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Japan Team Maps 'Semi-Infinite' Trove of Rare Earth Elements (japantimes.co.jp)
schwit1 quotes a report from The Japan Times: Japanese researchers have mapped vast reserves of rare earth elements in deep-sea mud, enough to feed global demand on a "semi-infinite basis," according to a new study. The deposit, found within Japan's exclusive economic zone waters, contains more than 16 million tons of the elements needed to build high-tech products ranging from mobile phones to electric vehicles, according to the study, released Tuesday in the journal Scientific Reports. The team, comprised of several universities, businesses and government institutions, surveyed the western Pacific Ocean near Minamitori Island. In a sample area of the mineral-rich region, the team's survey estimated 1.2 million tons of "rare earth oxide" is deposited there, said the study, conducted jointly by Waseda University's Yutaro Takaya and the University of Tokyo's Yasuhiro Kato, among others. The finding extrapolates that a 2,500-sq. km region off the southern Japanese island should contain 16 million tons of the valuable elements, and "has the potential to supply these metals on a semi-infinite basis to the world," the study said.
There goes asteroid mining.
Nope. "Rare earth" metals were never the rational for asteroid mining, because rare earth metals are not actually rare. They are fairly common, but generally don't exist in concentrated ores that can be economically mined. Neither asteroids nor deep sea deposits change that, because neither is going to be more economical to mine than known deposits in China, Africa, and California.
The Mountain Pass Mine in California is currently mothballed, not because of lack or ore, but because prices are too low to stay in business.
Asteroid mining is for metals like gold, platinum, and other siderophile elements, which are rare in the earth's crust, but thousands of times more common in the earth's core and in asteroids. The earth's crust is mostly oxides, so metals that do not oxidize readily tend to sink to the core.