Rare-Earth Mineral Supply Getting Boost From California, Australia

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."

Radioactive spills?

[jd]

Ok, management was replaced. Fine. Probably needed. But that doesn't tell me if the pipes were fixed or how the new management proposes to not have that kind of issue in the future. Nor does it tell me if the new management is proposing any kind of additional cleanup that may be needed in those protected lands (doesn't matter that it was a while back - Bhopal still suffers from uncleaned pollution and Florida has a gigantic oil sludge that will haunt it for a long time no matter how much it's officially declared gone).

In short, yeah, new sources of Rare Earths are great but the Earth is also fairly high on the Rare list and I'd rather not need a new source.

Japanese probably investing huge amounts of money

[antifoidulus]

I wouldn't be surprised if the Japanese are pumping huge amounts of money into this venture right now. With the Japanese economy being heavily invested in industries that use these minerals Japan definitely wants to wean itself off of reliance on China, and the insanely strong yen makes investing in the US incredibly cheap right now. Japanese companies would be incredibly remiss if they weren't taking advantage of this opportunity(and they may even get support for the government who wants to weaken the yen)