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The problem with Rare Earth is that the West collectively acts like 3 year old who are to dumb to solve incredibly simple problems. Rare earth contained lots o

• pjc50 8y ago
  Thorium is radioactive, just not very much. It's toxic in the way a lot of heavy metals are. https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxprofiles/tp147.pdf https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxprofiles/tp147.pdf
  • nickik 8y ago
    Yeah is radioactive but you can build a bed out of it and sleep on it so its not radioactive in any practical sense. And of course Toxic is not a problem because most of the metals a rare earth mine would deal with would be toxic. You can actually find heavily concentrated earth in the US that would basically count as nuclear waste because nuclear policy is so insane.
    • woah 8y ago
      Where is this earth located?
      • pp19dd 8y ago
        Quite a few places (around 13), albeit most are abandoned or inactive sites. You can locate most of these by spotting a tailings dam of some kind on Google Maps. There are three active mines, in California and Nevada owned by Molycorp Minerals, Rye Creek LLC, and Columbus SM LLC: CA: San Bernardino, Shasta, Rancho Cucamonga and Near Primm (35.478098,-115.532034) MT: Place called Rye Near Ravalli. Could not locate it manually, and the coordinates were listed incorrectly as 46.015278,-114.171389. Directions: "Turn east off of Highway 93 onto Tanner Ave. Follow it until it dead ends and turn right onto dirt road and follow it for approx 1/4 mile into mine site." NV: Esmeralda, Churchill, Pershing (38.119167,-117.993611) OR: Coos UT: Salt Lake (itself?) WA: Stevens, Grant
    • vanderZwan 8y ago
      > Yeah is radioactive but you can build a bed out of it and sleep on it so its not radioactive in any practical sense. Eh, you're technically correct in the sense that you can also make a bed out of asbestos and sleep on it and be fine, as long as it doesn't become airborne. Sure, you won't get thorium in your system as quickly but it's still a material that you probably don't want in your household or in the environment in general if you don't need it. I do agree that in the general sense fears of radioactivity are exaggerated, and even then only selectively: those scanners we installed at all airports in the last decade will also cause more incidences of cancer, but you hardly ever hear anyone about that. What should be feared more is the mining industry not giving a shit about human health, the environment or, for the lack of a better term, "the commons". If the waste of the mining industry ends up in the groundwater we do have a big problem. And in practice this is not an "if", it's a "when", or even "how long will it take before they are found out this time and still get away with it".
      • bdamm 8y ago
        > those scanners we installed at all airports in the last decade will also cause more incidences of cancer, but you hardly ever hear anyone about that. Right; because compared to the radiation dose you get during the flight itself, it's nothing.
        • basicplus2 8y ago
          That is a different form of radiation
      • ataturk 8y ago
        Those scanners made Level3 Systems and other government contractors billions of dollars, so you just pipe down, citizen!
      • nickik 8y ago
        There are tons of thing in that are unhealthy if the become airbourn. It is like many other forms of rare earth mining. So not having a domestic rare earth industry because of thorium regulation is totally insane.
    • MR4D 8y ago
      To Woah: You might look here [0]. A great quote about the radiation levels: "Searching for uranium is in some ways easier than for other mineral resources because the radiation signature of uranium's decay products allows deposits to be identified and mapped from the air." Key phrase: mapped from the air That's a pretty high level. [0] http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fuel-cycle/mining-of-uranium/uranium-mining-overview.aspx http://www.world-nuclear.org/information-library/nuclear-fue...
      • gh02t 8y ago
        It's not so much that it's highly radioactive as it is that radiation detectors are really sensitive. It's not inert, but its specific activity is pretty low. The types of radiation it emits do mean it is significantly more dangerous if you breathe it (say as dust) or otherwise absorb it into your body.
      • 8note 8y ago
        My family does airborne mineral exploration, and it's the same for thorium (we look for three types of radiation to determine whether a certain spot is likely to be uranium: uranium, potassium, and thorium) the benefit is that you can directly tell that it's uranium due to it giving off specific wavelengths, vs with diamonds, you need significant interpretation of the data to look for not-diamonds and hope that there are diamonds there too
    • Spooky23 8y ago
      The problem is that the output of mining isn't a big, hard Thorium bed. It's going to be a big mountain of loose ore contaminating the water table. It's like lead in car batteries. Lead is incredibly toxic, but is mostly safe in that application, as there is a very tight chain of custody for batteries and good recycling programs.
  • lawlessone 8y ago
    can't we use thorium to make thorium reactors to charge or shiny new electric cars?
    • sandworm101 8y ago
      Of all the resources needed for such a reactor, thorium is probably the smallest percentage. Copper, iron, lots of nickle, vanadium in the various alloys, aluminium everywhere, and a tiny blob of thorium in the middle.
    • nickik 8y ago
      Yes. But the amoumt of thorium falling out of rare earth mines is many times larger then humans could consume with reactors.
  • Symmetry 8y ago
    It looks like it's 10,000 times more radioactive than a natural mix of potassium isotopes so worrying on the "radon concentration in your basement" level not "radioactive waste" level.
• skybrian 8y ago
  The article is about the availability of cobalt and nickel, which are not rare earth metals.
  • nickik 8y ago
    Same exact thing applies to many of these metals and worrying about cobalt and nickel is really not close to as important as rare earth mines. You need rare earth for batteries as well, also for many other things in the new electric transport infrastructure.
    • hwillis 8y ago
      > You need rare earth for batteries as well This is a pervasive and utterly false idea. There are no rare earth elements in li-ion batteries and never have been. It's a weird kind of free-association that people think so. Also, nickel and cobalt mining are completely different from rare earth mining. The only rare earth element used in EVs in any significant amount is neodymium, about 1.6 kg in 200-300 horsepower PM motors. Induction motors, like those in the Model S and X, use none at all. Neodymium is entirely replaceable for EVs and has perhaps a 1% impact on range. If it becomes expensive it won't be used. According to the USGS the US has enough mapped, recoverable neodymium for 1 billion EVs[1]. Australia already produces enough for over 10 million cars per year. [1]: https://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/rare_earths/mcs-2018-raree.pdf https://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/rare_earth...
• officialjunk 8y ago
  Seems possible to me the US may want to deplete others’ mines while saving their mines to become the last ones remaining.
  • nickik 8y ago
    Yeah that is impossible, rare earths are all over the place if you are willing to go to slightly less optimal places you can never run out. That would be like saying in 1800 that Britain will not use domestic coal because they want to save it.
  • yellow_postit 8y ago
    That would require a level of long term policy and conspiracy that I think the US government incapable of. More likely to be arguably poor policy with unplanned for market consequences.
  • pp19dd 8y ago
    There are roughly 85,000 mines in the U.S. Of those, 62,000 are outright abandoned. Rest are either nonproducing, temporarily idled, sealed, or intermittently active. Only about 6,300 are currently active. It's not a limited resource problem but a profitability problem. Think the main article's point is that you probably want to research diversifying now before a resource squeeze forces you to catch-up.
    • dredmorbius 8y ago
      There was a specific policy of discouraging mining in the U.S. sometime mid-century or earlier. The history of mining in the West can be pieced together from hundreds of different online sources. The BLM spins the story that all the old mines have all been worked out and that is why they were abandoned, which is believable, but certainly not the case, although some mines have been worked out. http://www.miningartifacts.org/Mining-Photo-Index.html http://www.miningartifacts.org/Mining-Photo-Index.html has a brief history of mining by state. Executive Order 6102 made it illegal for a U.S. Citizens to hold or own more than $100 in gold; coins, bullion or otherwise. It allowed the Federal government to seize gold and required citizens to turn in all of their gold, at the face value of $20.67 per ounce, or face up to 10 years in Prison and or a $10,000 fine. Later Executive order L-208 essentially banned all non-essential mining operations. Gold and Silver mines being paramount on that list. Later expensive bonds were required before a new mine could be cut, which limited new mining to well funded mining companies. All of these contributed to the end of most small scale mining. Source: https://plus.google.com/+NationalbureauofminesOrg1/posts/fDhd3KfXt5u https://plus.google.com/+NationalbureauofminesOrg1/posts/fDh...
• mcfist 8y ago
  Thorium is not much radioactive indeed, but radon it emits is. That's why f.ex. building houses on a granit (that is generally thorium rich) without proper ventilation underneath can result in serious health issues.
  • NeedMoreTea 8y ago
    There's loads of cities built on and with granite, and long before any awareness of Radon came about, without undue health effects. Scotland particularly - Aberdeen is even nicknamed the Granite City. Modern levels of draught exclusion can make for a little more of a problem of course.
    • Spooky23 8y ago
      You can map a specific radon level to probability of getting lung cancer. At high levels, it's equivalent to smoking cigarettes, and for smokers, it increases your cancer risk 7-8x. At the levels where it is recommended that you remediate your home, your likelihood of dying from lung cancer is equivalent to dying in a car accident. That's potentially 50 people a year when you look at a population of 200,000 people.
• dbingham 8y ago
  As someone currently dealing the consequences of being far too cavalier with long term environmental pollutants like PCBs and lead, I would argue that behavior you're describing as being that of a "3 year old" is actually a good example of government sanity, not stupidity. It's reasonable long term caution to avoid creating a bigger problem in the future. The true 3 year old behavior on display here is the market behavior you're advocating: ignoring a potential long term problem in favor of a short term gain. Environmental toxins are not something to be cavalier about. Once soil gets contaminated, it's damned hard and expensive to clean up. Land is one of the single most limited resources we have. We can ultimately live with out lithium ion batteries. We can change our behavior, use other electrical sources, or as the article argues for, find other sources of electrode material. We cannot live with out clean soil in which to grow healthy food. Or on which to live.
  • rubber_duck 8y ago
    >Land is one of the single most limited resources we have. It sounds romantic but is it really ? Even agricultural land is relatively cheap and there are more scarce resources that are needed for development.
    • simonh 8y ago
      Cheapness isn’t a measure of importance though. Air is cheap. Water is cheap. That doesn’t mean it’s ok to squander and pollute cheap but essential and very expensive to renew resources until they are not cheap anymore. Water and soil in particular are very important resources to protect, far beyond their price in economic terms. They are vital strategic assets because so much of our economy and ecology depend on them.
      • igor47 8y ago
        Thank you so much for saying what needs to be said! People read too many economists. "Money is the only measure of value and I didn't pay my own mother, so motherhood must be worthless!"
      • 8y ago
• j45 8y ago
  Thorium is the unleaded gas to Uranium (if it was leaded gas) for nuclear reactors. Maybe there's some opportunity there :)