investment is huge, and the cost will be saved in the later stage due to the small amount of nuclear fuel.

A nuclear power plant with an installed capacity of one million kilowatts only needs to provide 40 tons of nuclear fuel every year. In this way, the annual fuel cost is only 8 million yuan. In the future, as the cost of mining uranium ore decreases and the cost of uranium enrichment will become lower and lower.

From a long-term perspective, nuclear power plants are still quite cost-effective.

Of course, the premise is that Li Weiguo must withstand the nagging from the cabinet and parliament, because the budget allocation of 200 million yuan is also a huge sum for the Chinese Empire.

After the decree to build a nuclear power plant in Mount Li was issued, Prime Minister Zhang Peilun hurriedly flew from Wuhan, the Greater Kyoto to Chang'an, Xijing, and personally lobbed Li Weiguo.

Of course, lobbying is only two words and there is no money.

"Your Majesty, the Imperial Academy of Sciences has invested 1 billion yuan as scientific research funds this year, accounting for as high as 50% of the total financial budget. In addition, this year's military budget has accounted for 90% of the total fiscal budget. This will add another 200 million yuan to the economic development this year!"

Zhang Peilun's words make sense. If fiscal expenditures are not invested in the economy, a cycle cannot be formed, and economic development will naturally be affected. This does not have a great impact on a small country with an economic backward economy, but for the Chinese Empire, as the most economically developed country in the world, it has a great impact.

Li Weiguo would not change his decision, but he was not unreasonable either.

"Economic development cannot be stopped, so we will convene an interim parliament, revise the budget, and increase the budget for economic investment."

Zhang Peilun was waiting for this sentence. He knew very well that he could not convince Li Weiguo to give up the construction of a nuclear power plant project, nor could he persuade Li Weiguo to reduce his military budget. Even if Li Weiguo had returned most of the rights to the cabinet and parliament, the thinking of imperial power supremacy has long been deeply rooted in the hearts of most ministers, including Zhang Peilun. This generation is difficult to change, and perhaps the next generation will truly drive the rights.

"Thank you, Your Majesty!"

Zhang Peilun happily took the order and left, and the imperial MPs waiting in Wuhan, Greater Kyoto were very happy to hear the news and immediately convened a parliament to significantly increase the economic development budget.

This time, the Chinese Empire doubled the amount of medium-term government bonds and sold a total of 2 billion yuan.

The Congress just passed a new bill to expand the scale of national debt, and a huge reaction occurred in the market. Countless individuals and companies from home and abroad, as well as civil groups, and civil groups, are scrambling to purchase national debts from the Chinese Empire.

As a result, in less than three days, 2 billion yuan of treasury bonds were sold out.

Faced with this result, the senior military and political leaders of the Chinese Empire, including Li Weiguo, were shocked.

That's a total of 2 billion treasury bonds!

It is the most valuable RMB in the world, and its purchasing power is equivalent to 20 billion US dollars in later generations.

This unusual signal made Li Weiguo alert.

You should know that anyone with a little IQ knows how much money you can't make for yourself, it all depends on patriotic enthusiasm.

Therefore, even if the people of the Chinese Empire are relatively wealthy and rich, they cannot buy 2 billion yuan of government bonds at once. It would be great if they could buy 500 million yuan of government bonds.

So who bought the other 1.5 billion treasury bonds?

The answer is about to come out, and it must come from abroad.

"Who bought the government bonds?"

Faced with Li Weiguo's questioning, the Minister of Finance hurriedly reported the statistics of the prepared list of government bonds to purchase.

Sure enough, the total amount of government bonds purchased by the Chinese Empire was less than 450 million yuan, and the remaining 1.55 billion yuan of government bonds were bought overseas.

Among them, the United States, Britain and Japan purchased the most government bonds, which were RMB 840 million, RMB 230 million and RMB 24 million respectively.

"Where are there more than 400 million left?"

"Report to Your Majesty, the remaining national debts are scattered around the world in small amounts, and are basically transactions between private groups."

Since the Chinese Empire's government bonds are allowed to be traded in the market, many Chinese Empire people will sell them to foreigners after purchasing the government bonds in exchange for a high price difference in the middle.

Of course, the price of the treasury bond itself remains unchanged. The Chinese Empire government will only exchange the face value of the treasury bonds for maturing, such as 10,000 yuan of RMB medium-term treasury bonds. If a foreigner spends 20,000 yuan to purchase, he will only receive a principal of 10,000 yuan and a few hundred yuan of interest when it expires.

This means that when foreigners purchase second-hand Chinese Empire national debts, they will inevitably suffer.

However, even if they suffer losses, foreigners are willing to buy it, or even purchase it on a large scale, digesting more than 1.5 billion yuan of treasury bonds, which is somewhat incredible.

But if you think about it carefully, it is reasonable.

Soon, Tang Shaoyi, the Minister of the Lifan Academy in charge of diplomacy, explained to Li Weiguo.

"Your Majesty, according to my inference, the reason why the American government and the British government purchased imperial government on a large scale even at the cost of spending money is that there is an intention to compete with the empire."

Tang Shaoyi's words instantly shocked everyone in the court.

However, Li Weiguo suddenly realized something. He did not make it clear, but continued to listen to Tang Shaoyi's judgment.

"Speak!"

Tang Shaoyi then continued to explain: "Your Majesty, you should be very clear that the empire's RMB is now the only universal payment currency in the world. Overseas trade settlements of various countries are based on RMB. Without RMB, the foreign trade settlements of various countries will be seriously affected, and this is one of them."

"The second is that when a country's RMB foreign exchange reserves reach a considerable scale, there will be a reverse effect, which I call foreign exchange coercion!"

Foreign exchange coercion, this is a new term, created by Tang Shaoyi, and for a moment, the court looked at each other.

However, Li Weiguo's heart became clearer and clearer. He had already guessed what Tang Shaoyi wanted to say.

Tang Shaoyi continued to explain: "Your Majesty, you may not know that since the end of the World War, the foreign exchange reserves of the United States, England, and Japan and other countries have become higher and higher. The United States' foreign exchange reserves have reached 5.13 billion yuan in recent years, and England's foreign exchange reserves have reached 2.3 billion yuan. Japan's economy is not high at all, but it can make the foreign exchange reserves reach 200 million yuan."

At this time, Zhang Peilun, as the Prime Minister, suddenly interrupted and asked: "Mr. Tang, the United States, Britain and Japan reserve RMB on a large scale, which is a good thing! The more RMB they reserve, the more materials the empire plundered from their country. For the people of the empire, we have made a big profit!"

Tang Shaoyi shook his head and said, "Making cheap is only temporary. In the long run, one day, the United States, England and Japan and other parliaments will spend the RMB and then use their own currency. This is essentially a fair foreign exchange exchange. But the problem is that the United States, England and Japan have been exporting various materials and products to the empire on a large scale to earn the empire's RMB foreign exchange, but rarely use foreign exchange to purchase the empire's materials and products. This is the fundamental reason why their foreign exchange reserves are rising year by year. Now they are still buying the empire's national debt at a loss, which is enough to arouse the empire's vigilance."

Many ministers did not understand and looked at the Minister of Finance Shen Xiaochuan, who was also the Secretary of Finance nominated by the new cabinet.

Tang Shaoyi is a foreign minister and has nothing to do with the finances. If he is general, it will embarrass Shen Xiaochuan, as the Finance Minister.

Shen Xiaochuan is also a person who wants to save face. He didn't understand what Tang Shaoyi said, but he had to stand up.

"Mr. Tang has forgotten that England, America and Japan are both defeated countries. Now under the military jurisdiction of the empire, they can only please the empire to survive. Therefore, they purchased foreign exchange from the empire on a large scale to alleviate the inflation in the empire and prevent the depreciation of the RMB. There is nothing to be wary of."

Tang Shaoyi was waiting for Shen Xiaochuan to speak, so he immediately counterattacked: "Now, the total foreign exchange RMB held by these three countries has reached 7.6 billion yuan, which is close to the empire's GDP for one year. If the three countries secretly unite and sell the RMB in a concentrated manner when there is a problem with the empire's economy, it will cause serious harm to the empire's financial and currency market. Isn't this a threat?"

At that moment, the whole court was quiet.
Chapter completed!