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Japanese Team Finds New Source of Rare Earth Elements
gyaku_zuki writes "As reported in the BBC, a Japanese survey team has discovered 'vast' quantities of rare earths in international waters in the Pacific Ocean. The search for alternative sources of these expensive elements (used in common consumer electronics including mobile phones) was intensified recently after a territory dispute with China, which produces more than 90% of the world's rare earths, resulted in China blocking export to Japan."
...let's dredge the ocean floor, history has shown us that has zero ecological impact :rollseyes:
The elements are probably down there because we've been dumping all our e-Waste into the ocean. We could probably just build a drilling platform on that texas-sized mass of plastic floating out there and start raking in the dough.
China only has "90%" of the world's production because they were able to undersell and close suppliers outside China. As China restricts exports, the price climbs and the suppliers outside China resume business.
Media and some politicians have been spinning this one as if China holds 90% or somesuch assnumber of the world's resource. Is that still going on? I know it took BBC two weeks to wake up to that one.
is the Glomar Explorer when we need it?
The problem is that the concentration of rare earths are not enough to be economically viable.
These ocean deposits are about 1,000 to 2,000 ppm which is about the same as the red sludge that was spilt in Hungary last year.
it says the depth of this find is between 11,000 and 15,000 feet (3,500-6,000 meters). I'm not sure a mining operation at that depth is feasible, or at least, cost effective.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
the Great Pirate Era Begins!!
This is silly rare earths are not rare, just toxic to refine from ore.
China has the market cornered because they don't give a shit that they dump toxic sludge doing it.
Can't be that much different than deep-sea cobalt nugget mining. Howard Hughes was all over that.
Never mind. That was actually a really cool ruse to raise a sunken Soviet nuclear sub. I can't believe it's not a movie, yet.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
So does the country who can get their flag down there first get to stake their claim on the deposits?
Slashdot stories get a little icon. The icon for this story is the great wall of China. Not exactly Japanese.
OTOH, the Chinese caused everyone else in the world to go looking for rare earth elements by cutting off the supply. Rare earth elements aren't particularly rare. They are quite expensive to process though so production moved to China to take advantage of cheap labor and lax environmental standards. The result of the Chinese embargo is that our rare earth production facilities are starting up again.
Or, as The Register reports, Japan has found gigatonnes of mud in the deep ocean....
There are rare elements in your back garden. Japan has found some under the sea. But the concentration they've found still means having to dig thousands of tonnes of mud up from the deep ocean and run it through millions of gallons of acid and other toxic chemicals to separate the rare earths from the common minerals. Could be costly. China's angle is that they have them on land and in places they can dig them out with JCBs rather than specialised deep sea equipment. Good luck on Japan but it sounds like it won't be cheap...
How can you have "vast" quantities of "rare" earths?
China is working on a blue water navy. Article is dated Sunday, April 18, 2010
Given the fact that they would need to dredge deep oceans to mine rare earths, the potential environmental damage to marine ecosystems (that are not even fully understood) will probably be not worth any amount of mineral yield.
In 3 . . . 2 . . .
To paraphrase a comment I read on this :
In the mining industry there is possibly two words for those rare metal deposit : ore, and dirt.
Ore is the state where you can collect it for less than the market price and make a benefit.
Dirt is the other one, aka 5 km deep underwater where the cost of recovering it TODAY would WAY exceed the possible ore value.
N.B. : IANADSM (I Am Not A Deep Sea Miner)
It takes 40+ muscles to frown, but only four to extend your arm and bitchslap the motherfucker
Is that like 200 nautical miles East from Fukushima?
I was really excited with this one when I first read it then the reality set in. They are going to have to effectively strip mine the ocean floor then use acid to process the soil. What happens to the toxic waste and the ocean floor? Before everyone starts saying we have to and we have no choice I'm not saying to not do it just can we take a second and do it responsibly for once? The problem comes in when the corporations try to save a buck and cut costs by dumping the toxic waste right back in the water. Also rather than strip mining every square inch of an area can we please do it in bands or grids so the ocean floor has a chance to recover similar to selective cutting trees? And no the ocean floor isn't dead anymore than soil is lifeless. It's part of the whole ecosystem and should be preserved. The rare earth minerals aren't needed for life to exist so there's no reason to not remove them just do it responsibly so we have an ocean left when they are done. This isn't about making things cheaper for people it's about squeezing out extra profits for the rich owners.
"5% cheaper earbuds for you is not worth trashing millions of cubic meters of ocean."
The more powerful magnets and better batteries needed to switch over to nonhydroelectric renewable evergy sources use those very same rare earths. In large quantities compared to ear buds. Ditto more energy efficient motors.
So, by never mining any of them, you help keep everyone chained to other sources.
Your choice, bub.
China does not by any means have a lock on rare earth production, with wikipedia reporting the following:
China now produces over 97% of the world's rare earth supply, mostly in Inner Mongolia, even though it has only 37% of proven reserves.
There are two things going on here:
On #1 -- Indeed mining for rare earths in the US is expensive because of workplace and environmental health regulations, but it can be had for some price. If China restricts supply, price will rise and US mines can reopen while meeting rigorous US standards for environmental sustainability of rare-earth mining operations.
On #2 -- if China wants to restrict supply, that's fine -- but they're own factories are probably close to the world's largest users of rare earths for electronics. So it's not as if we won't be able to get our iPods.
People hear "rare" and they think there must not be much of them. Well rare earths, aren't. I mean they are rare as opposed to, say, iron or silicon or aluminium, but they are not rare as in "very hard to find."
As the parent said, China produces most of them because they do it the cheapest. The US (and other countries) produced them in the past and can do so again in the future.
Now these under water deposits might be of interest because it sounds like they may be easier to process than what we have now. That could be useful. Even though the extraction will probably be more costly, if the refining and processing is cheaper, that could make them worth while.
However these are not something that is rare, contrary to the name.
JESUS H. CHRIST WITH A CHERRY ON TOP!
THIS HAS BEEN KNOWN FOR *DECADES*!!!!!
Geologists have know for decades that the oceans contain a vast quantity of minerals, including rare earths. The Glomar Explorer, for example was built to secretly salvage a sunken Soviet submarine. However, a realistic cover story was needed, so the Government settled on saying that it was a ship designed to recover manganese nodules (which contain a smorgasboard of minerals and rare earths, in addition to high concentrations of manganese, hence the name) that cover the ocean floor.
The plausibility of the story rested in the fact that there *DO* exist extremely vast sources of minerals (including rare earths) on the sea floor.
Honest to God, why do highly educated and credentialed people keep overlooking things that have been known for a years?!
This should be grounds for revoking their credentials until they go back to school..... again.
I can already see the next "discovery" headline:
"Japanese researchers discover rotting fish stinks!"
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
That's from Fukushima!
Now they are going to Bose-condense that elements http://arxiv.org/abs/1107.0107 and, probably, make a nuclear winter with that
People found rocks and stuff in the ground and under the ocean a ground breaking new reality.
We scratch the surface of the planet for centuries and poeple are still shocked that there might be more (a whole fuck ton more) just a little deeper down. We've been down to approximately 4km digging for stuff, there couldn't possibly be anything else of interest in the other 6367km before you reach the center.
It's revelations like this that gives me hope for humanity.
This is just basic economics at work. If there's still a demand and the cost goes up (or the current supply dries up), replacements will be found, or new, previously uneconomic sources become cost effective to tap.
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
This will probably save us from war. China's actions are one of war footing rather than a nation that really wants to get along. They are acting just like 1935 Germany and building up, while keeping quiet.
Now you can have an assured supply of smug.
(A Prius battery contains 12kg+ of Lanthanium and other toxic crap that only the Chinese can smelt without prohibitive environmental cost.)
Please list more than 12 of them that we started, with proof, or are you just a liar?
This is not news. I am sure I read this story in Scientific American in 1963. Maybe 1964.
Some mornings it's hardly worth chewing through the restraints to get out of bed.
We can also mine in landfills and trash dumps. Someday in the future people will be forced to reclaim all the metals which have been dumped for more than a hundred years.
Last time there was a hunt for "rare metals" on the bottom of the Pacific, it turned out to be a CIA operation called "Project Jennifer-Azorean" which aimed at building a huge "mining-drilling ship" with a clandestine purpose. The Hughes Glomar Explorer "mining ship" actually carried a giant claw designed to retrieve a whole sunken soviet submarine to rob her of the cipher books and nuclear-tipped missiles. The venture reportedly went awry, after some of the claw fingers broke during lifting and most of the sub's hull fell back to the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.
It is worth noting that the japanese built an even larger Glomar Explorer copycat about 15 years ago, reportedly to retrieve the soviet's 80-ton "battle satellite" Polyus, which fell into the Pacific Ocean after an unsuccessful orbital injection. The russians found out early via the GRU and were not pleased at all. (BTW, the Polyus weapon system was meant to counter the militarized US Space Shuttle program and the launched example reportedly had 24 large, propaganda leaflet filled canisters loaded in its "nuclear minelayer mechanism", to emphasize the peaceful intents of Gorbachev's Glasnosty regime versus Reagan's agressive SDI programme. If pressed further by the USA, the soviet's weaponized Polyus edition would have carried multi.megaton metropolis-busting H-bomb mines.)
Anyhow, maybe the japanese are now trying to make another round on the Polyus wreckage, coovered up with this seabottom rare metal scam story?
Japan actually, but why let facts get in the way of mindless patriotic bigotry?
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Right, Herr Krautmeyer. Didn't your grandfather ever tell you it's not the russians who will get you it's the chinese. Ah-so, pig dog!
You want the US to ally with a dictator that tortures his own people?
Seems strange that they only have an icon for China showing up for this article when it clearly has to do with Japan too.
How long until China declares that based on history these waters are an integral part of Chinese territory and a "core interest" of China - followed by a declarations that the presence of foreign ships in those waters hurts the feelings of all Chinese people everywhere?
I often don't like the choices people make, but I like the fact that people make choices. That's why I'm a conservative.
I have to wonder about the environmental impact of a large scale mining operation in the middle of the Pacific. Are we talking about digging holes in the sea floor? Will the sediment enter sea currents and possibly silt up/bury sea floor dwelling plants and critters. What impact would this have on the overall ecosystem?
FTFY
And to answer the question, no I don't want the US to ally itself with yet more murderous dictators, but I do expect that the US will ally itself with more murderous dictators. The principle constraint would be a shortage of murderous dictators with something that the US wants who the US are not already allied with.
And I'd expect my government to behave no differently to the US government. After all, they're both composed of politicians and lawyers.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"