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."

Comments

Somebody didn't get the memo!

[flightmaker]

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".

Re:Politics

[turp182]

I agree on all points but that of oil. Fracking depends on high oil prices, otherwise it isn't economically viable (don't expect the price of gas or oil to come down). As well, those fracked wells show much faster production declines than traditional oil wells, on an individual basis they decline pretty fast. Environmental concerns are also pretty big, may as well be mining rare earths...

For more info regarding fracking and the "more oil than Saudi Arabia" propaganda (at best that's what it is, at worst it is completely uninformed...), this article goes over the basics:
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/9753

The Oil Drum has many other more detailed articles as well.