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US Sits On Supply of Rare, Tech-Crucial Minerals
We've recently discussed China's position as the linchpin of the world's supply of rare earths, and their rumblings about restricting exports of of these materials crucial to the manufacture of everything from batteries to wind turbines. Now an anonymous reader sends this MSNBC piece on the status of the US's supply of rare earths. "China supplies most of the rare earth minerals found in technologies such as hybrid cars, wind turbines, computer hard drives, and cell phones, but the US has its own largely untapped reserves that could safeguard future tech innovation. Those reserves include deposits of both 'light' and 'heavy' rare earths... 'There is already a shortage, because there are companies that already can't get enough material,' said Jim Hedrick, a former USGS rare earth specialist who recently retired. 'No one [in the US] wants to be first to jump into the market because of the cost of building a separation plant,' Hedrick explained. ... [S]uch a plant requires thousands of stainless steel tanks holding different chemical solutions to separate out all the individual rare earths. The upfront costs seem daunting. Hedrick estimated that opening just one mine and building a new separation plant might cost anywhere from $500 million to $1 billion and would require a minimum of eight years. [But the CEO of a rare earth supply company said] 'From what I see, security of supply is going to be more important than the prices.'"
If these rare earths are so rare and valuable, and only going to become more so, why should the upfront cost matter? The plant should still make a huge profit, unless I am misunderstanding basic economics.
Seems people in America only want to invest in fraudulent get rich quick gambling schemes these days. Actual resource extraction and manufacturing is for the peons.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Buy cheap stuff from abroad while available and cheap. Mine locally if overseas supplies are restricted or prices get too high.
For the same reason they aren't drilling for oil off the coasts. You know, if you don't start now, it's going to take even LONGER before production is spun up. And by then, we'll have yet another dumb ass in office and we can't mine this stuff out for whatever reason (NIMBY, clean air, whatever). Even if the company stockpiles it, the material is still an asset and can be used when the Chinese decide to close their borders because of another cultural revolution.
'There is already a shortage, because there are companies that already can't get enough material,' said Jim Hedrick
May be, it's not just a shortage, but a cost of doing business. The real question is: if those companies were willing to pay ten times the amount for those rare earth minerals, would they be able to get them? Probably, I think. Personally, I think this is just another industry that's trying to get the government to subsidize 90% of its infrastructure costs.
One thing that does not seem to be talked about much is that all rare earth metals will be completely depleted, in any practically extractable reserves, within the next 50-100 years. The response to the shortage of rare earth metals seen here is similar to a fishing fleet who is pushing the fish population to total extinction through overfishing, doubling the number of fishing boats in order to make up production decline... it only speeds up the extinction process, and that repeatedly we see fishing industries opposing any efforts to allow fish populations to rebound, thus dooming destruction of the very fish population being fished, forever. This is short sighted thinking, it is far easier to carry on business as usual for fisherman even though the species is going extinct, in the short term, in the long term that behaviour leads to a much worse outcome.
A difference with these metals is they cannot regenerate. Once they are gone, thats it. Still today metals are being used like its an endless supply, and people throw away everything from electronics to batteries which contian precious metals. In the process, we are throwing away our future. Knowing this one realises that with all environmental and resource issues, recycling is not a joke, and the people who have been pushing for it desperately are not "environmental nutjobs", they understand what is really going on and the true ramifications. I find this is true with nearly all environmental issues which are often ignored by the vested interests from pollution which threatens to severely damage our health adn well being to resource depletion.
The concerns over metal are also existing for oil as well, which is now predicted to peak as soon as 2014, that is a question of when, not if.
See, first we eat all of their pie, cheaply.
Then, when they're all out of ingredients to make cheap pie, we open up our fridge and start making
our own pies.
Then we can eat our pies, and if they want pies then they'll have to pay a lot more for it. Because we've got the only pie in town.
Support FSF: Stop thinking with your wallet, and think with your imagination. (cc/non-commercial)
When the Manhattan Project needed rare earths, they turned to Frank Spedding, a chemist at Iowa State. He managed to get the job done with a lot fewer resources that what is being discussed here. I fear that we Americans have become too lazy and in love with a quick return on the buck. Some things are hard work, even if you are really bright. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Spedding. He also created the Ames Laboratory, the one near Offit Air Force Base, not the Ames Research Center near the Navy's Moffitt Field.
Think global, act loco
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Thanks for the advice, Sam Walton
IIRC Sam Walton believed in buying locally, or at least domestically. Corporations do not always continue with the policies and practices preferred by their founders.
We have all sorts of off-shore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, and when Hurricanes Katrina and Rita came through back-to-back, none of 'em leaked a drop. There were some minor spills from beached tankers, but none from the drilling platforms and piping. It can most certainly be done safely. We're already doing it wherever NIMBY political obstructions don't prevent it.
I own a mineral deposit in a central Nevada mining district, though not with any intent to exploit it. I am quite familiar with the regulatory details of mining in the US. It is very different than the caricatures spoon-fed to the public by activist organizations.
Environmental impact studies are fine and necessary. Archaeological impact studies are mostly bullshit; the region is littered from end-to-end with artifacts leftover from the Lake Lahontan civilization (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Lahontan), you can find stuff everywhere if you know what to look for. So everyone just pretends that there are no artifacts.
There are two big problems that really make it impossible to profitably mine US deposits. First, there is an environmental lawsuit industry that thrives on delaying the opening of mines until the companies run out of money to deal with them. The lawsuits are mostly bullshit about hypothetical habitats for endangered species and the like; they aren't credible, but that isn't the point and some courts are willing to entertain them indefinitely.
Second, a big problem is that if you pick up a rock, you own it. In the western US mining districts, those rocks are laden with natural concentrations of all sorts of low-value heavy minerals that are magically transformed into "toxic waste" the minute you touch it. This has arguably been the biggest killer of new mining. The obligation to scrub natural mineral formations of elements with no economical value very substantially increases the cost because you end up "mining" metals that have no value. This is particularly problematic for things like rare earth metals -- the mineral complexes are intrinsically "toxic waste" under standard regulatory regimes. It doesn't matter that they are natural, the mining company is obligated to treat nature as a superfund site.
Regulations regarding arsenic in the water have been similarly exploited by environmental activist groups to shut down mining. In many places in the western US, the background levels of arsenic in the groundwater is naturally several times higher than the EPA limits because of the local mineral formations. The way it works now is that if you do mining near those formations, you become responsible for bringing the natural background levels within EPA guidelines -- a fool's errand. So mining companies avoid areas where the local arsenic levels exceed EPA guidelines, lest they become responsible for cleaning up arsenic they didn't produce.
Environmental activists have very cleverly created a regulatory framework that holds mining companies responsible for natural mineral distributions even if the mining companies are in no way responsible. This has effectively outlawed heavy metal mining in the western US because the environment is naturally full of heavy minerals.
oil, oil shale, and natural gas that we cant touch thanks to environmentalists and their willing accomplices in the Gov't... what make you think we will be allowed to tap these resources?
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
That sounds like a round about way of saying that it would be profitable to mine if you were allowed to leave your tailings, and the waste from the refining processes in big piles on the ground.
-- QED
Petroleum is used for a lot more than energy (I hear it makes a great jelly). That said, once electric cars become the norm, people might still use petroleum for energy in niche (expensive) markets like jet fuel.
That sounds like a round about way of saying that it would be profitable to mine if you were allowed to leave your tailings, and the waste from the refining processes in big piles on the ground.
One man's trash is another man's treasure. The government has to chase people off with shotguns to keep them away from beryllium mines' tailings. The fact that GP brings up that all this stuff is classified as "Toxic waste" means that it is unprofitable to use the entire buffalo on a corporate level. If you want to mine rare earth metals, there WILL be companies who will purchase your tailings from you for what cheaper metals they can tear out of them, but then what do they do with it? They can't sell it back to the mine they purchased it from. They can't store it anywhere, because it's "toxic waste" when it could just be chalk matrix that could safely be dumped next to the nearest mountain -- except it might squish a scorpion or two. So this secondary market becomes unprofitable/overregulated and therefore nonexistent.
I am the richest astronaut ever to win the superbowl.
When was the last time we had an amendment that actually impacted the operation of government?
Amendment 27 just deals with legislators not granting themselves immediate pay raises. This amendment is nowhere near the scale of what OP is suggesting. It's addressing an administrative detail, not a critical issue.
Since when is the law black and white? You're deluding yourself if you think it's so simple. It's open to interpretation, and if I choose a loose interpretation, that is my perogative. It's open to debate in the form of cases before the court... if the law were black-and-white, we wouldn't need lawyers and judges.
Just or unjust, whether you agree or disagree with me, the truth of the matter is that the law is exactly what we make of it. And what we've made of it is a fuzzy mess that you can put a fine point on... but so can your opposition.
I'm not advocating disregard of the law... I'm advocating understanding that the law must be mutable, that our Constitutional process for changing the law is broken (through lack of use), and thus should not be held as a requirement for action. Because inaction through lack of a useful channel for authorization is, in many cases, worse than taking action outside the scope of the Constitution.
Note that I think we still need to use the Constitution as a guiding document, and should do our best to only deviate when necessary. It's just that getting ANY meaningful amendment to the Constitution passed is impossible. Our stupid 15-second-soundbite politics have killed our ability to have meaningful political dialogue on a national stage.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
> the US has its own largely untapped reserves that could safeguard future tech innovation
Oh, sure, that'll help. With the lunatic left running things we will never manage to open another mine - no matter how crucial the material might be to "future tech". In fact, it's usefulness in future tech is probably proportional to the amount of protest it will create at proposals to mine it.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/softwood_lumber/
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
We have international courts and trade agreements. If they don't play fair, they can get slapped with tariffs or outright bans. And if they won't play ball at all, well, by our own rules we should not be trading with them.
You seem to be under the impression that our international treaties were written in a way to provide a fair shot for communities that favor strong environmental and labor protections over bottom-feeding rent-seekers.
Unfortunately, the WTO cares far more about trade barriers than the environment. While the WTO recognizes the right of nations to protect human health and their natural resources, it does not recognize any restraint on trade in "like products." So, for example, if you want to ban tuna caught in a way that threatens dolphins, you can't do that under WTO/GATT precedent if the end products (canned tuna) is the same. It doesn't matter that the method of making the product is different, and that customers may be concerned. Dolphin-safe & dolphin-unsafe canned meat is physically the same.
Here is a good list summarizing the big mixed-bag of WTO & GATT v. the environment lawsuits. Generally speaking, a law that governs the effects of a product once on US soil are fine, as long as you treat foreign and domestic products equally. A law that tries to govern how a product is made in another country which is indistinguishable from an equivalent product made elsewhere is generally not okay.
Reading about WTO/GATT cases is often very frustrating. Sometimes it's because the international bodies make decisions that seem grossly obstructionist to protecting the environment. Other times it's because countries are trying to hide flagrantly protectionist measures against foreign goods (while safeguarding domestic goods) under the rubric of protecting health & the environment. (Take the Thai cigarettes case, where the US sued Thailand for blocking cigarette imports for health reasons ...but still allowed the sale of domestic cigarettes.)
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
I predict within twenty years or so, you can do this kind of separation in your backyard. Rare Earths are actually pretty common. Some people who realize that may not want to put in all the money for a conventional plant?
Meanwhile, the US spends a trillion dollars a year of "defense". But can't be bothered to have a plant in the country to produce strategic materials... What an odd notion of "security".
If you're going to bother to set up such a complex extraction facility, why not go all the way, for exactly the reasons you outline? This sort of process talked about around 1980 can extract and separate anything in there from regular old rock or seawater:
"Advanced Automation for Space Missions"
http://www.islandone.org/MMSG/aasm/
"Flowsheet and process equations for the HF acid-leach process"
http://www.islandone.org/MMSG/aasm/AASM5E.html#f541
The chemistry was thought doable even then. Look at the things they worried about being infeasible back then: "If each of the 13 sector components is as complex as the HF acid leach system (certainly a gross overestimate), then the total computer control capability required is about 6 megabytes or 9.4X10e7 bits using 16-bit words."
I have far more than that capacity on my cell phone...
The problem is that in the USA, all these industrial processes are separated due to the logic of the "free market", so no one can plan comprehensive materials extraction, production, and recycling facilities of the sort NASA was envisioning thirty years ago...
But no, the USA has to make plans to attack China (to the cost of trillions if the USA was so foolish) to keep them in line because there are not enough "rare earths" around...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_earth_element
"The term "rare earth" arises from the rare earth minerals from which they were first isolated, which were uncommon oxide-type minerals (earths) found in Gadolinite extracted from one mine in the village of Ytterby, Sweden. However, with the exception of the highly-unstable promethium, rare earth elements are found in relatively high concentrations in the earth's crust, with cerium being the 25th most abundant element in the earth's crust at 68 parts per million."
Do you ever get the feeling somebody is just laughing at us?
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Well, only if it was opposite day and you were a leprechaun.
Since you are going to pretend not to understand, let me simplify.
A rock on the ground is nature, a rock in you hand is a 20 million dollar hazmat cleanup.
Don't act like your green, ghoulish, commie, contribute nothing, luddite, hypocritical brain doesn't understand what the man said. Little fucks like you are what causes the chasm with rational people who want to protect the environment. Do I think we should dump heavy metals into water supplies? No you douche bag conceived fuck hole.
If I were to ask you if you wanted to help me start a not-for-profit to keep legitimate mining in court and from ever breaking ground, what would you say? You would be giving me a reach around in the next Denny's parking lot. I know what you're saying, a reach around in a parking lot that doesn't seem ergonomic, well fucker that just proves my point, if your first thought is about the logistics of a Denny's parking lot reach around instead of the weight on society that frivolous lawsuits cost everyone you've reached your anti-epiphany. You don't matter so you get in other peoples way. While people try to make something worthwhile you (and people like you) bite at their ankles like my 8 mo. old puppy, except my puppy now has funding and a lawyer.
"In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash"