From Slashdot:
The NY Times reports that the Chinese government has placed a trade embargo on all exports to Japan of a crucial category of minerals used in products like hybrid cars, wind turbines and guided missiles.
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.
The embargo comes after a dispute over Japan’s detention of a Chinese fishing trawler captain whose ship collided with two Japanese coast guard vessels as he tried to fish in waters controlled by Japan but long claimed by China.
The Chinese embargo is likely to have immediate repercussions in Washington. The House Committee on Science and Technology is scheduled to review a detailed bill to subsidize the revival of the American rare earths industry and the House Armed Services Committee is scheduled to review the American military dependence on Chinese rare earth elements.”
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And how exactly are we going to solve this one if it is not a secret?
This is what I refer to as ‘Schweinfurt business’. Just capture the market in the most crucial element or part.
The American air force lost a lot of aircraft and brave men attacking a factory in Schweinfurt deep into Germany in the Second world war. It didn’t make tanks or aircraft – it made ball bearings.
cheers David
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.
I’m cutting my use of dysprosium in half. It’s the least I can do to help solve this crisis.
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).
Grahene will save as 🙂 this materaial is only 5 years old and samsung arledy have workin touchscreen http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3sAc4nqAbOs
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 .
I have read (sorry no link, so do check) that whenever anyone tries to start production of “rare earths”, China artificially forces the price down and puts them out of business. This item in 2 parts …
http://www.techmetalsresearch.com/2010/07/chinas-rare-earths-game-plan-part-1-the-effects-of-reduced-export-quotas/
http://www.techmetalsresearch.com/2010/07/chinas-rare-earths-game-plan-part-2-the-issue-of-pricing/
… does seem to indicate that China is exercising price controls, but also says (if I have read it correctly) that they don’t think the Chinese are doing that [putting non-chinese out of business].
Sorry, not much help, but IMHO the links above are interesting.
OK, it looks like the chinese, aided and abetted by Goldman-Sachs, have been up to some dubious tricks after all.
http://www.australianrareearths.com/china-attacks-australian-rare-earths.html
http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/Lynas-Corp-LYC-rare-earths-Japan-China-Non-Ferrous-pd20100923-9K9AY?opendocument&src=rss
typo ‘graphene’ not ‘grahene’ and the funy part is this is just carbon 🙂 but if you google it you notice then they can make from it or improve almost everything, ultracapacitors, composite, electronics, solar planel…
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
29.Mike McMillan says:
September 24, 2010 at 1:26 am
I’m cutting my use of dysprosium in half. It’s the least I can do to help solve this crisis.
Excellent Mike. I’ll join you and I’m also cutting my use of Neodimuim.
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.
Until the greens took over the biggest use of rare earth elements was in flints for cigarette lighters and in gas mantles.
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..
China started mining her rare earth minerals only since 1984, heavily subsidized. It dumped them cheaply on the world market and most other countries stopped their loss making mines. Now the Chinese polit buro goes in for the kill: selective export bans or high prices for their (home made) monopoly.
Within a year this game will back fire as others open their mines again like the Nolans and Mt. Weld projects Australia, the Hoidas Lake project Canada, and the Mountain Pass and Nebraska projects in the US. The Indian government mines never stopped digging. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_earth_element
GM says:
September 23, 2010 at 11:15 pm
“There is a shortage of rare earth elements. What is this telling you?
One thing it tells me is someone is going to figure out how to recycle cerium oxide. It’s used as a polishing compound. Right now it’s too cheap to mess with.
but it will not make much of a difference due to that same old problem of the mismatch between exponentially increasing demand and finite and very limited supplies
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.
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:
Exactly, they are in trace amounts. Nobody sees any problem with that, of course…
If any greenies want to complain about opening or reopening non-Chinese mines, they should sell their priuses and use the money to buy carbon credits for the mining companies. This solves three problems at once – less demand for the cars, greenies can feel like they are saving the planet, and the greenies can’t make it to their court hearings because they’re stuck on a bus somewhere!
Can we start saying “it’s better than we thought” yet?
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…
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).
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.
Brief introduction to the problem for those who think there isn’t one:
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3451
http://www.pnas.org/content/76/9/4212.full.pdf
Yes, it rather skewers the “energy security” argument, doesn’t it?
I think the key is “rare ” earth metals. Are there enough of these metals worldwide to sustain the green revolution or will we have a “peak” production like oil.
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.