Rare-Earth Mineral Supply Getting Boost From California, Australia 84
An anonymous reader writes "In recent times, the world's supply of rare-earth minerals has suffered from both increased demand, due to their use in modern technological devices, and uncertain supply, as China restricts the flow of exports. Now, Molycorp's mine in California has re-opened, and another in Australia is set to open later this year, easing — but not erasing — worries about skyrocketing costs. '[The mine had closed] in 2002 following radioactive wastewater spills and price competition. The largest spills, from a pipeline to Nevada, occurred in the late 1990s, in protected lands in the Mojave Desert. The company has since changed its ownership structure. ... It's being rebuilt to produce up to 40,000 metric tons of rare-earth elements by 2013, which would be a 700 percent increase from its production target for the end of this year."
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Shortage is a matter of price (Score:5, Insightful)
Remember how in the 70s people complained we'll be out of gas by 2000? Then again in the 90s, we should be out of it by today. Now we have just enough gas to last us 'til the 2030s.
Do we keep finding so many sources? Well, not that many. But what we find is more sources that get profitable with rising prices. Oil sands in Alaska, you think anyone would have even thought of exploiting that while the barrel was at 20 bucks? Of course not. It's not profitable. At 140, we're talking.
It's almost the same with REMs. First of all, the name is misleading. They're not rare by definition. Well, aside of the radioactive Promethium. Cerium is amongst the most abundant elements on our Earth's crust. The problem with them is that they're fairly evenly distributed. There are few places where they can be extracted economically. With rising price, maybe sieving them from desert sand might be commercially interesting.
A "shortage" of REMs means about the same as a "shortage" of well educated personnel: There's only a shortage if you are unwilling to pay the price required to get what you want.
Re:yeah. better chinese workers die (Score:5, Insightful)
How does Apple's HQ pretend that we have a green economy? Who's saying it runs off unicorn farts? Though "run off sunshine" is exactly what we're trying to do, and Californians have been doing more than most for generations.
If what you're complaining about is that the US has better environmental protection than China does, that's not hypocrisy. There's nothing stopping China from cleaning up the way the US did, except its greed for the dollar at the expense of its workers. And when China does, if its growing population of people with enough money to protect themselves from being poisoned does protect themselves, their rising costs will help the US compete with them economically.
None of that is hypocrisy. It's economics and the politics that follows it.