Interviews: Ask CMI Director Alex King About Rare Earth Mineral Supplies

The modern electronics industry relies on inputs and supply chains, both material and technological, and none of them are easy to bypass. These include, besides expertise and manufacturing facilities, the actual materials that go into electronic components. Some of them are as common as silicon; rare earth minerals, not so much. One story linked from Slashdot a few years back predicted that then-known supplies would be exhausted by 2017, though such predictions of scarcity are notoriously hard to get right, as people (and prices) adjust to changes in supply. There's no denying that there's been a crunch on rare earths, though, over the last several years. The minerals themselves aren't necessarily rare in an absolute sense, but they're expensive to extract. The most economically viable deposits are found in China, and rising prices for them as exports to the U.S., the EU, and Japan have raised political hackles. At the same time, those rising prices have spurred exploration and reexamination of known deposits off the coast of Japan, in the midwestern U.S., and elsewhere.

Alex King is director of the Critical Materials Institute, a part of the U.S. Department of Energy's Ames Laboratory. CMI is heavily involved in making rare earth minerals slightly less rare by means of supercomputer analysis; researchers there are approaching the ongoing crunch by looking both for substitute materials for things like gallium, indium, and tantalum, and easier ways of separating out the individual rare earths (a difficult process). One team there is working with "ligands – molecules that attach with a specific rare-earth – that allow metallurgists to extract elements with minimal contamination from surrounding minerals" to simplify the extraction process. We'll be talking with King soon; what questions would you like to see posed? (This 18-minute TED talk from King is worth watching first, as is this Q&A.)

Comments

Re:I thought rare earths were not that rare

[denis-The-menace]

There are plenty of Rare Earth mines in the US but they are "Polluted" with Thorium.

In China, they would process the Rare Earth minerals and stockpile the Thorium on the side until they could find a use for it. In the US, that is illegal.

Now China is thinking about using the stockpile of Thorium in LFTR reactors. And guess what, LFTR reactors are illegal too because they are considered "Breeder Reactors".

So why is all this stuff still illegal in the US? The Old-School Nuke industry wants to keep their Dyno-Reactors until they blow up, Literally. It's WAAAY too profitable to be the sole-source for solid reactor fuel.

Re:I thought rare earths were not that rare

[Ralph Wiggam]

The Mountain Pass mine in California produced a majority of the world's rare earth supply in the 80s. After getting undercut in price by China and a bunch of EPA violations, it was shut down in 2002. In 2008, after China threatened to limit their exports, a new company purchased the mine and got some government support as there are strategic issues involved.

I don't know if they're actually producing anything yet. If not, they're close. When you drive from LA to Las Vegas, you pass this mine. I've seen a bunch of cars there for a few years.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Pass_rare_earth_mine

Re:I thought rare earths were not that rare

[Mr D from 63]

Fast Reactors are considered proliferation risks, and it is that stance of the anti-nuclear establishment that really prohibits their development. The nuclear industry would be quite happy with development of fast reactors. They have several designs proposed, developed with their own investment $$.

The True Cost of Various Environmental Laws?

[eldavojohn]

The minerals themselves aren't necessarily rare in an absolute sense, but they're expensive to extract.) The most economically viable deposits are found in China, and rising prices for them as exports to the U.S., the EU, and Japan have raised political hackles. (At the same time, those rising prices have spurred exploration and reexamination of known deposits off the coast of Japan, in the midwestern U.S., and elsewhere.

My understanding revolves around only the crudest idea about modern mining methods and the resulting tailings & water usage they often employ. I assume that in China, they get around these costs by just damaging the environment (like dumping tailings where ever instead of having dedicated settling and filtering ponds). Could you give us some back of the envelope calculations (they could be percentages or additional yearly operating costs) of what these environmental regulations mean for mining operations in the United States versus China? There's an awful lot of talk on Slashdot and other news sites about how cost prohibitive the EPA makes business in America but I've never seen an expert in the industry actually talk hard numbers. Any ballpark estimates would be greatly appreciated. In your experience, are any of these laws and regulations less or more effective than others?

Re:I thought rare earths were not that rare

[Opportunist]

We have to differentiate between economic and true shortage. Economic shortage only means that it is currently, at this market price, unfeasible to pursue to exploit some sources. With most of the stuff we call "rare" or where we detect a "shortage", all it means is that at the current market situation it is not possible to produce more of this stuff. There is more, but the price would have to rise to make it economically viable to exploit the source.

That has happened and will happen. If we need some material, we will have to pay the price to mine it, drill for it or otherwise produce it. And once the price rises, deposits that are currently uninteresting will become viable.

China's Complete Supply Chain

[eldavojohn]

Recently this year the WTO ruled against China's practices in the rare earth market but some pundits have stated that this ruling doesn't matter because China controls the whole supply chain of rare earths. Would you care to comment on the efficacy of the WTO's ruling? Can you explain what part of the supply chain the US is missing? For example, we're missing mines but if we had mines we're missing refineries but if we had them we're missing ... etc. What throughput of each mineral in our domestic supply chain would we need to put the US government at ease?

What about processing?

[WindBourne]

There are plenty of new rare earth mines coming. However, molycorp was going to make a new processing plant, and then with a change of CEO, pulled out of this.
So,
1) Will the federal gov. help out with setting up a processing plant? My rep, Mark Coffman, used to push this as needed for national security, but, he has stopped since his friend was booted.
2) Will the federal and/or state gov. help with increasing demand so that we can rare earth processing off the ground again?
3) Is there any push by your group to deal with the thorium that comes with rare earth mining? Perhaps, new thorium reactors?