China Cuts Off Rare Earths

Rare Earths are not rare, but are found many places around the world. In recent years China has become a dominate supplier by undercutting world prices, but obviously this will not continue if they cut off the supply. It may cause some short term disruptions, but long term global production will pick up the slack.

Tom

 

Go here to see the U.S. rare earth mine . . . . right here in CA.

Rare Earth Mining in the United States Gets a Second Chance | Fast Company

It's an environmentally unfriendly process - which is as much the reason for having it shut down in the U.S for so many years, as well as china's lower over head/monitary costs - and lack of concern for their environment.
"oh! ... you mean mining rare earth is toxic?"
See . . . we really don't care HOW toxic it is, when OTHERS make it. But ... tell us in the news, "China restricts rare earth mining" .... and the story is a 'spin'. Yes ... China is just being MEAN to the good ol' U.S.A. ... cutting off our much needed rare earth materials - used in big screen TV's etc. What ever shall we do without newer big screen TV's ?!? ok ... batteries for cars, too.

But when WE shut down U.S. rare earth mining, well the only reason can be that those dang chinese ... working for pennies a day ... they're killing our industry. Yep ... what ever those Chinese do ... it MUST be for bad reasons ... right?

Sadly, while the U.S. mine was shut down ... virtually NO improvements in mining processes were developed to make mining environmentally cleaner. Read HERE, for a typical description of how our rare earth 'needs' affect the chinese landscape:

http://www.independent.co.uk/enviro...for-worlds-rare-earths-addiction-2281309.html

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I read into these for a speech a couple weeks ago. 17 (?) rare earth elements, lanthanum and all.

IIRC, they are usually not concentrated are very difficult to process and separate out. Some radioactive waste as byproduct of processing. But, yeah, they are not rare, just very expensive to mine and process.

 

Hands up who didn't see this coming?


So what do China do? They flood the market with cheap supply and make Western production unviable to the point where the mines shut. Once a large number of mines have shut they either stick up the prices and/or restrict supply.

How did we all fall for this? AGAIN!

 

reality of this is that manufacturers have already worked around this by both setting up their own production sites outside china, and by developing components with less need of rare metals (toyota namely, as documented by news sites in past few months).

 

The golden goose has definitely been killed. Electrified vehicles must and will move away from rare earth magnets. Which means larger packaging and lower performance. Neo magnets belong in headphones - not vehicles.

 

What makes you say this?

Tom

 

the chinese learned from opec.

 

I think it's time the U.S. gets back into manufacturing and mining, even if that results in some environmental sacrifices.

 

we'd be better off putting a tarriff on competing imports so we could afford to keep sound environmental regulations.

 

And we don't need to pollute our own yards, when all the bad stuff can be dumped next to the enormous mineral deposits recently identified in Afghanistan ...

So, which foreign imperialist power will profit from commercializing Afghanistan's vast mineral wealth while the locals are poisoned -- the U.S., or China?

 

If every vehicle on the road right now was replaced by a hybrid or EV, are there enough rare earth metals on Earth to supply every vehicle?

 

Electric vehicles make up a small portion of electric motors. And rare earth metals are not rare, just hard and expensive to process.

 

Manufacturers are already looking to decontent REMs from their motors. The market cost per kg of REMs so far this year has been up more than 5x and could easily go 10x (or more). No one can live with that level of cost uncertainty. Other alternatives exist, but were unattractive at the cost & performance of REM back when current designs were being developed.

To my knowledge, only Continental decided that REMs were too great a cost risk and developed their vehicle electrification components to avoid them altogether.

 

Yes, but cost is an issue. As with any commodity, cost rises with demand.

Tom

 

I am guessing it is either they are getting increasingly frustrated with west/japan refusing to share technology, and forcing them to set up mfg in country, or they have a comprehensive EV plan and realized they don't have enough for their own needs.

 

Really? that cost uncertainty doesn't seem to effect the millions of drivers pouring gas into their car. Nope, the majority of folks go about their daily business as though the reality of peak oil is just some kind of distant theory. Now, why do you thing that is . . .
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...in NiMH batteries (currrent Prius HEV) the "M" is the rare earth metal.
So one advantage of the Li batteries is no rare earths, I thought.
If the current crop of EV's were using NiMH then there probably would be some supply issues.

 

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This drone is for real: http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2011/10/11/us-navys-ufo-like-stealth-drone-reaches-new-milestone/
HIGH-RES image: http://media.globenewswire.com/cache/189/hires/11668.jpg

This is just a joke that there is a correlation between the two announcements. They are unrelated.