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Where Next-Generation Rare Earth Metals May Come From
retroworks writes "Great piece in The Atlantic by Kyle Wiens of IFIXIT.org, who visited and photographed the Molycorp Mountain Pass rare earth facility in California's Mojave Desert. The mine is the only source of rare earths in North America, one of the only alternatives to the mineral cartels in China, and one of the only sources for the key metals such as tantalum needed in cell phones. There is of course actually one other source of rare earth metals in the USA — recycled cell phones. Is the best 'state of the art' mining as good as the worst state of the art recycling? If the U.S. Department of Energy subsidizes the mine, will China open the floodgates and put it out of business? Or will electronics be manufactured with alternative materials before the mine ever becomes fully scaleable?"
...rare Earth metals may come from the Moon. We didn't do that yet, because no one knows how to call them.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
There are rare-earth deposits in other places - like Elk City, Nebraska having resources of the rare metals. However, it wouldn't be much fun to be running a mine in the middle of the desert.
And wrong at that. There are rare earths in many more products then cell phones. There are other sources, just not other mines etc.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Superficial article about Mountain Pass. The big problem they have is finding a place to dump the tailings. A rare earth mine needs big settling ponds. The Mountain Pass solution is that they've built a pipeline to Ivanpah Dry Lake on the Nevada border.
The mine tailings are slightly radioactive, because the dirt in the area being mined has some uranium and thorium in it. This isn't a big deal once the water has evaporated and it's solid material again, but the water in the tailings ponds has to be kept from leaching into a water supply.
So if we make the mine operational and then China starts providing us with cheap metal, I don't see the problem. Keep the mine maintained, and ready for use, and let China load us up with cheap minerals. Oh, of course making this situation of allowing many hundreds of businesses and hundreds of millions of consumers to thrive in an atmosphere of reduced costs would depend on the government buying out or subsidizing one...
Naturally, this will have conservatives crawling out of the woodwork to declare that capitalism is being subverted and to let the market decide. I will quietly pray that the other business leaders wait for those conservatives to go home, and then beat them until all the stupid has leaked out...
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
Just to be clear: rare earth minerals are mined in numerous countries.
Our problem is that China had a national strategy of buying up as many mines and refineries as it could.
By creating a vertical *monopoly, China has made it very hard for anyone else to enter the market.
Assuming China doesn't implode from its demographic and financial problems, there's a serious risk that China's state capitalism is going to outcompete America's free/mixed market capitalism.
*sometimes monopolies lower prices. When this happens to a market with high start up costs, it deters anyone else from entering.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Seriously? "One of the only?" Which is it, smart guy.
Market Economics don't quite apply in this case. It was market economics that put the mine out of business in the first place. The Chinese undercut them until they could not continue.
The recent Chinese trade embargo on rare earth elements did expose the world's strategic vulnerability to the single source in China. Both the US government and the EU woke up in a hot hurry and determined to do what's necessary to revive alternate sources.
The mine and its counterparts elsewhere will, in this case, have the government support they need to to provide critical materiel to industry. Alternative materials may come to the fore eventually, but for now governments will do the necessary.
Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.
Whenever I've had conversations with libertarians about how free trade would actually work in the real world where governments frequently aggressively protect corporate interests, they always stammer "buh buh the free market will prevail." Really? You mean American companies going up against Chinese state-owned companies or companies with tacit backing from the Chinese central government aren't going to face crushing problems competing against that level of cohesion between state and corporate power? Anyone remember what happen to the Australian mining executives who were imprisoned a while back for having the audacity to negotiate hardball style with their Chinese counterparts under the mistaken premise that it was a meeting of equals?
When this country was at its most economically free, we had high tariffs. That's an indisputable fact that no free trader can deny unless they want to argue that slavery was so heinous that it overshadows all of the economic freedom in all areas of employment, property ownership, business creation, etc. that was enjoyed in the late 18th century and most of the 19th century.
By digging aroung you can find rare earth in North America. Some examples:
IAMGOLD Corp. - Niobec Niobium Mine
MDN Inc - Crevier Deposit : Niobium, Tantalum and Zirconium resource
Dios Exploration Inc. : Lithium, Niobium and Rare Earths
There are two other potential new sources that were missed in this article: Greenland and deep-sea muds around vents.
The simplistic answer is that fee companies competing with state-sponsored ones is by very definition not a free market.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
See, there's your problem.
Sadly, the Libertarian model more or less assumes that nothing about current reality applies, and that we can hit a big reset button and start from scratch in a bubble where all of their little assumptions would hold true by sheer force of will.
It's like bed-time stories for economists.
There will always be inequalilties that keep that perfectly free market from happening, and countries will always try to bolster their own industry over others. The US does this in many areas (agriculture, steel, lumber) and seems to expect they can protect their own companies while trying to skew the playing field against foreign competition who have a different cost structure.
To me, there's simply nothing to actually support the notion that the Libertarian free market could ever exist. And, if it did, it sure isn't going to bring about all of the positive things it claims ... mostly the world would devolve into the rich having all of the privileges, and the rest of us being left to duke it out for scraps. But apparently, that's a good thing somehow.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Not only in the US, but in other parts of the world too.
After all, about half the rare earth metals are named after a single Swedish town and the scientists working on samples from there. But minerals with rare earth elements in them can be found in numerous places.
The question is how high the price must go before commercial mining or even prospecting becomes lucrative, given the higher environmental concerns in countries outside China, Columbia and South Africa. It's (for now) cheaper to close ones eyes and let these countries mine it and deal with (or ignore) the pollution problems.
My first thought when I read that was that if China starts selling the stuff at insanely low prices (at a subsidized loss) to beat out domestic competition, why don't we just start buying it up and stockpiling it.
That would give us a buffer if they decide to cut us off, and we wouldn't need to buy from them for a while if they raise the prices, which might cause them to keep underselling themselves.
It seems that the second link in the summary is being ignored (by both /. and industry). The concentration of rare earth elements in used electronics (cell phones, displays, computers, etc.) is many thousand times higher than their concentrations in rare earth ores. Rather than tearing up and polluting large areas of the earth with new mining, it would seem to be much more cost efficient and easier on the environment to "mine" used electronics.
I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
You don't understand what free trade is. That's your problem. We do NOT have free trade in the united states... not by a long shot. We subsidize one industry, tax another, we bribe other countries to sell us cheap goods with economic and military aid. If China is willing to sell goods for cheaper than it costs to produce, then that's good for us. The rare earth metals will remain in our country while we bleed China dry. You can only try to manipulate the market for so long before you run out of money. That time is fast approaching for China. The price of goods will suddenly skyrocket and manufacturing in the US will suddenly seem a lot more reasonable (it's actually already starting to happen) The only thing standing in our way is our government and its silly programs designed to aid industry and other countries. Let oil rise to its real value (likely $8-$10/gallon) and see what happens to the automotive industry. Stop subsidizing farmers and giving the food away to countries that can't afford to produce it themselves. When the cost of a bad of grain goes from "free" to $20, see how quick local business's figure out the free market.
While it would not surprise me that discarded cell phones form a significant waste stream, saying ...
There is of course actually one other source of rare earth metals in the USA — recycled cell phones.
suggests that there isn't any other source. More-or-less all electronics consumer goods have rare-earth materials in them, from TVs to computers, to stereos, to MP3 players, to microwave ovens, and so forth. Essentially anything that's going to have a circuit board in it is going to have rare-earth materials that might be re-processed. And we have all of those lovely landfills just waiting to be mined, too.
In the same vein, the summary suggests that cell phones are the only reason to think rare earths important when, again, every segment of the electronics manufacturing industry is wondering where they're going to get tantalum capacitors in the coming years.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
With all the posters pointing out rare earth deposits in other areas I can't help but think we might have a glut of rare earths in 10 years. It takea a while to get the mine up and running. You mine all that material in anticipation of a market. Then lo and behold you have a bunch of recycled phones, old wind turbines being replaced, etc. Next thing you know there's a bust in mining. That's why most of us kids shouldn't play on the commodity investing freeway.
I have long held the idea that a future industry will be the comprehensive mining of trash dumps.
Brought to you by Carl's Junior.
Australian executive charged in China with embezzlement
And who just happen to be ethnic Chinese citizens of other countries...
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
NGC here has a good article. One of the issues though again is cheaper labor and lax restrictions in China. Processing rare earths is labor intensive and can generate toxic and radioactive by-products which are fare more expensive to deal with in our regulatory system from an environmental and worker safety perspective.
Silence is a state of mime.
Sea water is full of everything and follows no boundaries.
His problem is he is talking to imaginary 'libertarian' strawmen.
It is best just to walk on when you run into someone who talks to trees (or strawmen). If he could understand your post he would, at least, construct better strawmen to have discussions with.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Indeed. However, the general thought is that although the [Insert Foreign Power] can tacitly back one of their chosen industries, to do so they must pull resources from somewhere else, which creates an opening.
Think of the marketplace as a battlefield. To put 5 more tanks on the lines protecting [Insert Politically-Favored Company], they must draw 5 tanks away from [Insert Some Other Company Not Held In As High Regard]. They strengthen one, at the cost of another; by focusing on their front lines, they've left their flanks unguarded. When the imbalance becomes large enough, competition from within and without begins appearing in earnest, destroying what's left of those weakened companies, and coming up from behind on those previously favored companies.
To protect GM, the United States had to ultimately sacrifice a fair number of less-favored, weaker, and / or newly created companies. Ultimately, it's a form of cannibalization, where Saturn eats his sons to maintain his power (to mix in some Roman mythology here, just for fun).
This is why protectionist economies eventually fail -> the market moves at light-speed or faster, cannot be bribed, and is constantly checking for weaknesses; the people working the protectionist racket move at human speeds, can be bribed, and are not always aware of weaknesses in either themselves, their friends, or their enemies. As the effects of poor decisions take some time to ripple throughout the markets (the effects thereof, not the decisions themselves), endlessly cascading until they hit a particular resonance (at which point destruction, creative or otherwise appears), things such as high tariffs may take several years to destroy a healthy economy. Feel me? It's like losing a loved one, acknowledging the fact thereof for many months, but only realizing it / feeling it on some quiet afternoon when you suddenly break out in tears, but don't know why.
I am John Hurt.
If you had the money, you would run a business case for your billion dollar recycling center and decide to keep it invested.
That's how people keep their money. Now get to work, you need to make payments on your new Prius.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Mainly because the mines have single pure metals, as opposed to a mix of all the valuable stuff. heat distilling molten metals is too expensive - today.
A good engineer could very well change that.
Cripes, the main reason we do such a good job of recyclying steel is that it is magnetic.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
there aren't many mines in the rest of the world because its cheaper to exhaust China's deposits first? Doesn't mean you can't get it else where if you need to. I'm pretty sure rare earth mines were shutdown many years ago when China got into the export game, probably wouldn't take much to reopen them
Whenever I've had conversations with libertarians about how free trade would actually work in the real world where governments frequently aggressively protect corporate interests, they always stammer "buh buh the free market will prevail."
Here, let me try.
When China subsidises it's own mines to drive prices down and force the competition out of business, our local mines will shutter and we all enjoy the benefits of rare earth minerals paid for, in part, by the Chinese taxpayer. We all win with the exception of the miners who were working at the mines. The mine owners may be forced to sell then mine to someone with enought foresight to know that the prices won't stay low forever. And they would be correct.
Once the Chinese government thinks they have a lock on the market and raises prices, the domestic mines open back up and begin to reap the large profits from the elevated prices of these rare earth minerals. Eventually, the price will lower and stabilize once supply reaches and equalibrium with demand.
So, yeah! The free markets will prevail. The main losers here would be the Chinese government and taxpayer who subsidized the materials that we used to build stuff and sell back to them at a profit. (Actually, they'd be the ones building it... but for Apple, who is American based)
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
" The mine is the only source of rare earths in North America, one of the only alternatives to the mineral cartels in China, and one of the only sources for the key metals such as tantalum needed in cell phones"
Only, only, only! Oh noes!
As if anyone doesn't already know or understand. The term 'rare' in rare earth doesn't mean rare as in "hard to locate any". It means "rare" in the sense that you'll never find VEINS of it, or nuggets lying around. It exists in many many places, but requires the refining of tons to get ounces.
-Styopa
There are extractable deposits all through Colorado and New Mexico.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climax,_Colorado
But first you need to get past the Sierra Club. Good luck with that.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
There's more than one rare earth mine in North America: Hoidas Lake in northern Saskachewan, and Strange Lake in northern Quebec, and Bernic Lake in Manitoba.
I guess the US is just lazy or something; lots of rare earths being pulled out of North America already.
Surely there are some we've just missed -- we just need to dig down to levels 2-16 near the lava and bedrock. And if there's none within walking distance, build nether portals to get far away and find new areas to look. Wow, I've been playing that game too much. I do wonder, though, do they have good ways of locating these in the whole country, or could looking harder really yield some new sites? Is there some super-metal-detector that can find rare earths at any depth anywhere in the country?
On the ocean floor, are large deposits of the stuff Wall Street Journal
A company called Nautilus Minerals Inc. is planning to begin operations.
"For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert"
This is where capitalism fails, when the intervention of a government dictates everything. You can only fight such abuse with your own abuse (high traffics to ensure alternatives along with international agreements with other countries). It would otherwise be too easy for China to fully control usage of rare earth around the world. These rare earth mining operations take a long time to both setup and become profitable, China needs only to open up it's export policies every few years to basically destroy any normal company. The only other option is government subsidizes to alternatives. Either way, it would require government to fight against government. (An economic resource war in a way).
Local businesses have already figured out the "free market". It's called 'WalMart crushes everyone smaller', which is why anyone who appreciates the value of small and local businesses is opposed to the Libertardian policies.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Looks like somebody bought stock in Molycorp and now wants to guarantee the success of his investment with a little buzz on the grapevine, eh?
Giant Smurfs are living where another huge source of rare earth is found, but I am pretty sure they won't put up much of a fight...
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
>> Perhaps you just haven't met the right Liberals or perhaps you failed to hold up your end of the conversation. If you want to speak to a Liberal you should be prepared not just for a political discussion, but for a philosophical one as well. Many people just tune out when the discussion turns to philosophy. Also try talking to a Liberal who is more intelligent than you are. Not less. You might actually learn something.
Fixed your comment.
Stop subsidizing farmers and giving the food away to countries that can't afford to produce it themselves
Worse than that even. The countries can afford to produce food themselves. What they can't do is compete with free food from the US. We give them food, all of their local sources of food go under because who exactly will buy bread when you get it from free from the USAID box?
+1 Disagree
The simplistic answer is that fee companies competing with state-sponsored ones is by very definition not a free market.
So... Libertarianism only works if China is Libertarian as well? Oooh... kaay... but I do think this is a good time to deploy "Good Luck With That" and some hollow laughter. Seriously, a politico-economic model that only works when everyone plays by the same set of rules is definitely unworkable in reality. It's like the right-wing reverse-image version of Communism. Sure, the nature of the mistakes it makes are different at the level of the detail, but the big picture is that you simply must not assume that people will obey any particular rule. There's always going to be someone (or some country or some company or ... well, who isn't important) willing to be underhanded to gain an advantage.
"Little does he know, but there is no 'I' in 'Idiot'!"
There's an old Iron mine in Missouri called Pea Ridge, where they have found REEs. The owner wants to re-open the mine to mine Iron and REEs.
Have a Look at a company Called Matamec Exploration Inc to be specific from what I can see there just scratching the surface of the deposit. Which is located north east of Renfrew Ontario, East of Cobalt Ontario and Sudbury and South of Timmins and Rouyn-Noranda so anyone with a little knowledge of the area knows that this can and probably will be a strategic asset for all of North America soon. Matamec Explorations Inc is a junior mining exploration company whose main focus is in developing the Kipawa deposit. It is also exploring more than 35km of strike length in the Kipawa Alkalic Complex for rare earths-yttrium-zirconium-niobium-tantalum mineralization on the surrounding Zeus property. A timely, high value and low cost mine is projected for early 2016. The viability of the project is emphasized by: a simple mineralogy rich in the rarer heavy rare earths (HREEs); a well defined NI-43-101 compliant indicated and inferred resource with plenty of upside; a flat-lying ore body that extends to surface and is open pittable with a low strip ratio; an ore concentration process that eliminates 65% of the ore; a simple, low cost recipe for extracting the total rare earths as an oxide (TREO). End users, such as the car industry, are interested in our critical metal content (such as dysprosium) and are capable of absorbing most of our product.
What you've described is how customers will respond to market forces. The situation is still anything but a free market.
If you consider China subsidizing shit to still be part of the 'free market,' then what the fuck is the point of even having the term 'free market' to begin with? It's all just 'the market'.
--Jeremy
Jesus was a liberal
What you've described is how customers will respond to market forces. The situation is still anything but a free market.
If you consider China subsidizing shit to still be part of the 'free market,' then what the fuck is the point of even having the term 'free market' to begin with? It's all just 'the market'.
--Jeremy
Understand that OUR market will be free and end up ahead. Sure, in my example, the Chinese government tried to manipulate the market, and did so successfully. However, it didn't help them. It ended up helping OUR market, because we have the FREE market in my example.
What you've described is how customers will respond to market forces.
Yeah! It's called Demand and is the most fundamental concept of economics. I thought we were past that.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
The mine owners may be forced to sell then mine to someone with enought foresight to know that the prices won't stay low forever.
And that will be the Chinese, as they're the only one able to concentrate enough money (through state-owned companies) to buy up the mines.
Just a few examples.
Libertarian, busted you are.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
The correct formulations are "one of the few" (for an indeterminant number) and "one of only N" (if the number is known).
I would REALLY appreciate it if the editors would fix this in submitted stories.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Yawn. Yea, lunatic fringe is lunatic fringe. There are also those who think the government can simply take control of all production and set prices as it sees fit.
The mine owners may be forced to sell then mine to someone with enought foresight to know that the prices won't stay low forever.
And that will be the Chinese, as they're the only one able to concentrate enough money (through state-owned companies) to buy up the mines.
Just a few examples.
Libertarian, busted you are.
Risk = Reward. If the Chinese can buy up all the mines in the world to corner the market on NEW materials, then they deserve the monopoly... wait, monopolies are illegal in this and many other countries. I wonder how that will play out.
But again, like people have said, even if all the mines are not producing, that will mean a HUGE market for recycled materials, increased research into alternatives and alternative supply chains.
So, yeah, China could bank if they could buy out the world's mines, buy out the future potential mines, outbid all other investors for those last few mines, prevent alternative sources from being found, and finally, prevent alternative materials from being discovered... yeah, then they could corner the market and reap huge rewards. However, that's a very VERY risky venture that, let's face it, won't pay out.
Sure, others have tried and some do quite well at it. DeBeers, for example, have a controlling chunk of the diamond market. However, the more they raise prices, the more alternative sources of diamonds are discovered. OPEC controls oil prices, but every time they cut production, more sources of oil are found.
There are laws of economics. The free market is based on those laws. Governments can bend the market one way or the other, but the laws may not be broken. When governments try to bend it too far one way or the other, a thriving black market will take over, which runs on... you guessed it... FREE MARKET principles.
I'm not recommending a free market. It's unavoidable. You may not break the laws of economics no more than you may break the laws of physics. You may try to manipulate them one way or the other and may even make a bit of progress, but in the end, the laws of supply and demand will win out. The trick is to not fight it. Know how the laws work and you can predict the future to make sure you are on the winning end every single time.
(yes, there are times when government intervention is required, like regulating natural monopolies such as utilities and insulin providers, but less is almost always better. Subsidies are almost never a good idea and if it really looks like China is about to corner the market on critical materials, then the US government can always declare the area around the mine a "national park" like ANWR to prevent anyone from owning it. Then the government would actually lease the rights to mine there.)
And that will be the Chinese, as they're the only one able to concentrate enough money (through state-owned companies) to buy up the mines.
No. Actually, US private sector is much larger than the Chinese government. The US private sector is larger than the US government. For that matter, US banks have more money than the Chinese government.
Sorry, but government only takes a percentage of GDP. That means that GDP is larger than government as long as tax rates are under 50%. All liquid money ends up in banks. Yeah, you may have put it in the stock market, but the company you invested in put it in the bank. If they spent it, whoever they spent it on put it in the bank.... all money goes through the banks. The banks in the second largest economy in the world can easily outbid the government of the third largest economy in the world (EU is first according to Wikipedia).
By the way, the US economy is still 2-3 times larger than the Chinese.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
It's like the right-wing reverse-image version of Communism.
I've often thought that. It is a distinctly 19th Century Utopian notion (though the product of the mid-20th Century). It was clearly a counter-reaction to and inspired by Communism (which Ayn Rand's family fled in 1917) dreamed up at the height of the "Red Menace" years from the 1930s to the 1950s. Like Communism it was dreamed up by an academic mind without basing it on any evidence of feasibility in the real world. Like Communism, to adherents the failure of the theory to describe the real world reveal a defect in reality (not the theory) or is simply the result of the theoretical scheme not being comprehensively and universally implemented. You must surrender to it utterly to experience its wonderful benefits.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
...If China is willing to sell goods for cheaper than it costs to produce, then that's good for us. The rare earth metals will remain in our country while we bleed China dry....
Brilliant! Let's do that! Lets buy all those rare earths at below cost, and bleed China dry!
Wait. Didn't China stop selling rare earths at below cost and now charges punitive rates? Isn't it a problem not getting them to sell to you at all? Why isn't that good deal still available? Come on China let us bleed you dry!
This could be shaped into a line for Weird Al's "Dare to be Stupid" ("It's like I said, you gotta buy one if you wanna get one free.").
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
... If you want to speak to a Libertarian you should be prepared not just for a political discussion, but for a philosophical one as well. ....
Done that many, many times. The problem is that philosophy is used as a counter to any consideration of reality.
Starships were meant to fly, Hands up and touch the sky - Nicky Minaj
It's halfway there. The employment conditions there are a wet dream for any libertarian employer. Consider an "unregistered" coal mines in China (the ones we hear about due to the nearly weekly death toll) and how little government oversight on any aspect of them there is. The libertarians would love it. Forget safety standards, it's just a negotiation between the employer and whoever wants to risk their lives in the hope it will pay off.
The thing with little Utopias is how badly it sucks for people they don't see as their perfect citizens. Burning people as witches is one American example.
Anyone else ever read Michael Chrichton's book Congo?
I remember thinking it was a little silly, but nowadays it seems like his most prescient novel.
- ------ Go 'til ya know.