Rare-Earth Mining Rises Again in United States

CommanderFrank

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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China has pretty much obtained a lock on the mining and production of rare earth minerals for the entire world over the past 20 years. Countries around the world are now beginning to offset China’s hold on the rare elements and the US is doing its part. Molycorp, located in California, will be reopened for production for what used to be one of the biggest rare earth mines in the world.

Rare-earth mining began at Mountain Pass in the early 1950s, and by the mid-1980s the mine supplied 60 percent of global demand and 100 percent of U.S. needs. But as Chinese production increased, operations at Mountain Pass dwindled.
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Yay for new jobs in the US (until China drops their prices again, undercuts everyone and cause layoffs in the US mines)!
 
China's main excuse against its accusations of unfair practices in exporting rare earths was that it was concerned about the environment and the pollution that the process creates. Not that I give the Chinese government much of any credibility when it issues statements in general, but does anyone have an idea of how dirty the process actually is?
 
China just wants to keep all major electronics manufacturing on its shores so they can abuse the global trade system. Their environmental concerns are BS, especially considering how polluted their ecosystem is (my wife went there a few years ago, it was nasty). Money and control is really their only concern.

China complaints aside -- the global economy needs to diversify and that includes adding additional sources of rare-earths. We all saw what happened to hard drive supply when Thailand flooded. When you put all your eggs in one basket you're going to have a huge mess on your hands (or feet :D) when that basket gets dropped.
 
ArbY said:
..., but does anyone have an idea of how dirty the process actually is?
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I don't, but I do like the idea of more US manufacturing and production. Mining for rare earth elements and using them domestically is great. I always look for a US made item before I go to an imported item (raw materials up to finished product). I'm amazed at how many of these Occupy folks want more US jobs, but spend their money on imported goods. How do they think these big corporations would justify more jobs if they won't even support the corporation in the first place by buying an American made product?

:) Glad the US is doing more mining. I like being a bit more self sufficient like we used to be as a country.
 
Until the environmentalist start bitching and griping and obama, predictably, gives in to them and bans the mining of rare earth element in the US:rolleyes:
 
ArbY said:
China's main excuse against its accusations of unfair practices in exporting rare earths was that it was concerned about the environment and the pollution that the process creates. Not that I give the Chinese government much of any credibility when it issues statements in general, but does anyone have an idea of how dirty the process actually is?
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Dirty in which sense? Chinese dirty? or US dirty? Because dirty in the US (under EPA regulations) is pretty damn clean for Chinese standards.

There are often layers of "dirty" one of course is the mining itself as it often you'll have a huge pit dug rather than mine shafts from a common hole. So from an ecological standpoint this pretty much changes one huge area of land from what it was. Now you can fix that kind of dirty fairly easily, it's all a matter of how good the mining company is if they'll put the effort to get the land back to decent quality.

Then there's the separation of what you want from what you don't want, there are a number of ways that this can occur. Often lots of water is used (resource) and this water isn't something that's usually treated after it's done it's job (pollution) so it carries with it all the silt and other crap that was buried under the ground. It could also use some other chemicals to separate what they want, and at that point it's all a matter of how far up their asses an EPA inspector is to see that it's handled properly.

Lastly there's the refining process which has it's own sorts of pollution, air, water, ground, again depends what they do with the slag, or the waste, or anything else.

Overall it's a matter of economics though, doing something cleanly requires more cost, now China polluting the shit out of their area is fine by us as long as they sell us goods cheaply. Now they're with-holding their grip, trying to pull the monopoly card, but for them it's going to backfire because all the places that used to be the leaders in mining of various minerals will go back to work leaving them in the dust (so to speak). Then any complaints they had with pollution and deformed child births will get swept under the rug while they go back to their old practices of doing it as cheaply as possible.
 
@arby..it says right in the article ..it is very dirty...and that the chinese ignore the health and saftey aspects..and that is why it was so cheap. lately, the chinese are looking to more clean up the process.

i this US mine that is reopening..it was closed in 2002 because of radioactivity seeping into the environment.
 
ArbY said:
China's main excuse against its accusations of unfair practices in exporting rare earths was that it was concerned about the environment and the pollution that the process creates. Not that I give the Chinese government much of any credibility when it issues statements in general, but does anyone have an idea of how dirty the process actually is?
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Given the amount of coal mining going on in China, this is laughable.
 
China has jacked up the price to where others can join in again. But I figure China will just undercut those who have invested in mining it, again. Then again

jack up the prices, encourage competitors to start, drop prices, burn competitive investors,...

After they repeat that a few times, they will have trained investors to stay away from the industry and put prices up permanently.
 
jpm100 said:
China has jacked up the price to where others can join in again. But I figure China will just undercut those who have invested in mining it, again. Then again

jack up the prices, encourage competitors to start, drop prices, burn competitive investors,...

After they repeat that a few times, they will have trained investors to stay away from the industry and put prices up permanently.
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^This, I have a feeling too that they would do that.
 
jpm100 said:
China has jacked up the price to where others can join in again. But I figure China will just undercut those who have invested in mining it, again. Then again.
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Nope...China has realized the truth: Even if they own the US financially, if we go under, everything they have invested in goes away and their economy fails. Odd but, It is now in China's best interest to ensure the US is successful again.
 
BBA said:
Nope...China has realized the truth: Even if they own the US financially, if we go under, everything they have invested in goes away and their economy fails. Odd but, It is now in China's best interest to ensure the US is successful again.
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What a delusion and a half.

Let's set the mind reading of China's motivations aside. Even if the Chinese were cooling their jets, our lust for credit to keep out economy propped up because of the industry we've lost will do the situation in from our end.
 
ArbY said:
China's main excuse against its accusations of unfair practices in exporting rare earths was that it was concerned about the environment and the pollution that the process creates. Not that I give the Chinese government much of any credibility when it issues statements in general, but does anyone have an idea of how dirty the process actually is?
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Uhmm... not much dirtier than any other sort of mining, really. The processes after digging it up to extract the rare earth minerals is much more dangerous/dirty due to the chemical reactions involved. Still, even this isn't exactly dirty considering other industries and their prevalent uses of dangerous chemicals. The biggest issue with this sort of rare earth mining is that it requires a lot of digging and a lot of space.

Reliance of Chinese rare earth mining won't diminish within the immediate future. It's going to take several years at least before we can get to a point where our own mines can provide the need for the minerals.
 
It's going to be tough going against a closed ecosystem like China. They have nationalized banks which then fund the nationalized mining and refining facilities. They have the power to undercut other nations simply because it is so easy for them to offset the costs to other areas and to keep the cost of labor very low. I'm glad to hear we're moving towards more rare-earth production but it's definitely going to be a rough fight for our mining companies. And, yes, US mining standards are so much higher that the pollution produced will definitely be orders of magnitude less than the Chinese process.
 
jpm100 said:
What a delusion and a half.

Let's set the mind reading of China's motivations aside. Even if the Chinese were cooling their jets, our lust for credit to keep out economy propped up because of the industry we've lost will do the situation in from our end.
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You are delusioned. I happen to have my information from conversation with Chineese h1b employees.
 
It is "dirtier" because of the significant ratio if byproduct having heavy metal contamination and radioactive materials (low level activity radionuclides). Very poisionous, and the radioactivity is very damaging if ingested. This means the literally tons of processing byproducts has to be disposed of in a way that doesn't get it into a water stream. That's the tough part about US environmental regulations--it is very hard and very expensive to dispose of waste in a way that the government regularors consider meets the very stringent standard. If you're in China, the standard is more like "don't dump the waste directky into the drinking water, and if you happen to need to ruin an aquifer or lake, just bribe the local communist party boss along with a note mentioning how many people you employ/passify from being unhappy with the Chinese government.
 
stealthy123 said:
YAY for raping the planet to the point it can no long support life! yay!
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Ruoh said:
The products from this proposed mine will go into your electric car, you know.
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Yup, cause electric vehicles are "green" like that. It's amazing how people think that electric vehicles are some sort of magic "green bullet", and don't or won't look past "the car uses no petrol" to see all the "non-green" processes that are involved in making and maintaining those vehicles.
Though a very small number of "green" people understand that, not sure which group stealthy123 is a part of.
 
About damn time we picked up the ball. China having absolute control over the worlds supply of rare earth mining is bad news. And for the tree huggers, this is good news for the environment too. At least we have laws and the EPA to regulate how they are extracted. China doesn't give a flying you know what about the environment, who would you ather have doing the mining?
 
After re-reading the article, that company is a scam.

Reading between the lines in the last few paragraphs, the company did not overstate it's product demand, the market dropping out was the real problem...lol (what a play on words.)

Also, they announced larger than expected profits by selling product that hasn't even been mined yet. Now that's reassuring, wreaks of ponzi scheme. Invest in me and I'll claim windfall profits.

That whole article has nothing to do with China, it was a sales article backing the company. I am suspicious as to whether the author of the article invested in the company...
 
MajorDomo said:
China has pretty much obtained a lock on the mining and production of rare earth minerals for the entire world over the past 20 years. Countries around the world are now beginning to offset China’s hold on the rare elements and the US is doing its part. Molycorp, located in California, will be reopened for production for what used to be one of the biggest rare earth mines in the world.
Click to expand...

This is mostly good news. For a time China was highly competitive in price and quantity of rare earth minerals, which lead to the shutdown of mines in other countries. Recently China restricted exports of rare earth minerals choosing instead to drive up the price of minerals that can't be obtained elsewhere.
 
once upon a time, the US gubermint was involved in keeping strategic resources available so that the US would always have access to them. this is why we have, for now, the only real stockpile of Helium in the world.

I would think that things like rare earths would be one of those things we as a nation should be keeping available. mining operations are not something you can flip on like a light switch in the event China decides at some future time to restrict rare earth exports, for whatever reason.
 
stealthy123 said:
YAY for raping the planet to the point it can no long support life! yay!
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US is doing a great job of that with coal burning power plants already (thanks Sierra club...whatever the hell they are, sounds like a bunch of hiking hippies), plus we are shipping all of our E-waste into some poor bastards back yard in China.
 
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