A labourer works at the site of a rare earth metals mine at Nancheng county, Jiangxi province October 31, 2010. REUTERS/Stringer
Posted on 12/15/2010 10:34:33 AM PST by NormsRevenge
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States risks major supply disruptions of rare earth metals used in clean energy products unless it diversifies its sources of the minerals, the Energy Department warns in a report due to be released later on Wednesday.
The United States and other countries are worried that China, which controls 97 percent of the world trade in rare earth metals, will use those supplies as a political weapon and cut back their export when it is in a dispute with another country or to grow China's clean energy technology sector.
"The availability of a number of these materials is at risk due to their location, vulnerability to supply disruptions and lack of suitable substitutes," U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu said in a report, due to be unveiled on Wednesday at a rare earth metals conference at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.
The release of the report coincides with trade talks in Washington between the United States and China. U.S. officials are expected to push Chinese officials to loosen export restraints on rare earth elements.
China, which said on Tuesday it planned to raise export taxes on some rare earth metals beginning next month, holds 37 percent of known rare metal reserves, the United States has 13 percent and the rest is in other countries.
The 17 rare earth metals, with exotic names like lanthanum and europium, form unusually strong lightweight materials and are used in a wide range of applications including high-tech and defense products, car engines and clean energy.
CHINESE STRANGLEHOLD
China has vowed that it would not use its dominance of rare earth supplies as a bargaining tool with foreign economies but it has cut its exports of the materials on environmental grounds.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
A labourer works at the site of a rare earth metals mine at Nancheng county, Jiangxi province October 31, 2010. REUTERS/Stringer
Mike
It is China. There is no ‘if’. There is only ‘when’.
Rare earth elements aren’t that rare ...
http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2010/11/04/are-rare-earth-stocks-more-than-a-bubble.aspx
I have been watching this all year, since i sell rare earth magnets...the increasingly alarmist articles are starting to seem like the ginning up of sentiment for public funding for a private business, Molycorp. (they recently got some dough from Sumitomo, which is a competitor in the magnet business). Watch the news organs for more alarmism...justifying public money for all the “green” initiatives is quite common. These windmills that don’t make power, hybrid cars that don’t save energy, and the other cool stuff being foisted upon us are a shell game that once again we will pay for.
We had the same thing on a smaller scale a few years back with DFARs program...
>> There is plenty here if they’d mine for it...
Why just last night I was reading in my new EDN magazine how the US USED to be the leading producer of rare earth elements!
Hey, what do you know: here’s the article on line:
http://www.edn.com/article/511666-Electronics_industry_braces_for_rare_earth_materials_shortages.php
It’s funny... I bet enviro concerns helped shut the US production down, and now the materials are in short supply, and a significant reason is because of “eco” applications! From the article:
“We used to lead the world in the export of rare-earth materials,” [Tom Valiere] says. “In the last 20 years, we’ve become dependent. The whole thing flew under the radar until green technology placed demand on rare-earth materials and we realized they were sole-sourced to China.”
DOH!!
Can’t help but laugh... kind like when wind turbines kill golden eagles. Zero-Sum Enviro Steel Cage Death Match!
If Obama announced today he wanted to use a portion of unspent stimulus money to redevelop U.S. rare earth mining the Chinese would change their position.
*
Rare earths used to be required for the manufacture of TV screens. I’m not sure if they’re still required for modern flatscreens, but if they are, the chicoms will really get a lot of people pi$$ed if they cut off supply.
I looked at my neighbor's windmill when I saw your comment. It is literally DEAD still. No energy being generated at all, unless there are solar cells in the blades.
China, which controls 97 percent of the world trade in rare earth metals
Drill, Baby, Drill!
And drill and drill and drill and drill and...
The first MolyCorp rare earth thread at Free Republic was in 1997.
There are plenty of rare earth minerals around, in that they are just the breakdown products of radioactive elements. The problem is separating and processing them into a useful form. Doing so is terribly polluting, expensive and difficult.
Most of the Chinese rare earth extraction is done out in empty deserts, so they don’t care about pollution, not that they care very much about pollution in any circumstance. And only because they have a near monopoly, can they charge so much for it, that they can afford the separation and processing.
If the price drops, China will stop exporting rare earths entirely. It’s just not worth it.
Of which many of those radioactive elements have long since ceased to exist.
http://www.kaiserbottomfish.com/s/Education.asp?ReportID=362761
Best single resource linkfest and charts for rare earths.
I hate China, but you’ve got to hand it to them. They are ruthless, which is why they are beating us at our own game. We are hamstrung by the enemy within.
This is going to be China’s century. Meanwhile, we are following in Britain’s footsteps to mediocrity, then it is on to French Socialism on the way to Italian apathy.
China is going to clean our clocks. Going to? They already are.
Here is a very good paper from the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security (IAGS) about how the Chinese came to dominant the rare earth element market.
http://fmso.leavenworth.army.mil/documents/rareearth.pdf
Uh, we are. Molycorp’s mine should be fully operational at the end of next year, more then enough to supply out needs. South Africa, Australia, and soon Canada will be ramping up production as well.
I’m not worried.
Russia has a large stash of the stuff, but they are going to sit on it and only use it for their defense industries.
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