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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."
Alternatively, let's put our technological well-being in the hands of a country that has shown little compunction in using its dominance to screw with any other country that gets in its way.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
You're talking about the US, right?
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.
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."
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.
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...
most modern windmills and solar cells need rare earth metals for their fabrication. so pick one, 'clean' energy or reduced environmental damage caused by mineing. you can't have both.
How can you have "vast" quantities of "rare" earths?
Buried in the article is also a note stating these same scientists propose changing the generic term to "common" earths.
#DeleteChrome
That doesn't compute. The amounts just don't make sense - if 5 square miles could provide enough for a year's use, then we'd have to be dumping several billion tons of rare-earth metals every year. Since we only dump less than 100 million tons annually, and most of that (by mass) is plastics or common metals, there's no way we can be causing this. Contributing, perhaps, but not causing.
From what I can tell (I'm nowhere near an expert, could be completely wrong here), rare-earth elements seem most common in newer mountain ranges. So they're probably being slowly eroded over time, eventually pooling in the oceans. Since the Pacific is a very tectonically active ocean, it's also possible that it's being pushed up from lower in the Earth's crust. That's what I would guess, but I could be wrong.
China is working on a blue water navy. Article is dated Sunday, April 18, 2010
China has been, and will be, developing a blue water navy. They're in no position to threaten the US at the moment and show no inclination to do so at any rate. So your point is exactly what? That the Chinese will risk a major confrontation with the rest of the world for rare earths? Righto. Best to loosen the tinfoil a bit.
Rare earths aren't particularly rare, they are just present in such low concentrations that they are expensive (and environmentally problematic) to mine. If the cost goes up a bit, there will be many other sources of rare earths developed. The short term issue is that developing such sources takes time and China has much of the current supply spoken for. However, these new Japanese discoveries will not come on line in the near future - they will take an enormous investment to get to the surface. So they will be of little help to the rest of the world. They do offer Japan a potentially home grown supply and they may find it advantageous to spend the time and considerable money working out the problems of hauling large amounts of muck out of an abyssal plain. Everyone else, not so much.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I was just joking, but I appreciate how sincere and informative your comment is!
So where would you rather live, China or the US?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
That's because they're brainwashed uneducated fucktards
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I would expect that the "monsters" (e.g. giant squid) would be smart enough to leave any dredging area in a big hurry. True story, at a prominent national lab a large sum of money was spent to make a habitat for an on-site family of whooping cranes, as part of the land they ranged was going to be impacted by new construction. As the construction to make their new home commenced, the cranes went "whooooop, whoooop whoooooop" like Curly from the three stooges (that might be slight embellishment), and flapped away never to be seen again, rendering the whole "wetlands mitigation" project yet another exercise in government waste and enviro-nazi stupidity.
Depending on your point of view, anything done by certain types of organisms are evil. Heck, look at the great oxygen catastrophe, when all those early photosynthesising organisms began shitting massive amounts of O2 into the atmosphere and created possibly the most substantial massive extinction in the history of the world.
I'm not saying we should go around throwing radioactive or toxic waste around, but there's a balancing act to be had unless you want a major population crash and the remnant population to live like our ancestors did 10,000 years ago. Get much closer in that in time to us, and well our ancestors develop agriculture, which began a process of slash-and-burn to ecosystems that permanently altered many places on earth.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Oh believe it. For example, there are millions of tons of gold in sea water, just no way to extract it.
Because, of course, the only thing these minerals are used for is cheap ear buds.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
There's plenty we can and do do without catastrophically damaging our environment.
Yep. Like deep-sea mining for rare earths.
5% cheaper earbuds for you is not worth trashing millions of cubic meters of ocean.
Your attitude is annoying.
As Woodrow Wilson warned, there is a military-industrial complex.
Wilson helped create the military-industrial complex. Eisenhower is the one who warned about it.
"I assumed blithely that there were no elves out there in the darkness"
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.
That was the most polite "woosh" I've ever read.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
US has better Chinese food.
There are no karma whores, only moderation johns
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.
I said "starting 3 wars", not "declaring 3 wars". USA last declared war in 1942, and has started at least two dozen wars since then.
Im from a country fucked by the US in a regular basis and well, I do prefer to be subsidiary to country that at least says its democratic or, even if some of its citizens dont like it, has people that *can* say they WANT to be democratic as opposed to what they have...
At least its press will eventually get around to showing shit at abu garib and gitmo... What if it was China instead? You would never know anything. You would either conform or spend years at reeducation camps if not with a bullet in your head.
Fuck that.
Its bad enough as it is...
NO SIG
TFA stated that:
China's apparent monopoly of rare earth production enabled it to restrain supply last year during a territorial dispute with Japan.
but omitted the fact that that "monopoly" had been created and sustained by undercutting the prices of other sources, not by being the only possible source. There are plenty of sources for rare earth elements with proven production capacities that will be available when China inevitably restricts exports or raises prices. The ocean floor is just another possibility, but one where the costs are not yet known.
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....
After all, the PRC has never fought a war, and they certainly never make aggressive moves against India, Russia, Japan, the legitimate Chinese government, the Philippines, Vietnam...
"man is the measure", I'm perfectly happy to kill a small amount of some creatures to make things good for mankind. You live in a building where worms and cicadas died when the foundation was dug. That's reality.
Rare earths are not rare. It was a horrible, horrible mistake to call them rare. Some of the elements in that family are more abundant than copper. They were coined 'rare' because as far as metals go, they are quite reactive, which makes them great for batteries, but also means they don't have much time to bond with eachother...which makes them great FOR BATTERIES! In essence, you do not find chunks of Cerium just laying around like you do, or did in some cases, as iron and boxite (aluminum) and copper. Thus they are usually found as minor, but significant, traces in other minerals and not all by themselves or as significant ores.
The largest mines prior to the mid 90s were located in the United States in Oregon, Brazil, and South Africa. There were literally Indiana Jones like warehouses full of 'rare earths' that were unneeded because the chemical properties of this family mean they are not found in huge chunks, but rather spread out in a given area. If you are digging for Lanthanum, for example, you'll end up with 'worthless' Neodymium and other metals. Prior to the mid-90s, these elements would often flip flop on the market as mines started pulling out different metals (Scandium vs Yttrium and Neodymium vs. Iridium)
China undercut global demand for the metals 20 years ago, and the World hasn't looked back since. It was an arrangement of convenience, as China started pulling out the damn stuff faster than the world could 'spend it.' No longer did lamp makers and battery manufacturers have to worry about ridiculous future contracts for rare earths. Prices stabilized quite dramatically, and the Wold loved it. China got a huge boost to a nascent technological and manufacturing industries due to the flood of foreign investment, as well as first dips on cheap metals.
The minute the so called 'Peak Earth' hits, and rare earths spike on the market because they have all 'disappeared', mines across the Globe will open up once again since it will be cost effective to sell the damn things.
So no, it will not be commercially viable to dig these elements out of the ocean floor for many many years. Keep in mind, the ocean floor is also full of gold nuggets, and the ocean itself as a vast amount of gold in solution. But just as it wouldn't be worth it to fly to the Moon where it made of gold, it isn't worth it to go panning for the stuff 1km below the ocean surface.
Anyway, 2.5 cents.
One additional element to the story is that extracting "rare earths" generally means you extract Thorium. One rare earth mine would extract enough Thorium to power the world (if we could get Gen IV happening)
.. they might have started a Thorium program.
The problem is that what is left is considered radioactive leftovers that you cant put back in the ground, even if the ground is more radioactive than what you pulled out.
China does not have the same problem, they have been storing the stuff, and who knows
http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/02/china-thorium-power/
If someone killed in self-defense and didn't have a problem with it, I wouldn't be thinking "there goes a genuinely moral person". I'd be thinking "there's something genuinely wrong with that person".
http://www.history.navy.mil/wars/foabroad.htm
Well sure, China tends to take the term Poo Poo Platter a little too literally for my taste.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
Thanks! That was getting my goat. Here's the full speech.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnaM8TqAzzo
"All these years believing you're the signified monkey, only to find out you're just a big hunk of nobody cares."