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Searching For Alternatives To China's Rare Earth Monopoly
KantIsDead writes "MIT's Technology Review adds to the ongoing discussion of China's monopoly on rare earth metals, an issue that was temporarily catapulted to national attention during China's rare earth embargo of Japan. The current article focuses on the search for alternatives to rare earth metals that would undercut China's monopoly and allow nations to develop their industry without fearing the hand of a Chinese embargo. From the article: 'In the US, the Chinese dominance of rare-earth mineral production has prompted a surge of funding focused on developing permanent magnets that use less, if any, rare-earth materials, such as nearly $7 million from the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy (ARPA-E). In one of these projects, University of Nebraska researchers are working to enhance permanent magnets made with an alloy iron and cobalt, or FeCo. This class of materials is sold today, but delivers half or less of the power of the best rare-earth-based magnets. The Nebraska researchers will focus on ways to dope the structural matrix of these alloys with traces of other elements, thereby rearranging their molecular geometry to create stronger, more durable permanent magnetic materials.'"
There are lots of rare earths in other countries. China is just the cheapest place to extract it. If the price goes up then other deposits will be able to be brought online economically.
Considering all the investment China is putting into Africa at the moment they are probably one step ahead in that department...
Divide a cake by zero. Is it still a cake?
Chorus Motors is working with Boeing to put their electric wheel motors in Boeing's new aircraft. They are powered by the plane's APU instead of using the engines.
http://choruscars.com/
Their technology results in a smaller motor with higher torque that does not require an assist from an ICE at higher speeds in an electric vehicle. It also does not use any rare earths.
Molycorp is restarting the rare earths mine in the U.S. but the industry to process the ore will take 15 years to redevelop.
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-07-28/molycorp-s-ipo-aims-at-chinese-grip-on-smart-bombs.html
"While U.S. deposits also exist in several states such as Idaho, Wyoming and Utah, they are still being explored and could take as many as 15 years before becoming fully operational, according the GAO report."
A much simpler method would be to just drop China from the WTO and have nations around the world reinstate their trade barriers against their unfairly priced goods on the open market.
But that would be easy.
And direct.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Molycorp is restarting the rare earths mine in the U.S. but the industry to process the ore will take 15 years to redevelop.
http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-07-28/molycorp-s-ipo-aims-at-chinese-grip-on-smart-bombs.html
"While U.S. deposits also exist in several states such as Idaho, Wyoming and Utah, they are still being explored and could take as many as 15 years before becoming fully operational, according the GAO report."
It's alot easier to get out of industries than it is to get in. I suspect this won't be the last industry we'll want to redevelop. It was foolish to get out of it in the first place. The same can be said for other industries.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
In other words, we (the West) have artifically created this situation by shutting down our own mines with labor and evironmental regulations, while allowing China (with no real enforcement of labor or environmental regulations, even if they are on the books) to dominate the market. I saw a TV spot about this a while back and apparently there was an operating mine in California as recently as 10 years ago, which simply wasn't able to compete with Chinese prices because the California mine had the expense of actually complying with the US environmental regulations. That gives the Chinese an artificial price advantage.
The market for these goods are mostly export markets in Japan, North America, and Europe, so this is in our power to control. To stimulate production in the west, we could do one of two things : 1) eliminate our own self-imposed regulations (perhaps unacceptabe from an environmental point of view) or 2) eliminate the artifical price advantage that the chinese have from not having regulations. I would choose # 2. We need only tax chinese imports and goods with chinese components. For example, say a motor from Japan uses magnets and is being exported to the USA, then the manufacturer would need to demonstrate that the magnet was made from non-chinese metals to be exempt from an import tariff. Once the artifical price advantage of the chinese component is nullfied, the manufacturer would be willing to pay higher prices from other non-chinese mines. Then other mines outside China would arise in the market. As an added side-effect, the Chinese might even begin regulating their own industry to get out from under the tariff.
There were many mines in North America. They were shut down because to comply with US/Canadian environmental regulation and pay the wages here would put them in a huge competitive disadvantage versus the Chinese mines. You just can't compete with places where they put environment and worker protection at such low places in their priorities.
The only possible interpretation of any research whatever in the 'social sciences' is: some do, some don't
as others have noted, there are enough rare earths, they aren't that rare. it's just that china, wihtout any work force laws or legal protections for its workers it is allowed to treat like slaves of the state, is able to parlay that into cheaper prices. so mining elsewhere withers and atrophies
if push came to shove, we can start new mines rather quickly
what worries me is manufacturing know how and infrastructure. it takes a generation to have a good manufacturing base, at least. and i'm not talking machines, i'm talking people. the manufacturing base is dying in the west, as everything moves to china
this is where china can really squeeze us, and we won't be able to react fast enough, because in a decade or two, we won't know how to make anything, it will all be made in china
we need to keep our manufacturing base, the whole spectrum of technologies and know how and expertise, humming along here
a rare earth is a rare earth, whether dug up in california or inner mongolia
but that 70 year old guy who knows how all about phase transitions in the manufacture of specialty glasses, or that 80 year old guy who knows all about resistance settings on collodial separation equipment, or whatever: when they go, its gone, the only other brain with that info is in shanghai
it's like us in the west watching iran trying to build a nuclear bomb and stumbling in its lack of knowhow. in 20-30 years, in a conflict, china could be in the same position, just watching us try to manufacture all sorts of high specialized industrial applications and us over here going "how do you do this?" "i dunno, the guy who knew that died 20 years ago" "well where's his knowledge backup?" "well, the bank of china bought that portfolio 10 years ago and moved it all to guangzhou, no one at the time thought it was a big deal"
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Those Chilean miners are damn lucky they weren't in China (or some part of Africa for that matter), if they were it would have been a write-off case kept away from the press and officials would have said "nothing to see folks, move along" despite protests from friends and family.
I think that says a lot about a country, when what most people would consider a third world nation does a better job of looking out for its people.
Not to mention that there is a lot of potential ability to recycle Rare Earth metals from electronics yet for whatever reason we keep shipping them off to China to be disassembled.
If you don't want China to have all the Rare Earth Metals... STOP GIVING IT BACK TO THEM.
3) make up a miracle new technology. Good luck on that one.
Your miracle new technology is ready. (You're welcome, and thanks for the luck.)
It's called the AC induction motor, and it uses no permanent magnets--only copper and/or iron and/or aluminum. A fine example was in GM's EV-1 in the 1990s, and its descendants live on at AC Propulsion, and, consequently, Tesla Motors. Permanent magnet motors are likely to retain slightly higher efficiency, but the difference in cost of the construction materials will allow the market to take care of the rare earth "problem".