Bad news for green technology

The situation appears to be still moot. On 23 Sepember, a media officer of Chinese Ministry of Commerce reportedly denied the embargo, at a phone interview with the News Agency Bloomberg.

An embargo on rare earths? That’ll put a Prius at a premium price. Or any other Hybrid come to think of it.

…review a detailed bill to subsidize the revival of the American rare earths industry…

Let’s see, subsidize an industry whose product sells for several hundred dollars a pound. Oh wait, I forgot; there are those pesky environmental impact statements that have to be submitted. With all that red tape from all those underworked governmental worker bees (federal, state & local) out to save the planet, they do need some sort of incentive to take all those risks. And any project will be tied up by any third rate political hack for at least several years. But why bother? In a decade, assuming the industry starts to become viable, they’ll get screwed … again … by some crusading activist with a cell phone camera. So, the question is, why should anyone take any risks with capital (or anything else for that matter) in this new spread the wealth America?

Bill Sticker says:
September 23, 2010 at 10:57 pm
An embargo on rare earths? That’ll put a Prius at a premium price. Or any other Hybrid come to think of it.
—–
Or any other “green” product that relies upon rare earth materials to make it happen.
This is, on the one hand, a brilliant shot by China to show that it controls world technological development in the non-oil based energy field, and that every other country should look into their own natural resources reserves of rare earths.
I expect that we loose this encounter until some date in the future when we develop our own rare earth industry. If possible.

Allow me to also suggest that the countries of the world and their major industrial entities have long known of this variability in the supply choke hold of China and rare earth materials.
On the country, to country diplomatic, if not just de facto level, this has been known for a long time. I wonder how our country will respond? Even if it supports the fishing vessel there is still alot of collateral damage.

I read the article. Interesting. Thanks for posting this. What amazed me was the claim that rare earth metals from scrapped hybrid autos were not being recycled!
My guess is that will change. 🙂

RE: Main Article
“China mines 93 percent of the world’s rare earth minerals, and more than 99 percent of the world’s supply of some of the most prized rare earths, which sell for several hundred dollars a pound.”
I wonder if this indicates that there are no other possible sources on Earth, or if it only means that no other sources have been identified yet. It would seem unusual for these minerals to be concentrated in just one spot in the planet, unless that was due to a special event like a giant meteor impact.

GM says:
September 23, 2010 at 11:15 pm
“There is a shortage of rare earth elements. What is this telling you?”
Prior to ‘greening’ only low demand for rare earth minerals, so made sense to buy from cheapest source – China. However, these minerals can be found all over the place, and if China decides to politic by embargo or massive price hikes, other countries will explore and start to exploit their own deposits.
China is heading for a fall as the expectations of its population grow and its overheated economy heads for meltdown.

The greenies make a lot of noise about all things being sustainable. How is the rare earth thing working for them then? There’s been nary a squeak from the likes of WWF or FoE. Haven’t heard about greenies protesting outside Chinese mines and factories. Maybe because the Chinese authorities aren’t as understanding as the suicidally bureaucratised West…

UK Sceptic says:
September 24, 2010 at 12:08 am
The greenies make a lot of noise about all things being sustainable. How is the rare earth thing working for them then?

FYI, the use of rare earth elements has very little to do with “green tech”, it is a common requirement for everything that is usually called “high tech”. That includes most of the cool gadgets we so much like to use and which are so loved by economists for the way they “drive economic development”.
And before anyone raises the tired canard about rare earth elements not being that rare in the crust, yes, that’s correct; the problem is that concentrated deposits of rare earth elements aren’t at all common.
Just another one of the limits to growth most people here are blind to. What is especially ironic (outright hypocritic if we are to put it bluntly) is that this fact is touted by this blog as a failure of the “greens”, those pesky enemies of the progress of free-market capitalism when in fact it is a very nice illustration of the failure of the latter to recognize the physical limits of the environment it is situated in

We are constantly warned about a new economic power that will push the West to the margins. In the seventies, the Arabs would buy us all, straight out. Well, they got Harrods.
In the eighties, clever people talked of how Japan planned to make Europe its shopping centre and Australia its mine. I can’t remember the bon mot to describe America’s marginalisation by the Japanese, but the chattering set found it delicious. Sadly…
In the nineties, here in Oz, you couldn’t cast any doubt on the viability of the Tiger economies of S. E. Asia without being called a racist. By the end of the decade, those casting doubts on the Tiger economies were called newsreaders.
It’s a bit like predicting an Arctic death spiral. By the time people notice it didn’t happen, the cranks and finger-waggers are on to another subject.
Problems are solved unpredictably, though you can bet the agents of change will likely be a couple of college dropouts, tinkering day and night in a garage, maybe somewhere in middle America: horny, unhygienic, and the despair of their parents.
The danger for Western societies is within: the eclipse of the individual, the trust in Big Levers. When we move from tolerating the corporate to becoming corporate, China and the others won’t have won. Everyone will have lost.

tonyb says:
September 24, 2010 at 1:14 am
We have known about this increasing monopoly for some years but are too fixated with AGW to deal with it and other more pressing problems.

And how exactly are we going to solve this one if it is not a secret?

It’s not so much what we don’t know that causes problems, but what we know that isn’t so.
Rare earth elements are common throughout the world; their applications are relatively new, so their sources are undeveloped. That will change.
The US just provided $1 billion to Mexico for oil development in the Gulf of Mexico while imposing a moratorium on oil developement in the Gulf of Mexico. That, my friends is the ‘green’ effect. Of course, we also subsidize windmills and photo voltaic power sources which require conventional power plants to back them up. Check out Spain and Portugal if you’re interested in such things.
BTW, if people were only constipated and dehydrated, the Earth would be a much cleaner place.

No immediate halt for civilization:
“Companies using the rare metals are believed to have stockpiles that could last several months.”
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gXfWLJxzB0v4RO3_FL1emLGHQZ7gD9IE48N00
And IMHO – the DOD has a short fuse when it comes to dependencies. Expect a very quick ramp up of production in the USA; emergency-style.
This might also give Obama the ammunition he needs to declare tariffs on imported Chinese goods (as retaliation for the undervalued Renminbi).

Perhaps the wrong moves by the West now may prove to be the right moves later, when the US, Australia and other Western countries finally decide they have been hobbled by mad Green ideology for too long. This piece of international brinkmanship by the Chinese points up the real lack of econmies in hybrid vehicles and is an illustration of how vital it is for the West to secure its lines of supply .

DirkH said on Bad news for green technology
No immediate halt for civilization:
“Companies using the rare metals are believed to have stockpiles that could last several months.”

Because of course several months are completely sufficient for changing all of our technology to not use rare earth metals (which isn’t even possible to begin with)…
The sanity of many posters here is under serious doubt

GM is busted, a full riposte to his claims on the Dung thread by E.M.Smith
Plenty of rare earths in the USA, currently China supplies because their price is lower and they dont have to do Environmental Impact Assessments or other expensive or time consuming stuff..

And before anyone raises the tired canard about rare earth elements not being that rare in the crust, yes, that’s correct; the problem is that concentrated deposits of rare earth elements aren’t at all common.
This is what I posted above, yet just as the creationists who repeat “But why are there still apes if man evolved from apes” after you have spent two hours explaining evolutionary biology to them, I get this half an hour later:

Actually rare earths are quite common in the earth’s crust – it’s just that they are in very trace amounts in most rocks. The Chinese deposits are unusually rich.

Exactly, they are in trace amounts. Nobody sees any problem with that, of course…

Archonix says:
September 24, 2010 at 2:21 am
I’ve been reading your comments on this thread, GM, and you seem to be missing one key element of this whole problem – and why it is ultimately a failure of the greens. The massive increase in demand for rare earths is caused by the mandated production of various so-called green technologies, which are sucking up rare earths and other resources that would, in normal conditions, be put to much better use. This is just like the whole bio-fuel debacle.

Because nothing else other than windmills uses them, sure.
BTW, I am not posting in this thread from the perspective of someone who thinks that civilization will collapse due to shortage of REE, it is just that they are a good illustration of first, the concept of the mineralogical barrier, and second, of how complex and how interrelated the multiple crises we face are. We have a problem with AGW, and we have a problem with Peak Oil, what are we going to do – no problem, we’ll move to renewables… wait a minute, we don’t have the raw materials to do that at the required scale. That sort of thing.
Because nobody likes to discuss the really fundamental problem which is growth.
Shortage of resources or longage of humans, pick your definition…

GM says:
September 24, 2010 at 2:23 am
“I get this half an hour later:”
No, *you* didn’t and don’t get it at all. You are not the center of attention.

We are supposed to be captives of mid eastern oil and must reduce dependence by moving to smart technologies, that rely on a 93-99% market control of essential rare earth materials by China???

Yes, it rather skewers the “energy security” argument, doesn’t it?

There are a lot of rare earth metal deposits around, e.g. Canada, also US. The issue is that they occur in parts per million rather than percents in the ore. So to mine you have to mine whole mountains to get them. Some other richer but much smaller deposits, e.g. pegmatites, Ontario, Nova Scotia, etc.

Dont worry we might loose some useless and over hyped car models but it will drive technology somewhere usefull. Hybrid cars are dishonest, they are , like solar and wind power well subsidised to appear usefull but in the real world a rich persons plaything, none can compete with my 1994 Citroen turbo diesel I owned in the UK, 50 MPG at 100 mph, that is sustaunable economy, throw 10% of the PC budget hybrids have wasted at turbo diesels and the particulate emissions will go away and you have a commercial development of real use.

The Mt Weld deposit in West Australia goes 4.5% rare earths and is close to start up with refining in Malaysia. Naturally I have a bunch of shares bought when this looked likely. Thank you Greens. Greenland may have the largest deposit which has a fair bit of uranium mixed in and has not been developed because of Danish feelings which I believe are about to bend to reality. The deposit belongs to an Australian company so we may be upside down but not always slow. Old North Queensland Doctor

“Rare Earths” are not rare. Cerium, for example, is as common as zinc. They were called rare earths because they seldom form concentrated ores like more familiar metals. This in turn means that somewhat more sophisticated techniques have to be used to extract them, and it makes increasing sense to use co-production. In the limit, we should forget about ores and just separate out the whole gamut of elements from the same bulk material (which can be any rock or soil, though municipal and industrial waste is ideal, since it will have all the desired elements in the right proportions, close enough). The energy requirements are not prohibitive; to overcome the entropy of dilution we need just -RTlnC/mol. Even for the rarest of the rare earths, that’s less than 20kJ/kg, which is negligible, bearing in mind that the chemical enthalpies for reduction of the oxides are in the MJ/kg range. We’re talking fractions of a penny per kg. There is no long-term technological or economic problem here. Political, regulatory and capital investment problems, maybe.

One small thing – I see here misunderstanding. Term “rare earth metals” does not mean that these metals are rare (in small quantites). It means that they were initially found in rare earth minerals, which are called so because lanthanides occurs in them.
Please use terms correctly,
Regards

Relax, Genus Malthusian, stop hyperventilating and releasing that excess CO2. Trust me, your combination of running around like a chicken with its head cut off while portraying Chicken Little isn’t near as endearing as you think.
Nothing you can do matters. Your opinion does not matter. Really. Our new Chinese masters will have their own plans for dealing with these problems you have imagined. If they want your opinion, they will give it to you.
Now, don’t you feel better?

Policyguy
We are supposed to be captives of mid eastern oil and must reduce dependence by moving to smart technologies, that rely on a 93-99% market control of essential rare earth materials by China???
Was this exposed in the Algore Inconvenient Truth?

No but it was exposed in this book I wish everyone would read,
Power Hungry: The Myths of “Green” Energy and the Real Fuels of the Future (Robert Bryce, 2010)

GM says “BTW, I am not posting in this thread from the perspective of someone who thinks that civilization will collapse due to shortage of REE, it is just that they are a good illustration of first, the concept of the mineralogical barrier, and second, of how complex and how interrelated the multiple crises we face are. We have a problem with AGW, and we have a problem with Peak Oil, what are we going to do – no problem, we’ll move to renewables… wait a minute, we don’t have the raw materials to do that at the required scale. That sort of thing.”
GM, this doesn’t hold together. You refer to “multiple crises” and then invoke only a few false ones. If you think we have a shortage of oil go stand in the middle of a busy freeway.
The rare earth problem is one of tight control by China and a lack of a back up plan by other countries who have been relying on China’s cheap prices to subsidize their own economies.

Tomasz Kornaszewski says:
September 24, 2010 at 4:49 am
“Sorry, didn’t see Paul Birch post.”
That’s all right. Your explanation for why they are called “rare earths” (that they were initially found in rare earth deposits) is more accurate than mine (that they didn’t form concentrated ores like other metals), though they’re complementary, really; the reason why they were initially found in rare earth is that they didn’t form concentrated ores that would otherwise have been found sooner elsewhere.

Looks good for RE dev outside of China but once we start digging holes in the ground the “exploiters” will be branded Big Dysprosium or some such tag.

“DirkH said on Bad news for green technology
No immediate halt for civilization:
“Companies using the rare metals are believed to have stockpiles that could last several months.”
GM says:
September 24, 2010 at 2:02 am
Because of course several months are completely sufficient for changing all of our technology to not use rare earth metals (which isn’t even possible to begin with)…
The sanity of many posters here is under serious doubt”
GM, i don’t care much for your lack of understanding of market mechanisms. But you insult me personally, so i think i should answer you.
So you had problems understanding what i said. Fine. What did i say? I cited an article that says that there are enough stockpiles for a few months. Now, did i want to imply that this solves all problems? Of course not. In that case, i would have spelled it out for comprehension-challenged people like you. It will help the industry limp along for a few months; which is good news. This will also give politicians a chance to resolve the conflict in time. See? Was that hard to understand? Fine.
What we will see is a re-assessment of the stratecigal importance of rare earths and the reliability of China as a trade partner. If there are not already strategic reserves for these materials, various governments will start to build them up, or build up some reserve mining caparcity. We will also see projects and regulations to improve the recycling of old electronics, which is a good thing IMHO.
BTW, does the GM stand for Girl Magnet? (Oh, i WANTED to say that…)

This is an interesting but not very significant story. It is perhaps noteworthy that we will do nothing other than “study” on any rare earth problem. This is because we have to keep our China masters happy: Yes, Master – What is thy bidding, Master? Should I keep holding my ankles, Master? Far be it from us to offend the Chicoms!

GM says:
September 23, 2010 at 11:15 pm:
There is a shortage of rare earth elements. What is this telling you?
That we’re all gonna die unless we bow to your Rule?

Grey Lensman says:
September 24, 2010 at 2:04 am
GM is busted, a full riposte to his claims on the Dung thread by E.M.Smith
Plenty of rare earths in the USA, currently China supplies because their price is lower and they dont have to do Environmental Impact Assessments or other expensive or time consuming stuff..

Yep its called comparative advantage.

On Climatreprogress half the posts are by a prokaroyates. He can’t touch the shear surge in volume by GM on this board. I suspect the limit on climateprogress for a skeptic would be about 1 or 2 posts max before they are banned.
REPLY: If they are known by name, often zero. But always fun to try. – Anthony

Isn’t this why we are in Afghanistan? didn’t they recently hit the jackpot of RE minerals there?

GM says:
September 24, 2010 at 2:41 am:
Oh, one thing you can be definitely sure of is that the NIMBYs will show up as soon as such mines are reopened anywhere close to a populated place (most of them are in remote areas anyway though).
Agreed, GM, so what are you personally doing in regard to your own lifestyle so as to lessen your own contribution to “ecological overshoot” – and thus to promote “sustainability” and help avoid the apocalypse?

Let’s see: The EPA makes it difficult or more expensive to conduct rare-earth mining operations, so the mines close down. Now the Congress is considering subsidizing rare-earth mining operations, to get them going again.
I suppose it is no surprise that our ever-helpful Federal government is working at cross-purposes. This is the kind of snafu-building we used to read about in third-world countries. How do we avoid becoming one ourselves?
/Mr Lynn

China fail ????
We’ll we will just have to see what their leadership is willing to do. Past leaders of China have been willing to do quite a bit to stay in power. How much is the dis-satisfaction in rural China where the people are looking to be included in the new found prosperity? How about the unemployed or the people working 80 hours a week, or the people seeing their children work along side them????
The people of China have seen the emergence of the modern world in China, but the spread has greatly slowed. The Tiger has risen and many do not feel the effects.
So, how does China keep control?? Do they need to?? If they do, I see two directions, one would be to beat the citizenry into submission, which they have shown they are willing to do.
Or, generate another need for the Tiger to rise. And they have done that, and are they already doing that?? Is this news story just part of that??????
They have ramped up the rhetoric over Japan and Taiwan. There is a lot of racial bias against Japan in China (duh), and they believe Taiwan is their rightful property.
When China honestly believes they can hold off the willing Allied forces, I believe they will make a play for Taiwan. Unite the country behind the goal. IF Japan moves to defend Taiwan, the Chinese government will have a force to be able to unite the country behind the government, feed on the racial hatred of the Japanese and start conventional war.
And of course the side benefit of a conventional war, many young male to middle age males will be lost. Something China has a surplus of!!
Not saying this is going to happen, but I do believe there is a non-zero probability.

DJ Meredith says:
September 24, 2010 at 8:34 am
There is a VERY CHEAP solution: Start powering electric cars with IRON batteries. (see my post above)
…and BTW another one CHEAPER: “Drill, baby, drill!”

Sorry, Chinese did it already:
http://autonews.gasgoo.com/china-news/byd-auto-admits-iron-battery-talks-with-vw-090424.shtml

Many of the commenters here still do not fully understand the game China is playing.
They are working on moving up in the suppy chain, from supplying bulk material to semi-finished goods and so on. By the time other countries have invested large sums of money in opening new RE-mines, China will offer the semi finished goods at prices nobody can resist. And so on….
Moving into the added value production is the only way for China to keep their growth sustainable. It is planned and executed carefully, patiently and consistently.
They love it that especially the people in the US think that the Chinese are just a bunch of stupid copiers, since it buys them time and makes the execution of the plan only easier.
You may also want to check the number of PhD’s that their universities crank out every year and wonder when innovation will flow to China. (it already is..)
The next man on the moon will wave the Zhong Guo flag while NASA is still figuring out the successor of the obsolete space shuttle.

The rare earth’s are discussed in a book (link below) in the context of who discovered them and how they were discovered and added to the periodic table. It is a very interesting part of history. The book’s title made me pause because I thought it might be too oriented toward comic or silly material. Not so. It is not terribly difficult to read but it is somewhat demanding – especially that you have some knowledge of physics and chemistry.
http://www.amazon.com/Disappearing-Spoon-Madness-Periodic-Elements/dp/0316051640
[Full disclosure: I am not connected in any way to this book or author except I do own a copy – obtained via a well known science book club that will go unnamed.]

nealins says:
September 24, 2010 at 8:52 am
The next man on the moon will wave the Zhong Guo flag while NASA is still figuring out the successor of the obsolete space shuttle.
I am sure it will be a GREEN FLYING CARPET !! 🙂

If the Chinese can ban rare earth exports, Anthony, can you at least ban comments from GM. I’m getting tired of having to thumbwheel over this moron’s bloviations.

We do have these “rare earth” resources in the United States but lack the will to exploit them. Somehow, in this constant bickering between exploitation and environmentalism, we have become so polarized that the very idea of using our resources in a responsible manner escapes attention. These issues, which involve both our national security and econonmy, need to be addressed without extremism from either side.

Much ado about nothing. The Chinese are trying to increase prices because their cost of extraction have gone up due to new environmental regs now being put into place. This is all for the good. Plus, it will allow western companies to re-open and profit from the higher prices. Why do people see nefarious things in good news?

Climate Change, The Sustainable Green Economy and the demonization of fossil fuels are all based on lies, lies and lies.
Paul Driessen gave us all the arguments already why green is not really green with his recent publication at WUWT and so did Burt Rutan:
http://rps3.com/Pages/Burt_Rutan_on_Climate_Change.htm
Besides that, who needs a Nippon hybrid if you can drive a much bigger and safer BMW using the same amount of fuel for the same price?
Why should we continue to build wind farms for electricity if they can’ t deliver 24/7 base loads at astronomic prices and maintenance costs?
http://eureferendum.blogspot.com/2010/09/scam-spreads.html
Why did humanity forget they fazed out wind power with expensive steam engines in around 1810, 200 years ago?
Why should we buy expensive solar panels subsidized with tax payers money that raise the price of electricity for people who don’t have solar panels if even President Obama does not want them on the roof of the White House?
Why should we grow bio fuels from food crops if 1.2 billion people go hungry and why should these bio fuels be sustainable in any way if people die?
Why should we surrender to technology that doesn’t deliver what it promises at times we are drowning in oil and gas for generations to come?
Why don’t we simply wait until real technology is developed to replace oil and gas for the good reasons instead of advocacy.
Why don’t we trust our Governments, scientists and environmentalists anymore?
Why do I no longer like the color green anymore?
Why does the entire climate scam remind me of a scam artist by the name of Victor Lustig who managed to sell the Paris Eiffel Tower by inviting local scrap dealers to make a closed bid?
http://www.3ammagazine.com/short_stories/non-fict/truetales/eiffeltower.html
I think because the way Lustig managed to pull off his scam is similar to the UN IPCC process.

Ralph says:
September 24, 2010 at 10:49 am
Then our next choice for buying a car should be, being decent skeptics, a wild gas burning big and safe SUV.(With enough back space to carry a big carbon barbecue and half a methane emitter sacrificed cow).

Enneagram says:
September 24, 2010 at 8:48 am
“Sorry, Chinese did it already:
http://autonews.gasgoo.com/china-news/byd-auto-admits-iron-battery-talks-with-vw-090424.shtml
”
Enneagram, this looks like a Chinese has translated it into English – at one place it says “Lithium-Iron Battery” so it seems he has mixed “Ion” and “Iron” up… BYD builds Li-Ion batteries.

OM[ALT 70]G you snipped my censored ALT 102 – word?
Messing up the environment is not the same as ALT 70, or ALT 102, -ing up the environment. Messing up something usually mean you can correct it, like cleaning up the mess. ALT 70, or ALT 102, -ing up something usually tend to mean you can’t correct it, fix it, or clean it up, as in the damage is already done so now you have to live with it, you need to adapt.
See what I did there? :-()

This is another example of the Chinese taking advantage of US government making it hard to operate inside the US. Another example is Kel-F (also known as CTFE or chloro-trifluoro-ethylene, a form of teflon). My company makes things that handle liquid oxygen, and there are very few materials that are appropriate for this application. Kel-F is a plastic that works well. It was invented and initially produced in the US, but is now not manufactured here at all. We buy from China.

I’m a little late for pre-empting the Malthusians among us and other commenters have advised that the rare earths are not so rare. Some comparisons with the crustal abundance of more familiar metals might help:
http://bing.search.sympatico.ca/?q=crustal%20abundance%20of%20the%20elements&mkt=en-ca&setLang=en-CA
For example: crustal abundance of Ce is 83 ppm, La 50 ppm; Nd 44ppm; lesser abundant RE minerals are the so-called “heavy rare earths”: Eu 2.2 ppm; Tb 1 ppm; Ho 1.6 ppm; Tm 0.52 ppm; Lu 0.8 ppm. “Abundant metals”: Cu 58 ppm, Ni 72 ppm, Zn 82 ppm and Pb 10 ppm and compared with gold Au 0.002 ppm, silver Ag 0.08 ppm
The problem as usual boils down to governments affecting the prices of commodities that puts cost recovering industries out of business and artificially reduces availability.

A Chinese tale to understand their psychology:
“A Chinese landlord was complaining that he was not receiving his pay from his American tenant, one day, tired of asking him to pay the rent, he menaced to his tenant by telling him he was going to punish him by using the “Chinese way of vengeance”. The American guy laughed at him, telling him: “Do whatever you want, I won’t pay you”.
The next morning, after waking up, the American guy found a brick on his night table with a written message on a paper attached to it. The man read it and said to himself: “Silly Chinese, I won’t pay it no mater what he does!”, and throw the brick with the message through his window…….the brick was tied with a string to a certain and very delicate of his body…, from then on, his friends call him the “eunuch”…..

Yes, Peter Miller, but I would add that any geologist should look with a jaundice eye at any resource the USGS puts a number to–have they really done a thorough inventory of all the land out there, or are they modeling what they believe is there by using certain foregone conclusions that constrain their models? The answer is thye have not done a thorough check–there’s always more resources, especially surpise finds, when a really diligent effort is applied.

*Sigh* Malthus must have left GM some money in his will. Let’s take a look at a REALLY rare element: Ru. Worldwide reserves are estimated in the low kiloton ranges. It also happens to be a staple of the disk drive industry for making media and when originally generous amounts of it were used per surface there was a scare that we’d “run out!” Panic sent prices up which then promptly crashed a year later when it was determined that maybe each disk didn’t really need quite that much after all.
http://www.ebullionguide.com/price-chart-ruthenium-all-time.aspx
Gee, I thought we were all gonna die.
As said by others the Chinese are trying to use their supply monopoly as leverage in other ways. I suspect that not only will their monopoly be broken quickly (within 2-3 years), but this will also show the world that maybe China isn’t such a great alternative to the US after all.

Ralph says:
September 25, 2010 at 12:39 am
“A modern diesel is nearly as efficient as a power station, when run on a motorway, ”
Not by a long chalk. A new super-efficient diesel, operating at its optimum load, will be about as efficient as an old inefficient power station. If you compare like with like, state of the art with state of the art, fixed power stations are still a lot better (factor of two or more). Moreover, electric or compressed air vehicles can utilise regenerative braking and better aerodynamics, which gives another factor of two for both city cycle and motorways; ignoring capital costs, overall energy consumption per tonne mile will be much lower, irrespective of where your primary energy comes from. The advantage of internal combustion vehicles at the moment lies in their lower capital cost and higher performance, an advantage that will be gradually eroded as competing technologies mature. Internal combustion may be able to fight back for a time by moving to gas turbines, which are potentially about twice as efficient as a conventional diesel. Supercharged pre-heated diesels operating at very high pressures are another possibility, but technologically problematical and an unlikely general-purpose competitor.

From: Tsk Tsk on September 24, 2010 at 6:20 pm

(…) Let’s take a look at a REALLY rare element: Ru. Worldwide reserves are estimated in the low kiloton ranges. It also happens to be a staple of the disk drive industry for making media…

Thus is demonstrated the value of independent investigation over accepting the “research” of an “investment site” engaged in transactions involving the researched materials. And right on the home page they’re recommending COINS? They have no shame.
Article on hard drive disk manufacture. It says annual production is only 27 tonnes. If we’re getting by on just that, and there are kilotons, we have plenty. Wikipedia ruthenium article states 12 tonnes mined, estimated reserves of 5,000 tonnes. In hard disk drives, layers of only a few atoms thickness are used. Wikipedia doesn’t even list it under “Applications.” In thin layers it provides wear resistance for electrical contacts. It’s used for thick film chip resistors. And that’s 50% of consumption right there. Other uses are in alloys, a little bit goes a long way. It’s a by-product of copper and nickel mining and processing and of processing platinum group ores. I don’t see any super-critical absolutely-must-have uses for it, it could be replaced, and there are North and South American sources.
If you’re worrying about hard disk drives, don’t. That technology is now getting dated as we await Solid State Drives (SSD’s) to finish taking their place. Currently they cost more, and generally available sizes aren’t as large. But the physical durability is unmatched, energy use is lower, performance is better, the estimated Mean Time Between Failures is so great the drive will very likely be long obsoleted by standard changes before one occurs, and the prices are dropping while size is increasing. I hunted down a new PATA EIDE SSD for a used Thinkpad I acquired without a HDD, works great.
However, ultimately size doesn’t matter. Really. What often hogs up drive space these days is large items like movies and games, sometimes large applications. With increasingly faster internet, especially wireless, local storage on your own machine will be declared old fashioned, web-based storage will become normal while online applications can handle the major stuff (also expect free/cheap access to content you buy like movies and music to replace downloads and physical media). In the end, a fast machine with fast communications using a lean mean operating system will be what regular consumers and most business users will need and use. The current SSD’s are already adequate for that.

From: Ralph on September 25, 2010 at 12:39 am

Anyone can get rid of a drive train in an electric vehicle, but you cannot get rid of the creation/storage/motive power losses.

You could get rid of some of that for part of the time. Those things under the hood are called alternators because they make AC, often three-phase, which is then rectified to DC, which is more efficient than simply using a DC generator. (Calling the one part of the gen-set a generator is technically wrong but that’s common usage.) If the gen-set is running it could power the wheel motors somewhat directly with the AC, bypassing the batteries. This, however, is not the main point.
With a conventional drivetrain, there are already creation/storage/motive power losses. All spinning iron is storing energy as angular momentum, which is lost on braking and must be replenished on acceleration. Plus there are joints, bearings, and other frictional losses, and viscous losses as with lubricants needed for gears. Reducing the amount of spinning iron increases efficiency. Electrical/electronic losses between the engine of the gen-set and the tires for the system I described are less than for a conventional drivetrain, even without taking the regenerative braking into consideration.

A modern diesel is nearly as efficient as a power station, when run on a motorway, and so the electric vehicle is bound to be less efficient than a diesel on the open road (but not so in town). The electric vehicle will only make sense, in terms of a reduction in fossil fuel emissions, when we have nuclear energy. (Discounting any renewables – I want my car to run every day, including during anticyclones.)

First off, I’m no great fan of plug-in-only electrics. It’s just an option with the base system I described, my clear preference is for the gen-set makes-its-own-electricity version. The vehicle will be its own highly-efficient power station, lacking the normal power line transmission losses. I’m not worried about the emissions, although they will be reduced, and emission-reducing options like propane or perhaps hydrogen can be implemented without major engine design changes, that headache is on the fuel storage end.
Also, the gen-set version will need only about three somewhat ordinary car batteries, so no massively expensive battery pack changes as with a plug-in-only. If people really want some plug-in capability, perhaps because they have some spare photovoltaic panels at home, the manufactuer can add more batteries to the gen-set version along with an “almost home” switch to tell the vehicle to let the batteries run down to a low charge. With parallel battery connections, adding batteries is easy. You could for example build the basic gen-set version to take six batteries and sell them with three at no great price difference on the manufacturing end for the expansion capability. And plug-in capability of some form should be standard to at least possibly allow the vehicle to get itself to the repair shop if the gen-set stops working. With 12V batteries in parallel, you’d only need some easy-to-get-at studs you could clamp a standard car charger onto for overnight charging. Which also allows for that great scenario where you run out of gas in the middle of the desert however you do have a small folding solar panel…

Well, the Japanese will do what they probably did with things like coal and soybean – fund development of additional sources.
Typically minerals are not rare, and locations may be known, but the cost of verifying a good deposit and putting it into production is very high against the risk that someone else will flood the market from one of those low cost but questionnable-reliability countries.
(Veering off a bit, the discovery of diamonds in northern Canada is a story of smarts and realization. An individual thought northern Canada should have the type of geology in which they are found in South Africa – large vertical pipes of softer material. But he couldn’t find any. One day the light bulb went on – being softer the material might be depressed by glaciers in an ice age and not fully rebound thus become a lake. I suppose he then searched among the many lakes up there and somehow got under the bottom of a likely candidate – “the rest is history” as they say in the entertainment business, today Canada is a prime source of diamonds. (An area of northern Canada is full of lakes – flying from Yellowknife to Fort Simpson I noted that the lakes had a general elongation north-south, as one would expect from glacial action.)

Paul Birch says:
September 25, 2010 at 6:12 am
Not even Ruthenium is really rare; there are tens of billions of tonnes of the stuff dispersed through the continental crust, all of it extractable if we really want it.
===
REPLY: Makes me wonder if we would find rare earth elements on the moon…if any nation could monopolize THAT supply, it would be the US!
Oh, wait, Obama killed the Constellation space project. Never mind.

Ralph says:
September 25, 2010 at 7:33 am “…”
You are comparing what seem to be fuel-to-user efficiencies of power stations (from wiki!) with a theoretical cycle efficiency of a diesel engine, and even there understating the state of the art of the former and overclaiming the latter. The best power station thermodynamic efficiencies have been above 60% for a quarter of a century. Whereas diesel engined cars are lucky to get 30%, even in unrealistically optimal scenarios. Just do the sums. 55mpg is not much better than a petrol engined car (with ~20% cycle efficiency), which traditionally reached about 35mpg and are now up to about 45mpg. (And remember that diesel is a denser fuel than petrol). Heavy goods vehicles are different beasts entirely; they are more efficient at constant moderate speeds, but have poor performance and struggle to accelerate when heavy laden or going uphill.
With suitable design, warming the interior of electric cars using the batteries’ or motors’ waste heat should not be a major power drain (electric trains manage it quite effectively, and their power consumption per passenger is lower than even an electric car, because they have much lower rolling resistance – metal wheels on steel rails – and lower aerodynamic drage – long carriages).

Some rare earths are used in exhaust cleaning technology, this technology is driven in part by the view that exhaust emissions are causing global warming.
The cynic in me says that if the Chinese gum up the works, climate scepticism will recieve a whole new fillip.

Chris Edwards says:
September 25, 2010 at 3:25 pm
“[…]generation is poor compared to a modern TD motor, the europeans get way over 55mpg these days, the only advantage hybrids have, and it seems rather slim, […]”
VW was very reluctant to join the hybrid hype. They’re darn proud of their TDI engines and never saw good reason for the added complexity of hybrids.

The competitor for the Man slow speed diesel mentioned above generates 84 megawatts and burns 330 tonnes per day. but not of diesel but heavy fuel oil at density approaching 1.0 and dirt cheap. That is economic.

Ralph says:
September 25, 2010 at 1:26 pm
“Have you touched a discharging battery? Does it feel hot to you?”
Yes, I’m doing that right now, and its uncomfortably hot. So hot it’s making my touch pad misbehave. And that’s just my laptop. The amount of heat needed to keep a car warm is small compared to the amount it uses to move (of which much is dissipated in its structure no matter how efficient the prime mover). Sure, if you want to dump a lot of heat in to warm it up instantly, you’ll waste battery power. But that’s true for internal combustion cars too. On mine the heater fan died long ago, so it’s not an issue for me.

Ten years ago I suggested to an MP that if the Gov really wanted electric vehicles to be popular (this was in west London, home of electric delivery vehicles) then they should pass a law making the car park companies (like NCP and very unpopular so no political fallout) supply small spaces with powr connector to top up and limit the price to 25% of a fossil powered car, most better off families who commute have more than one car so a commuter and a family car is norm, however in France this is fine but the UK, no good as I bet the line losses far exceed 2%, on a damp day (like half the year in England) just listen to the insulators sizzle in the transmission towers, look at the long distances the national grid runs, and with Scotlans, Wales and the west country on that grad lots of liniar runs, given they went from copper to aluminium for lightness I suspect the overall loss from ground to outlet, in the UK is 2/3 when I left that was the ratio of gas heat in my workshop to electric.

This is quite the discussion, very interesting, a few points. In one for or another, most of these have been mentioned, here is a summary.
– IIRC when a generic diesel is running at stoichiometric mix, it will pump out some smoke, most diesels don’t because they are fed a lean mixture for emissions, which ironically causes them to be less efficient.
– Plug ins, really in the end the discussion should be almost moot, as we don’t have the generating capacity to charge them. Spain/Italy have pinned their hopes on wind/solar. Germany is decommissioning nuclear plants. AFAIK UK is with the US and is simply not building enough generating capacity. IF we have a economic boom, we’re screwed for power.
– For heat, turn the A/C systems to heat pumps
– A few years back, rumor had it GM had a diesel Volt, 3 cylinder at that, small battery (less weight), that got stupidly high gas mileage without the BS of starting with a full battery and using that initial charge up like they are doing with the current mileage figures. I think BIG dump trucks, trains, and ships have had right all along; serial diesel electric is the right way to go!
– stop putting hydrocarbons in the ground (ie. landfills) and use newer thermo depolymerization techniques to cost effectively get diesel and greatly reduce landfill usage.

Forgot one point.
There are a few states that are pushing into the realm of no gas-taxes. Nope, with hybrids and electrics screwing with the tax structure they want a GPS unit in every car, you will get billed for mileage.
Thus the economic advantage for being efficient will be great decreased!

From Bernd Felsche on September 25, 2010 at 8:49 am:

Wheel motors are an efficient way of getting power where it’s needed. But they are impractical in the real world of road-going, consumer financed and operated passenger cars.

One thing I have become singularly impressed by, is the sacrifices that green-minded people will accept compared to what I consider needed for an adequate vehicle, and they will even pay more for the privilege.

In the first place, they increase the unsprung mass, reducing ride comfort and road-holding and therefore dynamic safety on less than smooth roads. The unsprung mass further increases the stresses on tyres on all practical surfaces, increasing the wear and, indirectly the rolling resistance as more hysteresis will occur.

I have driven enough different vehicles over the decades to know “ride comfort” primarily begins under your butt and behind your back. Good seats compensate for many issues. I have also taken curves too fast and felt that unsprung mass wanting to lift up against the suspension and fly outwards to initiate a rollover, reducing that effect couldn’t hurt.
However, I fail to see where there would be a great increase. Examining a real wheel drive (the proper comparison since the rear wheels will be powered), I see at the back a differential and rear axles in their housing, and a drive shaft, mounted under the springs. Upon switching to wheel motors, it looks like there should be a net decrease in unsprung mass, certainly no increase. On the front end, under my four wheel drive truck I find similar components as at the rear, thus a similar mass comparison. Wheel motors will allow a transition from beam axle suspensions to all wheels having independent suspension, where applicable depending on vehicle and usage, which reduces unsprung mass.
Also, at the wheels there will be increased spinning mass thus increased gyroscopic stability.

In the second place, they are in a vulnerable location. The only thing between impacts and motor components is the cushion of air in the tyre. This requires either exotic (expensive) materials or more material to make the motor durable for consumers, again increasing the unsprung mass which in turn increases the dynamic road forces on the motor.

I have seen the transition on cars from steel rims and “normal” tires to larger-diameter lightweight aluminum rims with low profile (aspect ratio) tires. In my real-world driving I encounter bumps, potholes, and road debris including the occasional tree branch or small rock. I don’t think I would trust these new combos to bump against a sidewalk curb without incurring damage, and at the repair shop where I get my vehicles inspected they confirmed they are seeing more rim damage. The market does not seem worried about having a sufficient cushion of air.
Besides having already addressed the “unsprung mass” issue, I will note the “vulnerability” issue is minor. We already design motors that can withstand physical shocks. A weak point would be the shaft between the motor and the flange the wheel is bolted on, there would be flexing. Which is easily addressed by a shaftless design with a rotating hub, and the assembly can use impact-absorbing rubber mounts.

In the third place, the best place for proper brakes is at the wheel. But having a motor there significantly compromises the size and type of brake. Regenerative braking cannot absorb power quickly enough for safe braking in traffic. There are no batteries to absorb such a powerpulse, nor would it be feasible to incorporate e.g. supercapacitors in sufficient volume to capture the vehicle’s kinetic energy.

From my experience with large CNC machining equipment, I can assure you the deceleration of regenerative braking is very likely sufficient, there is also dynamic braking. For situations where you will need regenerative braking even after the batteries are fully charged, such as going down a large hill or mountain, there will be a resistor bank that will quickly convert excess energy to heat. Such has been common in industry since before modern inverter technology made converting that energy back into line voltage practical. If it is determined the batteries cannot absorb the full surge from heavy regenerative braking, and simply adding more batteries is decided against, excess can be shunted to the resistor bank.

But brakes, when used, generate heat … by converting kinetic energy. Temperatures exceed 500°C in motor vehicle brakes.

500°C? That’s well above the melting point range and into the ignition range of most polymers, and above the flash point of brake fluid (reference). High temperature silicone rubber is available that will withstand just over 500° temperatures, Fahrenheit. Given the use of rubber with brake cylinders and calipers as well as flexible brake lines, your number seems high.

Heat and electric machinery don’t travel well in the same compartment.

You are giving me temperatures purported to exist with conventional braking. Thus they are not applicable when regenerative braking is employed. Industry has employed motors in high ambient temperature conditions before, the technology exists, and the energy generated on braking will be stored or shed elsewhere thus I do not anticipate great temperatures at the wheel motors.

The wheel is the wrong place for a traction motor in a passenger car. There are better places. Locations that don’t compromise ride comfort, road-holding and are cooler and more friendly to motors; which don’t cost a lot in drivetrain efficiency. That inefficiency is balanced in part by being able to have a lighter motor which doesn’t have to endure large shock loads and high temperatures.

All of which I have now gone over, plus there are the advantages to wheel motors as I previously described which lead to greater efficiency, reduced maintenance costs, and easily-implemented items like traction control, wheel speed varying steering, and any-wheel drive which will increase handling and safety. They will work.

Ralph says:
September 27, 2010 at 1:05 am
“Add a motor to a European wheel, and you WILL be increasing weight and reducing ride quality. ”
A well-designed hub motor can provide its own suspension; essentially, it is fixed relative to the hub, not the tyre. It is not an unsprung mass.

Actually, the last time I looked up one of those supposedly scarce minerals, IIRC one needed for advanced batteries for electric cars, I found that claims of China supplying almost all of it were wrong – Australian mines were in significant production and could expand if needed.

E.M.Smith says:
September 27, 2010 at 11:33 pm
“And again, per the notion that truck Diesels are somehow magically different from auto Diesels: No, they are not. Sorry, but just “no”. As I said, you can get the Cummins in a Dodge passenger pickup and it’s the same engine used in larger commercial trucks. ”
They are not “magically different”. Cars and heavy goods vehicles are physically different, and their engines are set up very differently, the former for a much wider torque range, the latter usually with many more gears.. A diesel engine suitable for a lorry would be ridiculously large and heavy for an ordinary car, where it would not operate efficiently. A Dodge pickup is not a car. I suspect that have failed to appreciate the difference between heavy goods vehicles and light goods vehicles; diesel engines from the latter have often been put in cars.
“The 30% efficiency number is going to be an old number for gasoline cars, not a Diesel number.”
No, the old number for petrol cars is 20% (at 56mph). Average considerably less. The diesel equivalent would be around 25%. Just do the sums (or see mine above), fuel consumption against drag.
Why some people seem to want to believe in the “magical” efficiency of diesel cars is hard to fathom. Are they so insecure in their anti-Green fanaticism that they can only see the disadvantages of electric vehicles, and have to deny the real advantages? Electric vehicles are more efficient than diesel cars – both overall and in terms of the core thermodynamic cycle for the same primary fuel – though at present they have far higher cost and lower performance. If it were otherwise, we’d be using rows of diesel cars in power stations!
“Oh, and rockets are MOTORS, while Diesels are proper engines… 😉 so not comparable…”
Rocket motors are combustion heat engines, so yes they are comparable. You can even use them to drive a car – but not very efficiently unless you want to travel at 4km/s!