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US Gives $120M For Lab To Tackle Rare Earth Shortages
coondoggie writes "With China once again playing games with the rare earth materials it largely holds sway over, the U.S. Department of Energy today said it would set up a research and development hub that will bring together all manner of experts to help address the situation. The DOE awarded $120 million to Ames Laboratory to set up an Energy Innovation Hub that will develop solutions to the domestic shortages of rare earth metals and other materials critical for U.S. energy security, the DOE stated."
Just lick butt of mighty China.
Now give me my $120M please.
I realize it's going to take robots/remote control machines and such but what is the real hurdle to ocean mining because I imagine that there is a lot of unexplored spots in the world and there could be a ton of material in the oceans just waiting for us.
It's about high time that we have bipartisan support for energy independence. It's time for both political parties to pull their thumbs out of their collective arses and get it done!
What? It's less idiotic than some things American politicians do.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
today works like this: bribe local authoritites and enslave miners in third world countries while destroying the environment, then let criminal organizations export them back to the us, like the blood diamonds; there is a huge black market out there.
Well funded R&D can bring us amazing advancements, I only hope this project succeeds and stops the illegal mining and the black market in the same vein of the synthetic latex.
Have they considered digging it up? American rare earth production didn't stop because it ran out, it just became less profitable than competing with China.
According to an article in Popular Mechanics (page 60, January 2013 issue) a company called Molycorp is running a re-opened rare earth mine in the Mojave Desert, forecasting "By mid 2013 the mine will have the capacity to produce 40,000 metric tons anually".
The US has sufficient resources.
see:
http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/rare_earths/mcs-2012-raree.pdf
Political interest actually is about getting _cheap_ access to china's resources.
It's true the Earth is very rare, but only because it keeps getting destroyed, thus the new Young Earth is always a little under-done -- Nothing a bit of Global Warming won't fix... Where was I? Oh, Shortage, right: The answer is quite simple, grant human rights to the Dolphins and ask them if they'll build you another one! Then you just have to make a formal complaint to the intergalactic zoning commission to prevent the hyperspace expressway before the Vogons get here... Blam! Just doubled your natural resources! (and my CPU power)
Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got a few mazes to run before I get back to removing the labels (and your memories) of the most important button on everyone's keyboards. I mean, look at it. It's the biggest one, and it's Blank?! Ha! Soon no one will be able to remember how it's used to locate the Restaurant at the End of the Universe, thus I'll have saved the Universe too! It's taking longer than I thought since many folks have retained a vague recollection of that unforgettable place and started re-labeling the key: "Space Bar"
possible solutions:
1. invade china
2. ask the UN to sanction china
3. ask the UN to write them a harshly worded letter
4. mine for our own resources
5. recycle existing rare earth stockpiles (aka your local landfill)
Ames lab knows how to perform low energy nuclear transmutations. There was a presentation at CERN last year showing that Mitsubishi Heavy Industries got positive results of transmuting Cs into Pr (Praseodymium is a rare earth element). Recently Hitach has reproduced these results. "advanced batteries" and "alloy formulations" sound good enough to dedicate some of the money to LENR related research.
1st: declare there's a shortage of some sort, scare people telling them there's not even enough of that resource for healthcare (but forget to mention there's plenty for money-producing-industries) -- 2nd: give some millions bucks to your friends to "look for solutions" -- 3rd: go on vacation with some of the $$ your friends give you back under the table
Instead of finding even more ways to strip the earth of all useful materials they should be investing in recycling used materials.
There are literally millions if not billions (in both weight/tons and in value) of rare earth materials in thrown away products around the world.
They should be investing in developing technologies to recycle old products and re-use as many of the materials as possible and not just the rare ones either as materials that are a plenty now will become rare if we continue to use and throw them away.
This would explain why they need to get all the precious metal.
How dare China play games with its own resources? And to the detriment of 'merica! Bad yellow peril! What a horrible, US-centric article!
Fortunately I have one : Video
1. Buy $120m of rare-earth materials.
2. ???
3. Profit!
Step 2 could be as simple as 'wait'.
From TFA: ..."
"...CMI specifically plans to organize its efforts in four mutually supporting focus areas:
Diversify Supply
Develop Substitutes
Improve Reuse and Recycling
Conduct Crosscutting Research
Correct me if I'm wrong, but Rare Earths aren't really rare in the sense of scarcity - they're about as common as lead or tin. They're "rare" in the sense that they're not found in veins or nuggets, they're found only by processing large quantities of materials (a usually complicated and toxic process that the US has largely farmed out to China because China's far more tolerant of environmental pollution). the article asserts that China controls 95% of the supplies of rare earths - I presume this means they currently produce 95% of the world's production, NOT that they sit on 95% of the world's reserves; two entirely different situations.
So aside from perhaps the first subject peripherally, as far as I can tell none of these points tries to substantively address that MAIN barrier to our 'supply' of "rare earths": regulatory reform to allow US firms to compete economically and viably with Chinese rare earth recovery companies. There must be an economic motivation if so many countries are nervous about China's lock on the processing capability, certainly?
-Styopa
If these minerals are so vital to the nation (and possibly even important to national security because of their uses in military technology etc) just offer whatever subsidies are necessary to make it viable for mining companies to mine and process the deposits that the US has on its own soil.
You could also introduce tariffs on the import of minerals from foreign countries.
There is precedent here, the US does exactly this (subsidize domestic production, tax foreign imports) for a number of agricultural commodities (sugar being one)
Simple, non-technical solution: Refuse to rely on a foreign source for materials deemed critical to the nation. Maintain your own production capability even when buying a cheaper foreign product (and stockpile if you must), but don't let your domestic production capability falter.
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
Seems like step number one is to stop sending anything with rare earths to Asia to be recycled.
Step 2 would be to try and attract foreign components containing rare earths here to be recycled. If its that important bite the bullet on not-cheap labor and other environmental issues (and develop better processes for doing it.)
At the same time of course, turn the geologists loose to find more.
Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of congress. But then I repeat myself. -- Mark Twain
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries reported transmutation of Cs to Pr at low energies, it was presented at a CERN colloquium last year.
http://indico.cern.ch/getFile.py/access?resId=5&materialId=slides&confId=177379
Toyota has replicated the experiment.
It was also presented at the American Nuclear Society's winter meeting in Nov 2012:
"Replication experiments have been performed in some universities or institutes mainly in Japan. T.Higashiyama et al. of Osaka University observed transmutation of Cs into Pr in 2003[7]. H.Yamada et al. performed similar experiments using Cs and detected increase of mass number 137 by TOF-SIMS. They used a couple of nano-structured Pd multilayer thin film and observed the increase of mass number 141 (corresponding to Pr) only when 133Cs was given on the Pd sample [8]. N. Takhashi et al., the researchers of Toyota Central R&D Labs, presented that they detected Pr from the permeated Pd sample using SOR x-ray at Spring-8 and the detected Pr was confirmed by ICP-MS and TOF-SIMS [8]."
http://newenergytimes.com/v2/conferences/2012/ANS2012W/2012Iwamura-ANS-LENR-Paper.pdf
...also known as "Common Asteroid Metals".
The older I get, the harder it gets to fight off becoming a cynical old coot. I have wondered why the USA is militarily involved in a country like Afghanistan. On the surface it does not appear to have anything in the national interest. Sure there were some terrorist training camps there. From the sparse media coverage of this war, the country appears to be run by 7th century goat herders. The drone war has been flattening those bases and the bad guys over there for a while though. What has been peculiar is this:
Why do we have boots on the ground when drones are working so well?
Why are we spending so much effort at "Nation Building".
Well well well. It appears there is a huge deposit of rare earths that were discovered by some of our geologists. Try Googling "rare earths Afganistan". Some reports claim a trillion dollar cache of the stuff has been discovered. I suspect there maybe a larger deposit than that. Check out just this one article.
http://www.livescience.com/16315-rare-earth-elements-afghanistan.html
Me cynical? Naaaa.
Oh, yeah! Wise guy, huh? Woob woob woob woob! Nyuk! Nyuk!
Really. There's no actual shortage of the stuff. There's just a shortage of mines that produce them cheaper than China did back then. Market prices rise? Well, I guess those old unused mines might become profitable again.
It pretty much lists everything America and China need to do in the next 100 years.
What do they pay if you pile-driver a midget?
The biggest barriers to asteroid mining are the high cost of surface to orbit transit and a lack of orbital infrastructure.
While those are huge barriers the biggest barrier is the fact that returning materials from orbit in any meaningful quantity results in a weapon of mass destruction. Dropping several tons of metal from orbit has the same effect as a nuclear weapon. Do you think Russia or China or the US would be comfortable with regular transit of WMDs in orbit? Even an accident would have very bad consequences.
Sending mountains of mined ore back down is free. Don't give me that look.
Free? Explain to me how you are going to get a 10 ton chunk of iron down from orbit without the huge explosion when it hits the ground. Explain to me how you assure nation states that you really aren't going to drop that chunk of ore on their capital.
Step 1: Pay other nations to dig up their rare metals/minerals and sell them to the USA.
Step 2: Hoard all of those rare metals/minerals.
Step 3: Wait for other nations to run out of their rare metals/minerals.
Step 4: ???
Step 5: Profit.
So, here's the conversation between President Obama and the Chinese Prime Minister....
Obama: What happened to the rare earths?
CPM: Who run Bartertown?
Obama: We don't have time to play this game. Turn up the rare earths.
CPM: WHO RUN BARTERTOWN.
Obama: I'm not playing this.
CPM: Embargo. Embargo!
Obama: (heavy sigh)... Ok ok... Master Blaster run Bartertown.
CPM; Embargo.... Lifted!
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
Here is a thought. The US is a capitalistic society. Why is the government funding this? If there is a resource shortage, isn't the private sector the solution? Or is it that the private sector is only the solution once all the hard stuff has been paid for by the taxpayer?
Rare earths are not rare. During mining one of the components that is almost always found with rare earths is... wait for it. THORIUM, which has to be treated as radioactive waste. This is a regulatory problem, not a scarcity problem.
Thorium
Not to be confused with Thallium or Thulium. .. I'm not sure why that strikes me as funny.
Generally speaking asteroid mining is proposed (at least in the near term) because having raw materials and heavy industry available *in space* would be immensely valuable to further space development since bringing stuff up from Earth currently costs at least a few thousand $/lb and is unlikely to fall by more than an order of magnitude any time soon unless that airship-to-orbit idea pans out. At those prices things like iron that are readily available in asteroids without even needing+ refinement start looking really good. Getting it back to Earth is a bit of a headache for reasons others have described, and is unlikely to be worth it for your primary materials, though the trace materials like gold, platinum, etc. that are significantly valuable on Earth are likely worth transporting down and may even manage to make the mining base pay for itself. The real treasure though is all the resources that will never see the surface of the Earth.
Now if we ever build something like a skyhook that can productively capture the angular momentum of transferring something from orbit to the surface that may change - essentially dropping stuff to Earth is the "fuel" that pays for lifting other stuff up. Unless demand increases dramatically though base materials like iron, carbon, water, etc will still probably be considerably cheaper to get on Earth - mining asteroids is likely to be considerably more challenging/expensive than landfills.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Since 1967, I have recycled what I could (cans, bottles, paper, and these days plastics).
However, I found out that Waste Management (WM) sends our recycled goods to China. That is JUST INSANE to buy goods from there and then send it back to there. This has multiple issues. Basically, China requires the ships to return full. They can either send back resources, or manufactured goods. At this time, they can send back resources because we are foolish enough to do so. However, if we stockpile the items, at some point, we will figure out that recycle of our trash is the way to really lower our costs. At the same time, it stops China from being able to wage an economic war with the west.
Now, as to access to resources, we have the rare earths. That is not an issue. Molycorp has those. In fact, molycorp has even developed a clean safe cheap way to mine the resources. What is really missing is the actual conversion of ore to the metals. And that is pretty wicked. If we can clean that up, then we should be OK.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Regularly, our universities and labs have allowed Chinese students to come here and grab the science slots. Generally, it is because not only does the US give a free ride to a number of students, but then China quietly gives up money. They are double-dipping.
But to make matters worse, these scientist will then bring in only their fellow country-men rather than looking at the top candidates.
It is long past time that America stops this insanity. We are destroying ourselves.
For $120M, can you find some way to stop meth addicts from sawing off catalytic converters and selling them for cash to scrap dealers? Who will turn around and ship them overseas where the rare metals are recovered?
Have gnu, will travel.
LFTRs please
here are the "games" china is playing. same "games" youll see with the diamond and oil industries, as well as canadian logging and even the US mint for coin collectors, but in this case we give a shit because, well, scary evil china.
Good people go to bed earlier.
well we could use more rare earth on youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3Z8NU5ImK0
Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
There is no shortage of rare earth metals in the earth. The only shortage is no companies mining for it in the U.S and other places. China invested in this area. Now its time the rest of the world mans up and invests in their own mining to break China's monopoly