California Rare-Earth Mine Reopens

burnin1965 writes in to let us know that the looming crisis in rare-earth materials (which we have discussed recently) has prompted Molycorp, the erstwhile operator of a California mine closed in 2002, to announce plans to reopen it. "With increasing prices on rare earth ore, tariffs raised by the Chinese government, and the threat of embargoes that would damage United States high-tech manufacturing Molycorp now has the needed incentive to reopen the California Mountain Pass mine. They will spend the capital needed to implement badly needed updates to environmental controls that will mitigate the radioactive waste water releases that plagued the mine in the past. Chinese imports in the 90s nearly halved ore prices and the California mine experienced multiple failures in environmental controls that resulted in the release of huge volumes of radioactive waste water. Updating the mine to address the environmental issues was not financially viable due to the cheap Chinese imports so it was closed in 2002." Within two years the mine could be producing 20% of the amount of rare earths we import from China.

Comments

Molycorp's production is going straight to Japan

[SuperBanana]

Despite the story's GO AMERICA slant, a lot of material is going straight to Japan, where most of it is consumed in the first place. Like to Hitachi: http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6BK5PL20101221

Oh look. They also signed deals with Sumitomo and Mitsubishi: http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/business/T101219002181.htm

They got huge piles of cash from Sumitomo, Mitsubishi, and Hitachi...which is why it's hilarious to hear the CEO of Molycorp waving American flags in various quotes. Oh, and Molycorp's stock has shot up since their IPO in July: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-07-28/molycorp-s-ipo-aims-at-chinese-grip-on-smart-bombs.html

Also, how interesting that the EPA announces cleanup plan of Molycorp site just a few days ago: http://abcnews.go.com/Business/wireStory?id=12460111

The EPA said contaminated material from the Molycorp site includes about 328 million tons of acid-generating waste rock, more than 100 million tons of tailings and acid-rock drainage at the mine and seepage at the tailings facility.

Anyone want to place bets on whether or not the US government will press environmental regulations on Molycorp this time, now that national security interests are involved?

I burn in hell for demanding responsibility?

[spun]

Progress does not consist of a small group of people enriching themselves at everyone else's expense. Progress consists of better things for everyone, not a trade off where some people must lose in order for others to win.

All I ask is that people pay all the costs they generate, rather than asking others to pay. Why should I burn in hell for asking that people take responsibility for their actions, and how their actions affect others?

I'm all for real progress, but poisoning people, animals, plants and ecosystems in order to extract useful minerals is not progress. When we extract those minerals without harming others, that is progress. Making things better for some by making things worse for others is not progress.

Re:Molycorp's production is going straight to Japa

[DCFusor]

No, it's not all going to Japan, just some. A lot of the Japanese companies are going to use this stuff *here* and might as well, because many of them manufacture little things like cars, um, here to sell to us. Molycorp is going mine-to-magnet right here, and that's where the value added is. I'm glad of it, having bought quite a lot of their stock when it was priced about half what it is today...yum. (I trade for a living, and this has been one of the good trades this year).

RE mining has been an environmental problem for a long time. For whatever reason, the RE ores always seem to have a lot of thorium in them also -- there's your radioactive issue, and why we don't just refine and use that too, I'm clueless, as the price of uranium is also doing well (and I own stock in that too that is also doing well). As the Indians know, it's part of a useful fuel cycle as it can be bred into fissile fuel just like U238 can be. The other issue with RE's is that most of them are so chemically similar that they can be real tough to get apart into the individual RE metals. GM and others have done some work on making pretty good magnets with "what you get" rather than what you'd have in a perfect world, slightly reduced performance compared to perfect, but far lower costs at a few stages of the process.

At the instant of this writing, MCP is up 10.2% *in one day* which is about a usual annual return from the stock markets. REMX, an ETF that tracks RE's is only up 0.87%. No guts, no glory. I don't know about the other bucks for sure, but the profits trading on MCP are going to this redneck engineer American to be spent here. I'm sure like any news driven stock, that it will either go back down, or flounder around awhile before going up again. That's why I call myself a trader -- I don't invest, I trade, and know when the heck to get out and put the money back into first bank of mattress....

Copper is doing pretty well these days too, some due to manipulation, but in general we're finding out that Malthus was right, just in the wrong century. Won't be many decades before old landfills become a "mineral rights" issue. We really do live in a finite place.

Re:Good!

[spun]

Who said we were a civilized country anymore? We're being run by a band of brigands intent on looting and pillaging rather than inventing and building, just like a third world banana republic. We ship raw materials and import finished goods, just like a banana republic. We lack any national health care system, when every other civilized nation has one. We execute people. We have more people in prison, per capita, than any other developed nation. We have a higher infant mortality rate than other developed countries. In all ways, we are becoming an uncivilized nation, and I didn't even mention reality television.