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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.
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.
To clarify, it’s not a monopoly per say. It’s the market structure that makes it hard for anybody to enter.
To start a rare earth mine requires long lead times, large up-front capital spending, and high running costs (As have been mentioned, these mines produce a lot of trailings that need special environmental handling).
Any competitor entering the market would face a opponent that has already spent huge amounts on it’s fixed capital (i.e. sunk costs). What normally happens in these situations is a long, brutal price war as the established company lowers it price because it does not have to recoup it’s sunk costs. So anybody who enters the market could not count on today’s high prices.
If the established company want’s it’s monopoly, it can even “dump” product onto the market for years, starving it’s completion.
Factor in that you are going against a state sponsored Chinese company that has access to cheap capital (effectively reducing the cost of it’s fixed capital) and lower requirements to it’s environmental laws.
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.