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."

Comments

The Chinese

[benjfowler]

... 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.

Japanese probably investing huge amounts of money

[antifoidulus]

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)

Shortage is a matter of price

[Opportunist]

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.

Re:Shortage is a matter of price

[Doc Ruby]

Nobody in the 1970s or 1990s said we'd be out of gas by now. Except the usual few nut jobs, who today say we'll never run out.

What we learned in the 1970s is that global oil production would peak around 2010. Which it probably has, despite the kinds of big lies oil corps and oil producing nations tell. Those lies produced major "corrections" to Iraq's, Nigeria's and several other countries' "proven reserves" during the past decade, when they couldn't keep lying anymore about the truly dwindling size of what they have left.

We also learned in the 1970s that after the global peak, the global output would drop off at about the same rate it increased to the peak. Because in the early 1970s we saw Hubbert's predictions made in 1956 about the US come true, validating his theories which next predicted global peak in the late 1990s.

Meanwhile global oil demand just increases. With falling supply past the peak, the shortages grow rapidly.

Oil sands and tar sands are profitable only to the extractors and sellers until it's pollution. But then the costs keep coming, all externalized onto the general public (and worst onto the poorest in the public). $140 is still too little to pay for all the costs including the damage. But indeed the oil corps are talking about anything they can put into a barrel at $140 per. Regardless of who really has to pay the rest.

Re:yeah. better chinese workers die

[Doc Ruby]

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.

Re:What if the market changes?

[Zancarius]

China has the ability to remove their restrictions on exports, pulling the bottom out of the price for these elements and putting these companies out of business again.

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.