Free Republic

In 1973 OPEC countries imposed an oil embargo to retaliate for US support of Israel during the Yom Kippur War. Drivers endured soaring gasoline prices, blocks-long lines, hours wasted waiting to refuel vehicles, and restrictions on which days they could buy fuel. America was vulnerable to those blackmail sanctions because we imported “too much” oil – though it was just 30% of our crude.The fracking revolution (horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing) and other factors changed that dramatically. The United States now produces more crude oil than at any time since 1970.But now we face new, potentially far greater dangers –...

It was revealed recently that North Korea is sitting on approximately $6 trillion worth of natural resources, which the country lacks the technology or expertise to extract. The impoverished nation is quite literally sitting on a goldmine, a significant portion of which is made up of rare earth metals. Rare earth metals are not - as you would expect - exceptionally rare, but are generally found in small trace quantities underground. What is rare is to find them in high concentrations, which is exactly what experts believe is present beneath the soil of North Korea. Not only are these resources...

It’s not far-fetched to consider ‘The Art of the Deal’ applied to North Korea’s allegedly vast rare earth resources. This may not be about condos on North Korean beaches after all. Arguably, the heart of the matter in the Trump administration’s embrace of Kim Jong-un has everything to do with one of the largest deposits of rare earth elements (REEs) in the world, located only 150 km northwest of Pyongyang and potentially worth billions of US dollars. All the implements of 21st century technology-driven everyday life rely on the chemical and physical properties of 17 precious elements on the periodic...

Scarce metals are found in a wide range of everyday objects around us. They are complicated to extract, difficult to recycle and so rare that several of them have become "conflict minerals" which can promote conflicts and oppression. A survey at Chalmers University of Technology now shows that there are potential technology-based solutions that can replace many of the metals with carbon nanomaterials, such as graphene. They can be found in your computer, in your mobile phone, in almost all other electronic equipment and in many of the plastics around you. Society is highly dependent on scarce metals, and this...

North Dakota coal companies are hoping to have a hand in solving the nation’s supply problem of rare earth elements. Europium, dysprosium, erbium, terbium, neodymium, holmium, scandium, lutetium, and yttrium, are just a few of these valuable materials. “They’re used in pretty much all of our modern electronics,” said Steve Benson, associate vice president for research at the Energy and Environmental Research Center in Grand Forks. Magnets, hard drives, alloys, batteries, catalysts in cars, lasers, even coal’s cleaner energy cousins wind turbines and solar panels rely on rare earth elements - and could, in turn, rely on lignite coal. And...

US scientists have found what it could be key for the future of the country’s ailing coal industry as they detected that ashes from local operations, particularly those around the Appalachian region, are very rich in rare earth elements. Researchers from North Carolina-based Duke University analyzed coal ashes from coal-fired power plants throughout the US, including those in the largest coal-producing regions: the Appalachian Mountains; southern and western Illinois; and the Powder River Basin in Wyoming and Montana. One of the team main conclusions was that coal waste generated by the Appalachian coal operations was the richest in rare earth...

HIRSCHFELD, GERMANY - Scientists in Germany have come up with a method for extracting the precious element germanium from plants. The element is a semi-conductor and was used to develop the first transistor because it is able to transport electrical charges extremely quickly. Nowadays, silicon-germanium alloy is indispensable to modern life, crucial in making computers, smartphones and fiber-optic cables. Transparent in infra-red light, germanium is also used in intelligent steering systems and parking sensors for vehicles. Yet although germanium is present in soil all over the world, it is difficult to extract, and most supplies currently come from China. Now...

MP Materials, which runs the sole operating rare earths mine in the United States, is an unusual victim in the year-long tit-for-tat trade war between the two largest economies on the planet, as the conflict looks set to open up a new battlefront over technology. The operator of the Mountain Pass mine in California said it will kick-start its own processing operation by the end of 2020, after China last week more than doubled an import duty on concentrates to 25 per cent effective June 1. MP exports pellets – ground-up ores that contain oxides of rare earth elements –...

The world’s first trillionaire won’t come from cryptocurrency or some clever new app – he or she will become rich from asteroid mining. _____________________________________________________________________ That’s what bankers Goldman Sachs reckon, anyway – and several companies are now vying to be the first into space. NASA estimates that the total value of asteroids out there could be up to $700 quintillion – equivalent to £75 billion each for us here on Earth. Several companies are now buidling the machines which will take us there – including Deep Space Industries, which is building a steam-powered thruster for spacecraft, the Guardian reports. British...

Researchers have found a deposit of rare-earth minerals off the coast of Japan that could supply the world for centuries, according to a new study. The study, published in the journal Nature on Tuesday, says the deposit contains 16 million tons of the valuable metals. Rare-earth minerals are used in everything from smartphone batteries to electric vehicles. By definition, these minerals contain one or more of 17 metallic rare-earth elements (for those familiar with the periodic table, those are on the second row from the bottom).

President Trump ordered the U.S. military and the Interior Department to take immediate action to "break" the nation's dependence on Russian and Chinese supplies of critical minerals as a matter of national security. "This dependency of the United States on foreign sources creates a strategic vulnerability for both its economy and military to adverse foreign government action, natural disaster, and other events that can disrupt supply of these key minerals," read an executive order signed by the president on Wednesday.

Rare Earth Salts is one step closer to launching a pilot plant in Beatrice following an announcement this week that it has successfully tested a commercial-size "separation cell." The startup plans to use new techniques to harvest rare earth elements from would-be mining waste from around the world. A pilot program, a smaller-scale plant to demonstrate the feasibility of the process, has been in the works to harvest these rare earth elements. This plant would consist of several "cells" separating the elements. Company officials have been working with a single full-sized cell, and CEO Joseph Brewer said this cell produced...

A new class of magnets that expand their volume when placed in a magnetic field and generate negligible amounts of wasteful heat during energy harvesting, has been discovered by researchers at Temple University and the University of Maryland. The researchers, Harsh Deep Chopra, professor and chair of mechanical engineering at Temple, and Manfred Wuttig, professor of materials science and engineering at Maryland, published their findings, "Non-Joulian Magnetostriction," in the May 21st issue of the journal, Nature. This transformative breakthrough has the potential to not only displace existing technologies but create altogether new applications due to the unusual combination of magnetic...

A new class of magnets discovered that swell in volume and generate little heat when placed in a magnetic field could be used to harvest or convert energy efficiently. Applications range from sensors and actuators for automobiles to biomedical devices, besides defence applications. Discovered by scientists at the University of Maryland (UMD) and Temple University, the new magnets made from abundant metal alloys could replace the expensive, rare-earth magnets which exhibit poor mechanical properties. Maryland professor of materials science and engineering Manfred Wuttig, and Harsh Deep Chopra, professor and chair of mechanical engineering at Temple heated certain iron-based alloys (iron-gallium,...

Last week China announced that it would adhere to a World Trade Organization (WTO) ruling from last year by removing export quotas among other restrictions on rare earth minerals (RE). After controlling the global market for a number of years and extracting handsome rents, why is Beijing suddenly deciding to comply? It probably has little to do with the Chinese deciding to play by the rules and more to do with the realization that their attempt to use their dominant position to coerce political concessions has backfired. China’s monopoly of RE production has been quickly slipping away due to market...

<p>World asleep as China tightens deflationary vice We keep our fingers crossed as we glimpse the first foam of a deflationary Ch'ient'ang'kian coming our way from China. The world's central banks have no margin for error Societe Generale has defined its hard landing as a fall in Chinese growth to a trough of 2pc, with two quarters of contraction. .snip. The balance of evidence is that most powerful Chinese leader since Mao Zedong aims to prick China's $24 trillion credit bubble early in his 10-year term, rather than putting off the day of reckoning for yet another cycle.</p>

Early miners digging for gold, silver and copper had no idea what riches would be found alongside in the piles of dirt and rocks. There's a new rush in the United States to find key components of cell phones, televisions, weapons systems, wind turbines, MRI machines and the regenerative brakes in hybrid cars and old mine tailings. These byproducts could very well contain minerals the periodic table calls rare earth elements. "Uncle Sam could be sitting on a gold mine," Larry Meinert, director of the mineral resource program for the U.S. Geological Survey says. Both the USGS and Department of...

Greenland's prime minister warned the European Union he could scrap a preliminary deal intended to safeguard the bloc's access to his country's huge mineral resources, saying Brussels has failed to follow through. "I don't understand the behavior of the (European) Commission," leftist Kuupik Kleist said on Wednesday in his office... Kleist's comments to Reuters signal Greenland may be increasingly willing to play off rival powers from Brussels to Beijing that are drawn by its minerals as global warming opens up sea routes and mining prospects. Kleist, who grew up harpooning whales from a remote village in northern Greenland, faces a...

Elk Creek, Neb. (population 112), may not be so tiny much longer. Reports suggest that the southeastern Nebraska hamlet may be sitting on the world’s largest untapped deposit of “rare earth” minerals, which have proved to be indispensable to a slew of high-tech and military applications such as laser pointers, stadium lighting, electric car batteries and sophisticated missile-guidance systems. Canada-based Quantum Rare Earths Developments Corp. last week received preliminary results from test drilling in the area, showing “significant” proportions of “rare earth” minerals and niobium. The only people more excited than Quantum? The residents of Elk Creek, where nearly one...

Earlier this year, the world was jolted when China apparently cut supplies of rare earth metals to Japan. In addition, China has announced that it is dramatically tightening its export quotas on the metals. This is big news because China produces 97 percent of the world’s supply of the 17 rare earth metals. Rare earth metals are used in everything from wind turbines to oil refineries, Priuses to iPhones, and flat screen TVs to smart bombs. Rare earth metals are chemically similar and include cerium, neodymium, europium, and samarium. Despite the name, most rare earth metals actually are similar in...