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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.
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!
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.
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.
I have long held the idea that a future industry will be the comprehensive mining of trash dumps.
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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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.