🧠 Food for thought

Implications, context, and why it matters.

China’s ‘nuclear power bank’ is nearing commercial reality

• Linglong One is expected to produce 1 billion kilowatt-hours a year, enough for about 526,000 households and large enough to back an industrial park in Changjiang county 1.
• The 125-megawatt (gross) reactor could become the world’s first onshore commercial small modular reactor (SMR) to start operating, though it has not entered commercial service yet 2.
• Its steady, safety-focused design has led to the nickname “nuclear power bank,” which could fit AI computing centers that rely on uninterrupted electricity 3.
• Linglong One sits within a global small modular reactor market forecast to reach US$28.9 billion by 2034 4.

China’s AI token growth tracks lower prices and higher power demand

• OpenRouter is a platform that lets developers access and compare AI models from different providers. By February 2026, Chinese models accounted for 61% of token consumption among the ten most-used models on OpenRouter, based on OpenRouter data reported by third parties 5.
• Third-party reporting tied that shift to pricing, with leading Chinese models listed at about 10 to 20 times cheaper than U.S. rivals, plus claims of similar performance on programming benchmarks, which are tests that compare how well models handle coding tasks 6.
• Programming-related usage on OpenRouter rose from about 11% of total token volume in early 2025 to more than 50% in late 2025, according to OpenRouter’s “State of AI” study 7.
• The surge in token-heavy AI work matches China’s policy push to coordinate computing capacity with electricity supply in its 2026 Government Work Report 8.