More than a month later, the information provided by Li Mingyang was confirmed.

On December 12, 2040, the president of the US Electric Power Company officially announced that it had successfully developed a second-generation controlled fusion reactor fueled by deuterium and tritium. It will start construction of the first controlled fusion nuclear power plant in the United States by the end of the month, and is expected to be connected to the grid by the end of 2045 to generate electricity.

Three days later, the US Federal Congress passed a bill to provide tax preferential policies and government-guaranteed loans to companies developing and building controllable fusion nuclear power plants, encourage and support enterprises to improve power generation technology, and provide equal compensation to enterprises that demolish thermal power plants. [bsp;   It can be said that the purpose of this bill is to catch up with China in power generation technology.

You should know that a country's energy technology fundamentally determines the overall production efficiency of society, and the most critical thing is power generation technology. According to the calculation results given by some Western scholars, every 1% increase in power generation efficiency can increase the overall production efficiency of society by 2%. Compared with traditional thermal power plants, the overall power generation efficiency of controllable fusion nuclear power plants has increased by more than 100%. If all replace traditional thermal power plants, it means that the overall production efficiency of society will increase by 200%, that is, the labor utilization rate will also increase by 200%.

Of course, this is just the result of theoretical calculations.

According to China's experience in promoting controllable fusion nuclear power plants, if all power plants are replaced, social production efficiency can be increased by more than 50%.

Even so, it was an amazing progress.

You should know that in the past fifty years, information technology has only increased the overall productivity of society by 50%.

If controlled fusion nuclear technology is promoted and applied and drives the development of related industries, such as electric drive technology completely replacing internal combustion engines, it will have more significant effects on improving the overall production efficiency of society and fundamentally change the appearance of human civilization.

After the bill was introduced, it immediately achieved immediate results.

Before the Christmas holiday, five American power companies had applied for tax cuts and government-guaranteed loans on the grounds of building controllable fusion nuclear power plants. Three of them had come up with plans to close thermal power plants and submitted subsidies to the government based on this.

With full commercial operation, the United States' controlled fusion nuclear power plant project is simply a sprout of mushrooms after a rain.

Of course, as early as four years ago, China introduced similar encouraging policies and fully supported private enterprises in building controllable fusion nuclear power plants through commercial operations. Otherwise, when a global natural disaster broke out, China would not have the possibility of promoting agricultural factories with extremely high power consumption on a large scale.

After the New Year's Day holiday in 2041, the U.S. federal government and the Congressional Energy Commission began to approve corporate reports.

On January 5, at the urging of the Congressional Energy Commission, the outgoing US president approved the last presidential decree during his term at the White House, which is to acquire 49% of the patent ownership of the controllable fusion nuclear reactor from the US electric power company for $160 billion.

Two days later, the presidential decree was passed almost unanimously in both the Senate and the House of Representatives.

It can be said that this is an extremely critical measure.

In the field of controllable fusion technology, the United States adopts a development model of state funding and enterprise development, so the US federal government only has 51% patent ownership. Although this ratio is enough to allow the US federal government to control decisions and decide who to sell intellectual property to, American power companies are the largest power companies in the United States, and can make a fortune by relying on 49% patent ownership. To put it simply, American power companies have a monopoly position and can suppress other power companies by charging high patent usage fees.

This is obviously not a good thing to encourage market competition.

Interestingly, because only 49% of the patent ownership is available, U.S. Electric Power does not violate the Antitrust Act.

The result is that patent ownership can only be repurchased from the US electricity company in the form of a presidential decree.

This creates a very interesting phenomenon, that is, the US federal government must use taxpayers' money to buy back the technology that was originally funded and developed by taxpayers.

To put it bluntly, it was to give US$160 billion to the American Electric Power Company.

Later, an American lawyer sued the federal government specifically for this matter, demanding that the federal government make a reasonable explanation. The lawsuit ended up hitting the Supreme Court. Five of the nine Supreme Justices supported the plaintiff, and the US federal government had to reduce the federal tax revenue by $160 billion.

Of course, this has no negative impact on the great development of power in the United States.

After the federal government has all the patent use rights, any power company with sufficient capital can obtain patent use rights at a relatively low price.

More importantly, this paves the way for the United States to export controlled fusion nuclear technology.

To put it bluntly, as long as the federal government is willing and supported by Congress, it can sell the relevant technologies of controlled fusion nuclear power plants to power companies in any country. Because the ownership belongs to the federal government, the income from the sale of patent use rights will be directly included in the treasury.

In this regard, the United States has obvious advantages than China.

The reason is very simple. Most of the patents of China's controllable fusion nuclear power plants are not in the hands of the government, but in the hands of private enterprises that invest and develop related technologies. Therefore, even if the patent use rights are sold, the government can only get a part of them. Moreover, when selling, private enterprises will definitely not consider the national strategy too much, but put corporate interests first, which will not help much in expanding market share.

In fact, private enterprises that had mastered relevant technologies were more willing to build power stations in other countries than sell their technology to power companies in other countries. By 2042, private power companies in China even formed alliances to prohibit technology output, but instead sold electricity directly.

The result is that with five years ahead of the construction of controllable fusion nuclear power plants, China's relevant technologies quickly surpassed the United States in the international market. By the end of 2042, only Pakistan, North Korea and Malaysia had built controllable fusion nuclear power plants, and other countries purchased electricity from China. In this year, the United States had sold the relevant technologies to Canada, Mexico, the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and India, and was negotiating technology sales with more than a dozen countries including Brazil, Argentina, Nigeria.

Of course, this incident also caused reflection by the Chinese government.

As a result, at the end of 2042, the Chinese government invested in the acquisition of all technologies related to the second-generation controllable fusion nuclear power plants, and the state invested in the later development, and promised that private enterprises participating in the preliminary development work would be able to obtain the right to use for free during commercial promotion.

Of course, these are all later stories.

In early 2041, after the US federal government took back the patent ownership, the US Electric Power Company signed a contract with the Indian government. At the cost of selling 100% pricing power of the national power grid within 20 years, the US Electric Power Company assisted the Indian Power Company in building five controllable fusion nuclear power plants with an installed capacity of 50 million kilowatts, and Chengpiao Astronomy Power Generation. Since then, the US Electric Power Company has paid dividends from the controllable fusion nuclear power plants built by the Indian Power Company through technology investment.

This agreement completely breaks through China's bottom line.

You should know that India's power gap in 2040 was less than 30 million kilowatts, and most of the time it was to ensure that industrial production was not affected by civilian power limit. Therefore, India increased its power supply by 250 million kilowatts within five years in order to expand the scale of industry, especially the military industry.

It can be said that these five controllable fusion nuclear power plants will become the basis for India to establish a military industrial system.

More importantly, this shows India's determination to expand its armaments.

According to the agreement, American power companies will obtain 20 years of power pricing power, which can make huge profits in India by raising electricity prices. For Indian people, this means that when power production efficiency is greatly improved, they will also pay higher electricity bills. It can be said that as long as the Indian government does not have a more important strategic purpose, it will not sacrifice the interests of Indian citizens who hold votes.

In fact, it was this agreement that led to the collapse of the Indian central government in two months.

However, the ruling rulers who returned to power through the election did not abolish the agreement, but only made the US electricity companies promise that the average annual increase in electricity prices would not exceed 5% through negotiation.

For Indians, this may be a good thing, but for China, it means that war is inevitable.

At that time, the United States' behavior in India had already aroused dissatisfaction among other countries.

The EU was the most active. When attending the EU summit, the French President suggested that the US's electricity monopoly in India had destroyed market rules, not only harming the interests of the Indian people, but also harming the interests of all investors in India.

Of course, this also includes the interests of French companies.

However, protests are protests, and the World Trade Organization has long become a decoration. It is impossible for the United States and India to stop cooperation because of protests from other countries.

Besides, other countries cannot sanction the United States and India, especially the United States.

You know, at that time, all EU countries, including France, were still queuing up to negotiate with the United States to introduce controllable fusion nuclear power plants.

Probably, protests are useless, and the Chinese government is too lazy to protest.

Just to offset the U.S. influence in South Asia, the Chinese government promoted electricity cooperation plans between several private enterprises and Pakistan in that month, and conducted in-depth negotiations with other South Asian countries on electricity output, promising to provide compensation for power procurement.

To put it bluntly, the Chinese government is paying money to help other countries purchase electricity from China.

In order to be legally reasonable, the National Congress then passed a tax increase bill for external power transmission, that is, when power companies export electricity, they must pay higher taxes to fill the loopholes in government subsidies. Obviously, this is a different way to allow power companies to reduce the profit margins of external power transmission.

Of course, these are administrative measures.
Chapter completed!