America Makes Plans to Produce Needed Rare Earth Minerals Domestically

[ronwagn + 6,290]

https://www.theepochtimes.com/us-may-boost-rare-earths-mining-to-counter-threat-from-china_3715572.html

Subsidies are being considered because of our national needs including defense. Our environmental rules require higher expenses than in many other countries. 

How well can we meet our own needs for rare earth minerals? RCW

 

US May Boost Rare Earths Mining to Counter Threat From China

BY EMEL AKAN

 

March 1, 2021 Updated: March 1, 2021

[Gerry Maddoux + 3,627]

I was unable to open your link, Ron, but I am very interested in this conundrum. 

Can you believe that with growing tensions with China, we're still unprepared? This is actually one of China's greatest tools of leverage over the U.S. 

The mine at Mountain Pass is the only one really capable of ramping up quickly . . . and it's in California. The Hondo, Texas mine won't be ready for months. I doubt that the Colorado mine ever gets going. We have the REE's (or so I understand), but we're going to have to tear up an awful lot of earth, using lots of that evil diesel, in order to get at them.

The EV/renewables market is sopping up RRE's like crazy, enough to deplete national security buildouts if this current trend persists. One has to presume that the U.S. will come up with production somewhere. 

However, it was noted very early during the pandemic that China produced 80% of our prescription drug precursors, and virtually all of our testing kits and reagents. You can't even get "Made in America" penicillin, for gosh sakes, and yet here we are, over a year later, and the situation hasn't changed much. 

I'm sure Mr. Biden is on this. 🙃

[NickW + 2,714]

Thumbs up

Any effort to diversify supply away from China is a good thing

[NickW + 2,714]

8 hours ago, Gerry Maddoux said:

I was unable to open your link, Ron, but I am very interested in this conundrum. 

Can you believe that with growing tensions with China, we're still unprepared? This is actually one of China's greatest tools of leverage over the U.S. 

The mine at Mountain Pass is the only one really capable of ramping up quickly . . . and it's in California. The Hondo, Texas mine won't be ready for months. I doubt that the Colorado mine ever gets going. We have the REE's (or so I understand), but we're going to have to tear up an awful lot of earth, using lots of that evil diesel, in order to get at them.

The EV/renewables market is sopping up RRE's like crazy, enough to deplete national security buildouts if this current trend persists. One has to presume that the U.S. will come up with production somewhere. 

However, it was noted very early during the pandemic that China produced 80% of our prescription drug precursors, and virtually all of our testing kits and reagents. You can't even get "Made in America" penicillin, for gosh sakes, and yet here we are, over a year later, and the situation hasn't changed much. 

I'm sure Mr. Biden is on this. 🙃

I got a rapid antigen test kit today as our sons school reopening for all pupils and the parents are supposed to do self testing twice a week. 

Made in frickin China. 🥵

[Symmetry + 109]

So you want subsidies?  You guys get pissed when China sponsors domestic industries because it is "unfair."

People here claim to hate communism but want government owned / sponsored mines that will operate unprofitably for national good...

Normally people buy commodities for the lowest price they can find on the market.

If you consume "home made" resources that cost more than the global market price you make you domestic industries less profitable while simultaneously making foreign industries more profitable as the global market price will fall with increased supply.

 

[ronwagn + 6,290]

10 hours ago, Gerry Maddoux said:

I was unable to open your link, Ron, but I am very interested in this conundrum. 

Can you believe that with growing tensions with China, we're still unprepared? This is actually one of China's greatest tools of leverage over the U.S. 

The mine at Mountain Pass is the only one really capable of ramping up quickly . . . and it's in California. The Hondo, Texas mine won't be ready for months. I doubt that the Colorado mine ever gets going. We have the REE's (or so I understand), but we're going to have to tear up an awful lot of earth, using lots of that evil diesel, in order to get at them.

The EV/renewables market is sopping up RRE's like crazy, enough to deplete national security buildouts if this current trend persists. One has to presume that the U.S. will come up with production somewhere. 

However, it was noted very early during the pandemic that China produced 80% of our prescription drug precursors, and virtually all of our testing kits and reagents. You can't even get "Made in America" penicillin, for gosh sakes, and yet here we are, over a year later, and the situation hasn't changed much. 

I'm sure Mr. Biden is on this. 🙃

WASHINGTON—The Chinese communist regime has recently signaled that it could leverage its dominance in rare earth minerals, raising alarm bells in the United States. The threat has prompted the Biden administration to take action to reduce U.S. reliance on China for rare earth metals that are used in everything from smartphones to electric vehicles to fighter jets.

In 1992, Chinese paramount leader Deng Xiaoping predicted the importance of rare earths to China’s future when he famously said, “The Middle East has oil. China has rare earths.”

Today, China is the dominant global supplier of rare earths, a group of 17 chemical elements used in the production of critical components of key technologies, which could easily be used as a weapon against other countries in a trade war or a conflict.

Beijing has already demonstrated that it could use rare earth elements as a retaliatory tactic. In 2010, China abruptly cut off exports of these elements to Japan during a conflict over a fishing boat. And at the height of the U.S.-China trade spat in 2019, Beijing sought to use rare earth exports as a “counter-weapon” against the United States.

And most recently, the Chinese regime officials reportedly explored whether curbing the export of rare earth minerals to the United States could cripple its production of F-35 fighter jets.

Faced with the threat of losing access to rare earth materials, the Biden administration is now seeking ways to reduce America’s deep reliance on China. President Joe Biden on Feb. 24 signed an executive order to “help create more resilient and secure supply chains for critical and essential goods.”

The order focuses on choke points in the supply chains of four key products, including rare earth minerals, semiconductor chips, large-capacity batteries for electric vehicles, and pharmaceutical ingredients.

It directs federal agencies to immediately conduct a 100-day review to identify supply chain risks and vulnerabilities for these key products.

These are the products where the vulnerability has become very clear, according to Julie Swann, a supply-chain expert who heads North Carolina State University’s department of industrial and systems engineering.

“We don’t even know the full extent of the vulnerability, or the potential impact. I think this is just the beginning,” Swann told The Epoch Times.

According to her, there are likely other products and supply chains that will come under review as the administration continues to detect more vulnerabilities.

It’s unclear what actions the administration will take following the review; however, there are different options depending on the product.

Speaking at a press conference, Peter Harrell, senior director at the National Security Council for international economics and competitiveness said “all tools are on the table” for the administration.

“We’re expecting we’ll be using a mix of incentives to encourage production here. We’re looking at ways to ensure there’s surge capacity available for things that might need to be ramped up quickly—stockpiling,” he said.

He added that the administration would also consider working with allies and partners to take collective actions to address future supply shocks.

According to Swann, it is expensive for any country in the world to try to be self-sufficient, and have all of the specializations and capabilities.

“What is likely to be a more sustainable approach is to make sure that a supply chain is robust to disruptions,” she said rather than just focusing on becoming entirely self-sufficient.

Rare Earths Are Abundant

Rare earth minerals are critical to the U.S. economy and national security. They play a vital role in many industries including consumer electronics, green technologies, medical tools, and defense. Rare-earth magnets, for example, are used in many hybrid and electric vehicles. These metals are also key to the production of weapon guidance systems, jet engines, sonar devices, and laser weapons.

Rare earth elements are abundant and easy to mine, nonetheless, they are called “rare” because they are difficult to separate and refine into a usable form.

In the 1980s, the United States was the world leader in the production of these elements and almost all U.S. production was coming from the mine operated near Mountain Pass, California, which was closed in the 1990s. The mine was reopened in 2013 after China restricted supplies.

In recent decades, China has gradually become the dominant power in both the mining and the refining of these elements. Today, China controls about 80 percent of the global supply of rare-earth minerals even though it contains only a third of the world’s reserves, according to U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) data.

Currently, the United States is fully dependent on imports of rare earths, with 80 percent directly coming from China.

China can “absolutely” limit exports of rare earths to the United States, according to Lewis Black, CEO of Almonty Industries, a Canada-based mining company that is specialized in tungsten, a rare metal.

“The mechanism to do so has always been in place and was recently strengthened in December 2020 with new laws that allowed the state to stop exports if deemed in the national interest,” Black told The Epoch Times, referring to Beijing’s new export control law, which came into effect on Dec. 1, 2020.

To counter this threat, the United States has the potential to catch up and expand the mining and refining domestically.

“Rare earths are plentiful but it’s really a question of whether local communities would welcome a mine opening up nearby,” Black said.

The processing required to produce these rare earth minerals is environmentally challenging and it also threatens human health.

“Mining left the United States in part not just because of cost but also for the optics as communities often objected to the presence of a mine,” Black said.

The biggest hurdle, he noted, would be reassuring the public that these mines can operate safely and environmentally responsibly.

“Most people have heard or seen horror stories regarding older mines and given mining has not been a dominant industry in the USA for a generation this reeducation of the public regarding modern methods will take time,” he said.

While rare earths are critical to the economic and national security of the United States, it’s unclear whether the Biden administration may promote ramping up domestic production and processing due to environmental challenges.

Japan Conflict

Beijing abruptly cut off rare-earth exports to Japan during a diplomatic clash in 2010 after a Chinese fishing boat collided with two Japan Coast Guard ships in the East China Sea. The export ban sent the prices for raw materials through the roof. The huge price spike worked against Beijing, as it encouraged new production in countries such as Australia and destroyed demand for Chinese rare-earth metals.

The resulting supply chain disruption led Japan, the United States, and the European Union to jointly launch a dispute settlement case through the World Trade Organization in 2012, which was ruled against China two years later.

An increase in prices led to an influx of capital in the rare earth mining industry, which helped kick-start mining projects in other parts of the world. However, this exploration boom was short-lived as the supply threat passed and the prices came down.

“That’s also the case now,” according to Harvard Business School professor Willy Shih.

“The real question is whether domestic sources will be economically sustainable over time,” he wrote in a recent op-ed in Forbes.

Shih believes the biggest challenge the United States faces in becoming self-sufficient in rare earths is economics.

A group of investors in 2018 restarted limited production of at least two rare earth elements at the mine in Mountain Pass. As a result, the domestic production of critical rare-earth mineral concentrates jumped 44 percent in 2019, making the United States the largest producer of rare-earth mineral concentrates outside of China, according to USGS. But almost all raw materials had to be shipped to China for processing because it creates toxic wastes that make it hard for the United States to deal with it.

In July 2019, President Donald Trump determined that rare earths are “essential to national defense” and activated Section 303 of the Defense Production Act to allow the U.S. military to fund private-sector efforts to build a domestic refinement capability.

The U.S. Department of Defense on Feb. 1 awarded more than $30 million to Australia’s Lynas Rare Earths Ltd. to build a Texas processing facility.

“Upon completion of this project, if successful, Lynas will produce approximately 25 percent of the worlds’ supply of rare earth element oxides,” the Defense Department stated in a press release.

Last year, the U.S. firm MP Materials also received the Pentagon funding for its rare earths separation facility in California.

To redevelop the U.S. rare earths supply chain, a bipartisan group of House and Senate lawmakers introduced proposals last year aimed at boosting domestic capabilities through tax incentives.

Alice Sun contributed to this report.

Follow Emel on Twitter: @mlakan

 

 

 

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[Ward Smith + 6,615]

Every pound of rare earths produced at the Mountain Pass mine gets shipped to China for final processing. This is because the US moronic bunglecrats reclassified an innocuous substance as a nuclear weapons material. Kudos to the first who figures it out. 

@Gerry Maddoux you've seen one of my inventions, I'm working with a national lab to solve this issue also. It's funded, just waiting on the money to show up to further test my concept. So far so good. 

[Boat + 1,315]

4 hours ago, Symmetry said:

So you want subsidies?  You guys get pissed when China sponsors domestic industries because it is "unfair."

People here claim to hate communism but want government owned / sponsored mines that will operate unprofitably for national good...

Normally people buy commodities for the lowest price they can find on the market.

If you consume "home made" resources that cost more than the global market price you make you domestic industries less profitable while simultaneously making foreign industries more profitable as the global market price will fall with increased supply.

 

Who wants government mines? If your advisory can influence policy due to a lack of anything our government should work to open doors with allies and work internally to rectify shortages. But to start or run companies is politics gone to far. To let the situation exist is poor management. Basically the world is run on poor management but therein lies opportunity. Subsidies are important kickstarters but unlike agricultural and oil went on decades to long. I would even add solar and wind to that list. Battery tech, transmission, electricity storage are items needing a decade or two push for example. Maybe rare materials and metallurgy need a push to get to scale. Ask the Musk class what’s needed for help in areas. I don’t mean 7,000 for each car. But setting up your own mines? Why not. Expanding tech at government labs chasing the next generation of battery materials. Of course, a no brainer. 

Edited March 3, 2021 by Boat

[Ward Smith + 6,615]

You should look into the history of what shut Mountain Pass down the first time. Americans do just fine when we're allowed to follow our Creative impulses. Things get really tough when the govt changes the rules midstream. Trump had a great thing going when he refused to allow any new regulation to be enacted until 2, then 4 old regulations were removed. It's nonsense for you or anyone to believe that all regulations are good. They're not, many of them are ridiculous. 

@Boat do you own a house? Pay a mortgage? Does the govt subsidize your home ownership because, gasp, you get to take a tax deduction? That's what you're complaining about, calling a subsidy? You're a big wind turbine fan, did you know each one consumes 4 tons of rare earth elements? I've posted the pictures of the environmental devastation in China where they mine and process their REE's. 

[Symmetry + 109]

19 minutes ago, Ward Smith said:

Trump had a great thing going when he refused to allow any new regulation to be enacted until 2, then 4 old regulations were removed. It's nonsense for you or anyone to believe that all regulations are good. They're not, many of them are ridiculous.

How did that work out?

The number of regulations is meaningless to those who understand how regulations work. They can simply pack as many rules as you want into one regulation or make a single factor so strong that it makes other factors irrelevant.

For example, metal mine effluents are regulated by levels of: As, Pb, Cu, Ni, Zn, TSS, pH, CN, NH3, and trout lethality. 

You could easily reduce the number of regulatory measures while simultaneously effectively increasing regulation. 

"We will drop monitoring for Cu, Ni, and Zinc in mining effluents but will lower the limit of total suspended solids allowed." 

 

 

 

 

 

[Boat + 1,315]

Regulations occur when a problem arises with competing causes. Regulations change over time as the situation changes. This happens in courts, Fed legislation, state legislation, county, town etc. Usually competing parties do their best to sway to improve their cause. Kinda simple, eh? Regulations are also case by case with increasing amounts of competing information. Make sense? You can’t bumper sticker a regulation. Well, you can but it’s nonsense. Courts in many cases refine or reject or amplify legislation but little legislation is set in stone. Times change.

Edited March 3, 2021 by Boat

[Ward Smith + 6,615]

10 hours ago, Boat said:

Regulations occur when a problem arises with competing causes. Regulations change over time as the situation changes. This happens in courts, Fed legislation, state legislation, county, town etc. Usually competing parties do their best to sway to improve their cause. Kinda simple, eh? Regulations are also case by case with increasing amounts of competing information. Make sense? You can’t bumper sticker a regulation. Well, you can but it’s nonsense. Courts in many cases refine or reject or amplify legislation but little legislation is set in stone. Times change.

So the EPA gets to label CO2 a pollutant, gets to fight in court against people who actually have to pay their lawyers while the EPA gets unlimited funds to fight them. Who loses? Is CO2 a pollutant? Without CO2 what happens to all life on earth? Asking for the smart people in the room

[surrept33 + 609]

2 hours ago, Ward Smith said:

So the EPA gets to label CO2 a pollutant, gets to fight in court against people who actually have to pay their lawyers while the EPA gets unlimited funds to fight them. Who loses? Is CO2 a pollutant? Without CO2 what happens to all life on earth? Asking for the smart people in the room

You could argue the reverse. In Massachusetts vs Environmental Protection Agency, the EPA's interpretation of the Clean Air Act was that greenhouse gasses couldn't be regulated under the act (though there were special exceptions given to California). Other states sued. The Supreme Court agreed with the states and disagreed with the EPA, giving the EPA to interpret the Clean Air Act in this manner (which if you look at international standards is also the direction most governments have moved). Then a new EPA started assessing the social cost of carbon, which in practice is used for a lot of corporate and international transactions these days. There were lawsuits related to this, but the new EPA won all of them in practice. The Trump administration tried to gut the EPA, but it didn't matter much, since companies, cities, and states found ways to self-regulate.

CO2, like Water, Ozone, Oxygen, Hydrogen and lots of other stuff, are either be dangerous or not depending on context and concentration. We use bicarbonate buffers to regulate blood pH, but our pH if it deviates too much it leads to acidosis (or the converse - the equillibrium in this case = homeostasis). Make the same analogy with the ocean and carbonic acid and increased ocean acidification and the entire carbon cycle. It's not just CO2, it's the amount of land use change along with all sorts of other changes man has done. CO2 is just one of the more easy things to modulate backwards via technological improvements and other carrots and sticks. 

[Gerry Maddoux + 3,627]

1 hour ago, surrept33 said:

CO2, like Water, Ozone, Oxygen, Hydrogen and lots of other stuff, are either be dangerous or not depending on context and concentration. We use bicarbonate buffers to regulate blood pH, but our pH if it deviates too much it leads to acidosis (or the converse - the equillibrium in this case = homeostasis). Make the same analogy with the ocean and carbonic acid and increased ocean acidification and the entire carbon cycle. It's not just CO2, it's the amount of land use change along with all sorts of other changes man has done. CO2 is just one of the more easy things to modulate backwards via technological improvements and other carrots and sticks. 

Forgive me, but I don't know what you just said. I sense that you made an important distinction here but either I've had too much lunch wine or I just missed the syntactic nuance. Rephrase, please, in something a simpleton could understand. 

[Symmetry + 109]

1 hour ago, surrept33 said:

 

CO2, like Water, Ozone, Oxygen, Hydrogen and lots of other stuff, are either be dangerous or not depending on context and concentration. We use bicarbonate buffers to regulate blood pH, but our pH if it deviates too much it leads to acidosis (or the converse - the equillibrium in this case = homeostasis). Make the same analogy with the ocean and carbonic acid and increased ocean acidification and the entire carbon cycle. It's not just CO2, it's the amount of land use change along with all sorts of other changes man has done. CO2 is just one of the more easy things to modulate backwards via technological improvements and other carrots and sticks. 

Ward doesn't understand buffers, don't waste your time spoon feeding him information. 

Once Ward is wrong about something he remains committed regardless of evidence.

 

"Dose makes the poison" is also too hard for him to understand.  

"CO2, good, it has what plants crave." -Ward

[Symmetry + 109]

5 hours ago, Ward Smith said:

So the EPA gets to label CO2 a pollutant, gets to fight in court against people who actually have to pay their lawyers while the EPA gets unlimited funds to fight them. Who loses? Is CO2 a pollutant? Without CO2 what happens to all life on earth? Asking for the smart people in the room

You think the EPA has a higher legal budget than Big Oil? Hahaha!

The best lawyers do not work for the government because the pay is much lower.  

 

What if the atmosphere was entirely CO2?  Your "argument" is logically flawed (absurdum).  

 

[surrept33 + 609]

1 hour ago, Symmetry said:

Ward doesn't understand buffers, don't waste your time spoon feeding him information. 

Once Ward is wrong about something he remains committed regardless of evidence.

 

"Dose makes the poison" is also too hard for him to understand.  

"CO2, good, it has what plants crave." -Ward

yes - see also:

http://www.dhmo.org/facts.html

see also some very nefarious conspiracies with the military-industrial deep state:

http://www.dhmo.org/coverup.html

[Strangelovesurfing + 737]

2 hours ago, Symmetry said:

The best lawyers do not work for the government because the pay is much lower.  

Many bureaucrats work for the govt. because they're skilled enough to attain a diploma but are 'head cases' who can't keep a job in the private sector due to their abysmal internal decision making processes. I know this because I used to deal with them all the time on Federal construction contracts.

Edited March 3, 2021 by Strangelovesurfing

[hemanthaa@mail.com + 64]

😀It's great news; long overdue,though.

[surrept33 + 609]

1 hour ago, Strangelovesurfing said:

Many bureaucrats work for the govt. because they're skilled enough to attain a diploma but are 'head cases' who can't keep a job in the private sector due to their abysmal internal decision making processes. I know this because I used to deal with them all the time on Federal construction contracts.

This depends. The United States has had a long history with civil service reforms and movements from the public to private sector, and vice versa.  Relatively speaking, our governance structures have less day to day corruption (for example, you don't have to bribe someone to get a permit - a quid pro quo situation). The last administration didn't do anyone any favors by running on a populist platform that over-politicised non-partisan roles. This obviously depends on your philosophy of politics. Should it be about serious policy debates or getting a leg up on your 'competitor'? Humans can do either. 

Every institution, whether it is public or private sector has some amount of institutional inertia. Some inertia is good (because you want multiple checks and balances), some is toxic or not very relevant (anymore). 

Personally, I think the best approach is to just use approaches from cognitive science (scientists who think about thinking) and behavioral economics. For example, Nudge Theory is interesting:

https://www.businessballs.com/improving-workplace-performance/nudge-theory/

The biggest lesson learned within the 'nudge' framework is that changing the defaults is often better to reduce friction especially when things become 'hot'. Take for example, a 401k program or a health insurance pool. A lot of people do not understand how to quantify risk, especially of processes that are accumulative, for example, smoking, obesity, or communicable diseases. How do you prevent unnatural deaths by minimizing effort, maximizing results and minimizing side effects? Good question - but that's why regulated markets like that of the United States tend to work well. 

Sometimes of course, people or entire industries screw up. That's okay, usually there is onerous regulation after those screw ups. Look at for example, the Basel accords after the last financial meltdown. 

[footeab@yahoo.com + 2,129]

On 3/2/2021 at 4:22 PM, Symmetry said:

So you want subsidies?  You guys get pissed when China sponsors domestic industries because it is "unfair."

People here claim to hate communism but want government owned / sponsored mines that will operate unprofitably for national good...

Normally people buy commodities for the lowest price they can find on the market.

If you consume "home made" resources that cost more than the global market price you make you domestic industries less profitable while simultaneously making foreign industries more profitable as the global market price will fall with increased supply.

 

Material cost of just about ANY product is less than 5% of the cost of said product...

Heard of Tariffs?  Massive Tariffs on any country which is not democratic would be the place to start.  Just as was true before 1995 and the WTO.  Get this, morals require responsibility.  Greed is just that, greed, be it at the consumer, or the producers who are forced to go to dictators for supply because the consumers have no morals.  Morals matter. 

[Marcin2 + 724]

The elephant in the room in this discusison are Chinese environmental regulations.

There is tendency to make them tougher (f.e. in coal-fired power plants they are already more stringent than in US).

It is very odd for me that there are still no export taxes on rare earths, they should be in the amount of relative environmental degradation that mining and processing causes.

So in the future US would have to mine rare earth minerals, or both China and US will find other willing countries to do the dirty job for them.

 

[surrept33 + 609]

40 minutes ago, Marcin2 said:

The elephant in the room in this discusison are Chinese environmental regulations.

There is tendency to make them tougher (f.e. in coal-fired power plants they are already more stringent than in US).

It is very odd for me that there are still no export taxes on rare earths, they should be in the amount of relative environmental degradation that mining and processing causes.

So in the future US would have to mine rare earth minerals, or both China and US will find other willing countries to do the dirty job for them.

 

Keep in mind that China imports a lot of these from America to effectively perform the rare earth separation in the first place:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ion_chromatography

There are a lot of these in the US, and we are probably far ahead in the 'state of the art' (these machines are hard to reverse engineer), but we just use it in biotech rather than mining, though we could (and probably should to diversify our options).

 

[NickW + 2,714]

18 hours ago, Strangelovesurfing said:

Many bureaucrats work for the govt. because they're skilled enough to attain a diploma but are 'head cases' who can't keep a job in the private sector due to their abysmal internal decision making processes. I know this because I used to deal with them all the time on Federal construction contracts.

Seen plenty of this in big oil and mining as well. 

[Ward Smith + 6,615]

20 hours ago, Symmetry said:

Ward doesn't understand buffers, don't waste your time spoon feeding him information. 

Once Ward is wrong about something he remains committed regardless of evidence.

 

"Dose makes the poison" is also too hard for him to understand.  

"CO2, good, it has what plants crave." -Ward

Let's not replay your humiliation again Enthalpic. You lost, you got owned and you proved you're no scientist. I have forgotten more about buffering than you've ever known. Quit acting like you belong at the adults' table