http://old.news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110...areearth_japan
This is a positive development for electric/hybrid vehicles and other advanced technologies that use rare earth minerals.
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http://old.news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110...areearth_japan
This is a positive development for electric/hybrid vehicles and other advanced technologies that use rare earth minerals.
^^^ this is the functional equivalent of 'shale oil'. Yes it is an alternate source. Yes it is far more difficult and expensive to extract. Thus doing so only becomes profitable when the commodity price rises far above the 'cost' of extraction.
So yes from a strategic standpoint China won't have a 'lock' on rare earth element supply with which to hold the entire world 'hostage'. But tripling the current commodity prices for rare earth elements, which would be a necessary side effect to allow deep deposit production to actually take place, is going to have major ripple effects on the costs of hybrid / electric cars and other 'green energy' devices that depend on rare earth elements for their performance.
They found the minerals in sea mud extracted from depths of 3,500 to 6,000 meters (11,500-20,000 ft) below the ocean surface at 78 locations. One-third of the sites yielded rich contents of rare earths and the metal yttrium, Kato said in a telephone interview.
Crush depth for an Los Angeles class attack submarine is officially disclosed as under 1600 feet.
Four miles down? Thats not going to be easy. You couldn't even breathe normal air. Oxygen would become toxic at those pressures. Helium mixes.
Any chance at all would need ROVs and one bitchin vacuum pump (four mile hose included).
Extracting the deposits requires pumping up material from the ocean floor. "Sea mud can be brought up to ships and we can extract rare earths right there using simple acid leaching," he said.
"Using diluted acid, the process is fast, and within a few hours we can extract 80-90 percent of rare earths from the mud."
Well isn't that a bit inconvenient. I don't see all the worlds environmental protection agencies letting a group dump metric tons of mud laced with acid and heavy metals into the eco systems around Tahiti and Hawaii. The mud alone would smother sealife in the area.
^^^ the ability to use mining techniques and leaching acid recovery without environmental concerns or environmental compliance costs or worker safety compliance costs was the reason that China has come to dominate rare earth metals production ... and also the reason that the previously dominant US rare earth mining and refining industry was forced to shut down ( since it could not avoid incurring the peripheral environmental and worker safety costs ). The absence of such costs in China is also the arguable reason that super high efficiency electric / hybrid vehicle motors, batteries, etc. aren't 3-4 times more expensive than they already are !
Again referring to the 'shale oil' analogy, that alternative source had to wait for decades for $10 a barrel oil prices to increase to $50+ a barrel on a permanent basis in order to make the shale oil extraction cost economically viable. It remains to be seen whether the pricing levels of hybrid / electric vehicles can sustain the increase, given that they are already heavily dependent on taxpayer subsidies to sell vehicles even with todays much lower rare earth metals pricing levels.
Probably can find these elements in Africa; you can get everything in Africa.
The US is reopening a rare earth mine...hopefully this will break the grip that China has on the supply of this stuff....
http://www.smartplanet.com/blog/busi...business/16498
^^^ it might if China cuts off exports completely. Otherwise, between union labor rates, OSHA safety procedures, and environmental costs, the rare earths produced by this mine would have to be sold at much higher prices in order to allow the mine owners to break even.