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Rare Earth Deposit Discovered In US
s31523 writes "With China having 97% of the market share of rare earth elements, many countries are nervous about being able to get supplies of key elements needed for high tech gear. Quantum Rare Earths Developments Corp. has reported they have discovered a potential huge source of rare earth elements, right in the middle of the U.S. While the USGS reports that the U.S. has an estimated 13 million metric tonnes available for mining (about 1/3 of China's reserves), finding another regular source is crucial to global stability. The potential yield of the deposit, found in Nebraska, could be the world's largest source for Niobium and other rare earth elements. Could this be the next gold rush?"
At stewarding its own resources, preferring instead to buy resources from other countries that do not have the level of regulation we have. We have plenty of oil, gas, rate earth metals etc... we just don't go after it.
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We already knew that the USA had large deposits of rare earth elements.
It is just cheaper to buy them from China than to mine and process what is available domestically.
"You want to know how to help your kids? Leave them the fuck alone." -George Carlin
Can we refine them here and export the waste to China for 'disposal,' or do we only get to ignore the environmental problem if they produce the waste themselves?
So Nebraska has something worthwhile! That is news!
With the price of corn these days, I'd say they have something else that's worthwhile.
The last US Rare Earth mine closed because it was an ecological nightmare to smelt the ore, not because it ran out. Since this is a new vein and not a new smelting process, it'll be doomed to failure the exact same way, so will the (relatively) new vein in Idaho. Short of the EPA rolling over on a mine that will be a superfund site within months of opening in a Democratic administration (anyone want to figure the odds of that?), this mine will be a non-starter.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you
Most rare earth minerals are actually not that valuable. They're necessary and quite abundant. The reason China controls the trade is that they have been willing thus far to run operations which mine at great cost for minimal profit. They've been buying operations in Africa and on other continents where large stores are found. In order for a US company to want to mine these minerals there will have to be a critical uptick in price, and that will raise prices on a number of important manufactured goods.
This is good news for Nebraska. The western side of the state is very sparsely populated, and getting more so as kids leave small towns for the city. More than half the state's population live in the two cities of Omaha and Lincoln. Getting development and jobs out there will help keep small town life alive for longer.
The troubling part is that western Nebraska is over the Ogallala aquifer that supplies water to much of the plains states. I shudder to think what would happen if it got contaminated with rare-earths.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
"Rare earths" aren't that rare. They're just at low concentrations, which makes for an inefficient mining operation. Getting rid of the waste products is a big problem. Molycorp has re-opened a rare earth mine in California, and is expanding capacity.
There are other rare earth mines in the US. There's no shortage of places to mine. It's just that, until recently, it wasn't profitable.
You misspelled bubble.
There is a very good reason for this. Rare earths aren't really that rare. What makes them "rare" (or I should say scarce) is how difficult it is to process them into their raw oxide. This is not an easy process. You can't just dig them out of the ground and sell the dirt to a laser making company.
So the next company that will be coming online is the Australian Lynas Corp with their processing plant in Malaysia and the worlds largest single rare earth deposit in Western Australia. The Malaysian processing plant is costing a lot of money to build - not the sort of capital an individual has.
Check this out:
http://www.lynascorp.com/page.asp?category_id=1&page_id=25
That gives you an idea of how rare earths have outpaced gold in the last 2 years.
Next I believe is USA's Molycorp (I may be wrong on that but I think that is right).
There's IRONY in this here post! Wee-hee! *prospector dance*
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
You've been brainwashed by professional liars. The United States does not have "lots of petroleum". We do have lots of coal, and we dig it up at a rate of over a billion tons per year. We have lots of natural gas, and we mine it at a rate of tens of trillions of cubic feet per year.
The people you listen to are paid big bucks to keep you outraged and misinformed. Stop listening to them.
a href="http://www.lynascorp.com/page.asp?category_id=1&page_id=25">yes/
The "rush" isn't in the resources itself, but the stocks of the company. If you do a GoogleNews search for "rare earth" and "nebraska", you'll find that them majority of the reports are through "market" sources. It's hype so that day traders will invest thus allowing original investors to sell at higher prices, get out, and watch it deflate because they all know that rare-earth mining and smelting is such a dirty business that the EPA won't allow it.
It's all over the place for a while, especially on /.. A ten second search would turn up enough stuff to study for some time. We still have our old REE mines as well as newly discovered ones. it's not that China has them all, but more that they can extract them cheaply due to labor and environmental costs as doing so usually involves lots of harsh solvents and left overs.
These are not minor problems - they are building a plant that handles 90C slightly-radioactive acid-abrasive slurry on a reclaimed swamp out of regular concrete, with no moisture barrier between the ground and the concrete, with cracks and voids in the walls of the already inadequate concrete, and connecting these tanks with pipes made out of regular non-corrosion resistant steel. The moisture from the ground is going to crumble the concrete, the slurry is going to eat through the pipes, and then go right into the ground. Not good.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
Holy brainwashing batman!
Even if money ends in hands of "illegal aliens", they'll spend most of it consuming local services and satisfying basic needs. That will create jobs and stimulate economy.
When government workers get raises, private workers have to get raises as well as private workplace would become less competitive when hunting for workers. Also, government workers, like illegal aliens would spend it on services and basic needs, creating jobs and stimulating economy.
Your third claim, raising salaries of those who are already well off is what tax raises is supposed to PREVENT. Because wealthy rarely spend money locally, instead investing it into whatever brings them most return, which is rarely something in the local economy, and often is against local economy. Mortgage crisis and many similar ways to earn money from crashing or massively slowing economy down would like a word with you, as would investments in companies that simply outsource, eliminating local jobs and cutting local economy at its knees. Which is what is happening in the West (USA, Canada, EU region, Australia, Japan etc wealthy countries) - we're approaching the levels where capital controls so much power that its self-destructive potential is starting to overpower host country's ability to survive it.
This is basic economics: capitalism is functional as long as it's properly guided so that it's natural tendency to become self-destructive is kept in check while it's positive drive for more competitiveness is supported. For examples of self-destructive nature of capitalism when unguided, you should take a look at the biggest crises that occurred in twentieth century - most of them have roots in failure to control the aforementioned self-destructive nature resulting in capitalism simply self-destructing. From bank crashes to motions that led to starting of WW2, collapse of capitalist system due to it running out of control has traditionally been one of the root causes.
This is what strikes me as amazing about people who complain about this issue - the sheer amount of doublethink required to actually believe that things they spout are correct, when it's at conflict with basic economics which you really don't need a degree to understand.