[BfloGuy]

Of course, the United States has ample supplies of these minerals. But it isn’t economic to extract them given our business-destroying environmental laws.

[BfloGuy]

Of course, the United States has ample supplies of these minerals. But it isn’t economic to extract them given our business-destroying environmental laws.

[frog in a pot]

It appears the next non-Chinese miner scheduled to go into production is LYSDY.PK

[muawiyah]

This sounds like old news. It's a highly complex situation where there are numerous rare earth mines throughout the planet but for the last couple of years the Chinese simply failed to shut all of theirs down while everybody else pretty much succeeded in the task.

The issue appears to be low levels of radioactivity that occur naturally but otherwise in the presence of rare earth elements, etc.

Best mining practices require dealing with that sort of problem FIRST. One large mine in the US is reopening this year after having been retrofitted to eliminate the radiation problem.

One of the reasons the Chinese achieved world dominance so quickly was that they have a number of mine owners who don't care ~ doesn't matter to them if there's radioactivity ~ so they opened up new mines. The Chinese government (envision bunch of guys with AKs and brown suits walking around firing on miners) has been closing such places too ~ although there's no saying that their preferred mines are any safer.

And don't get the idea that "rare earths" are "rare" ~ they aren't!

[headstamp 2]

Can these materials be recycled from old motors?