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Rare-Earth Mineral Supply Getting Boost From California, Australia
An anonymous reader writes "In recent times, the world's supply of rare-earth minerals has suffered from both increased demand, due to their use in modern technological devices, and uncertain supply, as China restricts the flow of exports. Now, Molycorp's mine in California has re-opened, and another in Australia is set to open later this year, easing — but not erasing — worries about skyrocketing costs. '[The mine had closed] in 2002 following radioactive wastewater spills and price competition. The largest spills, from a pipeline to Nevada, occurred in the late 1990s, in protected lands in the Mojave Desert. The company has since changed its ownership structure. ... It's being rebuilt to produce up to 40,000 metric tons of rare-earth elements by 2013, which would be a 700 percent increase from its production target for the end of this year."
And they are sponsoring this little rebuild how? Want me to tell you what they will be oopsing about in 5 years?
Duh!
Ok, management was replaced. Fine. Probably needed. But that doesn't tell me if the pipes were fixed or how the new management proposes to not have that kind of issue in the future. Nor does it tell me if the new management is proposing any kind of additional cleanup that may be needed in those protected lands (doesn't matter that it was a while back - Bhopal still suffers from uncleaned pollution and Florida has a gigantic oil sludge that will haunt it for a long time no matter how much it's officially declared gone).
In short, yeah, new sources of Rare Earths are great but the Earth is also fairly high on the Rare list and I'd rather not need a new source.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
It's been working for OPEC for a long time - maintaining prices *just* low enough that countries without such accessible oil struggle to compete as suppliers.
... probably thought they were awfully clever for a while.
Nice to see the good guys get up once in a while. Here's hoping that government policy makes it easy for these guys to get started and start producing economically and profitably. The less that hostile and aggressive foreign powers have over us, the better.
the reason it got shut down is because you can't outcompete a country where environmental activists are put into labor camps.
pretty simple, and yet, almost every media story on this thing hides the truth in vague generalizations like "cost competition".
its not cost competition, its fucking slavery.
see also: Kerr-Mcgee and Tronox
I wouldn't be surprised if the Japanese are pumping huge amounts of money into this venture right now. With the Japanese economy being heavily invested in industries that use these minerals Japan definitely wants to wean itself off of reliance on China, and the insanely strong yen makes investing in the US incredibly cheap right now. Japanese companies would be incredibly remiss if they weren't taking advantage of this opportunity(and they may even get support for the government who wants to weaken the yen)
Monstar L
all you can do in this life is to try to set a good example
we would not set a good example by deciding to let our workers and citizens die due by ignoring safety and health just so we can join the 'race to the bottom'
I'm not saying that US corporations are not complicit in offshoring pollution and slave labor, but the US people have a greater sense of justice and morality than our corporations I think....I hope -and maybe someday that will make a difference
-I'm just sayin'
Remember how in the 70s people complained we'll be out of gas by 2000? Then again in the 90s, we should be out of it by today. Now we have just enough gas to last us 'til the 2030s.
Do we keep finding so many sources? Well, not that many. But what we find is more sources that get profitable with rising prices. Oil sands in Alaska, you think anyone would have even thought of exploiting that while the barrel was at 20 bucks? Of course not. It's not profitable. At 140, we're talking.
It's almost the same with REMs. First of all, the name is misleading. They're not rare by definition. Well, aside of the radioactive Promethium. Cerium is amongst the most abundant elements on our Earth's crust. The problem with them is that they're fairly evenly distributed. There are few places where they can be extracted economically. With rising price, maybe sieving them from desert sand might be commercially interesting.
A "shortage" of REMs means about the same as a "shortage" of well educated personnel: There's only a shortage if you are unwilling to pay the price required to get what you want.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
How does Apple's HQ pretend that we have a green economy? Who's saying it runs off unicorn farts? Though "run off sunshine" is exactly what we're trying to do, and Californians have been doing more than most for generations.
If what you're complaining about is that the US has better environmental protection than China does, that's not hypocrisy. There's nothing stopping China from cleaning up the way the US did, except its greed for the dollar at the expense of its workers. And when China does, if its growing population of people with enough money to protect themselves from being poisoned does protect themselves, their rising costs will help the US compete with them economically.
None of that is hypocrisy. It's economics and the politics that follows it.
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make install -not war
What are you talking about? Oil prices have been up around $100 or more for several years.
Let's have a legit citation or a retraction.
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make install -not war
such a policy would probably work quite well.
The earth's crust is about 28% silicon. We're not going to need to recycle that any time soon.
It makes more sense when you realise that Australia is the 51+Nst state of the US, so the headline is actually just listing the states of the US, not implying cartographical closeness.
Plan My Week for iPhone
You do realize that this is why the rare earth mining operations in the US were shut down in the first place: Because of subsidized Chinese exports undercutting the industry. They destroyed the rare earth industry in the US, Canada, and Australia once before. One would hope that we wouldn't let them do it again, but I have little faith in our leadership.
He who has no
Yes, and all other countries are honest, upfront, forthright, put the concerns of others above their own, and use their power responsibly and fairly. Gimmie a break.
and we pretend we have a 'green economy' with our space-ship apple headquarters that run off of sunshine and unicorn farts.
fucking US hypocrisy is astounding.
But your hypocrisy is just A-OK because you're edgy, right? Sitting there posting on the electrically-powered Internet with your computer made from petroleum by-products and rare earth minerals, powered by coal, natural gas, petroleum or nuclear. What's astounding is your stupidity regarding your own situation. Nobody's pretending we have anything other than what we have, which is not an optimal or efficient system. If you don't like what's going on, get an education and invent something better. Give it away for free if you're that worried. Otherwise my suggestion would be to dial back on the rhetoric and the America-hate and start advocating real solutions. Otherwise, you're just another douchebag troll.
Unicorn farts contribute to global warming, by the way.
Mitsubishi and Sumitomo, so far.
http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/dy/business/T101219002181.htm
We need a more robust semiconductor industry. More locally-available REs would hopefully (idealistcally) cause a price drop from local suppliers, making their equipment more affordable. For the local LED industry, this could be a MAJOR boost.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
But allowing China's citizens to die for us is okay in your world?
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Why would you set up shop in the US? You have to "pay" the dems and reps, locals and feds.
Then on going taxes, federal green issues, workers and toxic locals with very good legal teams.
In many parts of the world you pay one good entry bribe and solve the rest with a death squad.
No ngo, tribal leader, green group, press, political or labor leaders to worry about.
In Australia you "invest" and if your workforce is dying you pay out an always low soft capped amount in court with very very little press.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
But allowing China's citizens to die for us is okay in your world?
Allow? It's as if you pretend we have the power of life and death over them, their government and society.
Didn't you get the memo? The US is responsible for every decision made in the world regardless of the country.
was recently discovered in Nebraska.
"Quantum Rate Earth Developments (TSX-V: QRE; OTC: QREDF) acquired the rights to what the U.S. Geological Survey called one of the largest deposits of niobium globally. The rare earth property, a 14-square-mile track of farmland in S.E. Nebraska, could employ hundreds once the mine is developed. ..."
Running with Linux for over 20 years!
What part of context have you ignored?
That at least some of environmental legislation is set by politics rather than good science. That the EPA is forbidden by law to do cost analysis of its regulations.
That a company will go out of business if nobody buys its products, and almost nobody will buy its products if they're priced absurdly higher than similar products.
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According to T.J.Rogers, Solyndra had inferior technology.
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And it's the Chinese who choose to sell.
If it's blood money, that's their own collective decision (or, as the case may be, inability to decide) -- and when the rapidly growing Chinese middle class decides that they give a damn, I expect it to stop. In the interim, why should I as a customer feel the slightest bit of guilt?
(I'm likewise very happy to let them mine and sell their own natural resources below natural market price while we hold onto our own; if we wait until resources from China are no longer viable before restarting our own mining and drilling industries, we then at that time still have our resources at a point in time when they're scarcer and more valuable. That said, it seems they've finally realised the hole that they've been digging themselves into on this point).
Cheap foreign labor, if the foreigners are not prohibited from saving their earnings, is a self-solving "problem." They get our money in exchange for their goods. Over time they accumulate money, and the more they have, the less they are willing to work cheaply. Eventually they come close to parity, like Japan. "Problem" solved.
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That's also a possibility, and I suspect the Chinese were banking on two things: 1) our complacency with increase price pressure on rare earths and 2) the length of time and start up costs for restarting mining operations. Both of these will only benefit the Chinese, and in the time #2 takes, they'll be able to decide just how much to subsidize their exports and have time to restart their own mining operations to push the price back down.
He who has no