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My understanding is that these rare-earths are not actually rare - what's rare is: 1. A country that will let you mine them 2. Refinery capacity Right now I

My understanding is that these rare-earths are not actually rare - what's rare is: 1. A country that will let you mine them 2. Refinery capacity Right now I believe the only refineries are in Australia and China but for obvious reasons the US is quickly trying to figure out how to build on here along with semi conductor fabs.

shagmin 3y ago
When I first read the headline China immediately came to mind. Just recently the US started investing in ports in other countries, just like China has done. And now the US will probably start competing on another front that China has taken a lead role in.
- seanmcdirmid 3y ago
  It’s weird, because the USA had done that investing long before China started belt and road, what was innovative about belt and road were the risk increase of the projects the Chinese took on, investments that western countries wouldn’t go anywhere near.
  - infecto 3y ago
    I think the take generally is that China was fairly naive about its investments. Thats the belt and road projects would easily payoff as this has historically been working inside of China. I do think the US/EU could learn a bit from China here. My take is that the Chinese way has been something along the lines of, here take this loan, we will build some infrastructure, and at the same time move in some mining equipment, port or whatever is needed. The loan terms are way over ambitious but China is not trying to tell them how to govern. When the US goes in, its all about cleaning up the politics/human rights/something other clauses that all get tied to the money.
    - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
      This works for China ATM because they have a lot of excess labor (migrant workers) that they can send abroad, like India does (though on their own accord, not via SOEs). It also gives their SOEs something to do other than keep over investing in domestic infrastructure. So I get why they do it (and why they won’t be able to do it in a coupes of decades). But they take risks, like lending money to an unstable dictator who is unlikely to last more than a few years, it isn’t politics/human rights or whatever else, it’s simply that the countries are poorly governed and risk citizen revolts. China always has a shocked pikachu face when the unstable dictator they’ve been supporting gets overthrown/arrested/killed/etc… but anyone could have predicted it when they made the investments.
QwertyPi 3y ago
[flagged]
civilitty 3y ago
Finding a place to mine ore containing rare earth metals is easy, it's purely the refinery capacity that's the bottleneck with environmental laws being the limiting factor to building them. The vast majorities of countries will let you mine them but they're always in such low concentrations (hence "rare" earth) that it's not economical to haul massive amounts of crushed rock to a refinery in another country. Due to their chemistry they don't form very concentrated veins like a lot of other minerals do - the key is just collecting lots and lots of crushed rock. All of the methods use extremely nasty liquid-liquid extraction [1] techniques that require massive pools of toxic and corrosive extractants that are difficult to dispose of afterwards because they're quickly used up in the chemical reactions but remain very toxic. Anyone who allows cheap refineries pays a very heavy price long term [2]. Several other countries are actually pretty well set up to refine them on short notice but that infrastructure is reserved for refining uranium and other considerably more valuable metals. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid%E2%80%93liquid_extraction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid%E2%80%93liquid_extracti... [2] https://e360.yale.edu/features/china-wrestles-with-the-toxic-aftermath-of-rare-earth-mining https://e360.yale.edu/features/china-wrestles-with-the-toxic...
- joe_the_user 3y ago
  Indeed, The thing I'd want to add is that it's not technologically impossible to build a safe Lithium mine (or a safe nuclear power plant or a safe oil transportation infrastructure). It can be much more costly and so in these days of cost-cutting, unsafe operation is common. But one should still keep in mind safety isn't theoretically impossible.
- perihelions 3y ago
  That yale.edu article needs additional context. It's verbatim repeating the PRC's talking points on the US-China trade dispute, the one over China's rare earth tariffs that was litigated before the WTO. The US position is that the export tariffs are a tactic to subsidize Chinese consumers of rare earths—their manufacturing sector—by giving them preferential prices for Chinese rare earths, the raw inputs. That's illegal under WTO rules. The PRC's position, what e360 is legitimizing (and amplifying), is that the West *morally deserves* to compensate China for the ecological costs of China's own mining industry, because we are its end consumers; and that these tariffs should be permitted under WTO rules as an environmental measure, not a protectionist one. e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_earths_trade_dispute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_earths_trade_dispute https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-trade-idUSTRE6BM3S420101223 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-trade-idUSTRE6B... https://ustr.gov/about-us/policy-offices/press-office/press-releases/2014/March/US-wins-victory-in-rare-earths-dispute-with-China https://ustr.gov/about-us/policy-offices/press-office/press-... It's jarring to suddenly be reading CPC foreign policy talking points in a random environmental article!
defrost 3y ago
> Right now I believe the only refineries are in Australia and China and Malaysia, with a new spodumene conversion facility being built in Texas by Tesla.
- Tagbert 3y ago
  isn't Spodumene a source of lithium instead of rare earths?
  - defrost 3y ago
    Right - brain fart - I was thinking of rare-metal pegmatites found at (say) Greenbushes W.Australia that gets mainly mined for Li for batteries, but additionally for Be, Cs, Ta. Wrong class of 'rare'. That said, Malaysia stands - Mt. Weld here in W.Australia refines there: https://lynasrareearths.com/ https://lynasrareearths.com/ The Lynas Mt Weld mine in Western Australia is acknowledged as one of the world’s premier rare earths deposits. Lynas also operates the world’s largest single rare earths processing plant in Malaysia where it produces high-quality separated rare earth materials for export to manufacturing markets in Asia, Europe and the United States. I'd have to check but IIRC the industry release re: Tesla also outlined including rare earth processing - which makes sense, pooling all the toxic by product processing to a single location to avoid multiple hellscapes.
perihelions 3y ago
The US' other major known deposits are in California. This discovery might actually be consequential, because Wyoming's an unregulated mining state (coal and stuff), while California's... the opposite of that. For historical background: California formerly extracted the majority of the world's rare earth elements, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Pass_mine#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Pass_mine#History
- beambot 3y ago
  Those regulations seem well-founded: California has a population density of 258.21 per mi² compared to 5.9 per mi² in Wyoming. And that doesn't even start to account for agricultural production for human consumption (versus livestock). Those limitations are reasonably founded if human wellbeing is the metric. Thus: This is good, despite any feelings about regulatory burdens.
  - perihelions 3y ago
    Sure, but this is in the Mojave desert.
    - gotoeleven 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - defrost 3y ago
        Oak Flat is another sacred site .. but with an estimated 64 billion US of copper lying below. https://www.afr.com/world/north-america/rio-bhp-s-seek-resolution-of-us-copper-mine-stand-off-20211129-p59cyc https://www.afr.com/world/north-america/rio-bhp-s-seek-resol... I've got my fingers crossed for the discovery of a squintillion dollers worth of unobtanium beneath the Vatican and the White House to see how this plays out elsewhere. For social science!
      - sgentle 3y ago
        I'm not sure exactly where the appropriate place is to mock the victims of genocide while they try to preserve what remains of their culture and land, but it's definitely not here.
wnevets 3y ago
#3 would probably be government subsidies. China spent a lot of money to drive competitors out of business.
photochemsyn 3y ago
Rare earth refining traditionally generates a lot of toxic waste of various sorts. This could likely be mitigated but it would raise the cost of the finished product well above current market norms, so unless universal standards were applied, it would become unprofitable relative to China. There's a good overview of the difficulties involved (and some alternative approaches and replacement materials) here: https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2023/04/05/the-energy-transition-will-need-more-rare-earth-elements-can-we-secure-them-sustainably/ https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2023/04/05/the-energy-tran...
- gustavus 3y ago
  I don't think competing with China will be a major concern domestically in the US in a few years as I anticipate a renewal and resurgence of the trade war.
- chii 3y ago
  > well above current market norms which just indicates that the cost is externalized, and the current market price is too low. But it would take international cooperation to force such externalized costs back into the supply chain, and no gov't wants to do if not doing so is advantageous geopolitically and economically.
- jeff_carr 3y ago
  > Rare earth refining traditionally generates a lot of toxic waste of various sorts. Could someone explain why? It certainly seems obviously easier than radioactive waste. All that has to happen is a stable solid. Why are there liquids?
  - defrost 3y ago
    > All that has to happen is a stable solid. What does that mean? Rare earths are "rare" for two reasons - they are spread about and don't appear in high concentrartions - at least one is "as common" in the crust as copper but it doesn't form in massive lumps of "quite a lot together" in the manner of copper (which forms in several types of clumps, eg [1]). The other reason they are rare is that they are mostly geochemically bound to other things in the way that silver and gold are not - a strong chemically reaction is required to free them and make them appear - that's a lot of wetwork with acids | reactive gases | etc [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porphyry_copper_deposit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porphyry_copper_deposit [2] https://www.britannica.com/science/rare-earth-element/Processing-ores https://www.britannica.com/science/rare-earth-element/Proces... Additionally (each ~ an hour) The Chemistry and Geology of the Clay Rare Earths: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFwrg4wWsm4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFwrg4wWsm4 Options for the separation of Rare Earth Elements: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMbsOjj_hls https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMbsOjj_hls (or search and find a lecture | paper of your preference)
kevin_thibedeau 3y ago
The push to roll out new semi fabs is only to add redundancy for defense purposes. They absolutely will not be rolling out cutting edge consumer ICs and they'll be perpetually running under capacity without ever turning a profit.
- jl6 3y ago
  What if defense wants cutting-edge ICs?
  - injeolmi_love 3y ago
    Generally speaking, defense prefers older, reliable, and well understood technology rather than the cutting edge stuff. It’s cheaper, easier to mass produce, and less likely to fail under extreme conditions.
  - kevin_thibedeau 3y ago
    They don't and they haven't since the 80s. The military needs reliability in harsh conditions above all else and modern processes can't deliver that. The military also doesn't care about the economic benefits of die shrinks so that driver is missing.
    - jl6 3y ago
      Front-line needs reliability, but the military has a lot of backend too, and they may well be interested in a secure supply of powerful GPUs running all kinds of AI-type workloads that don’t need to be on the battlefield. Something like continuous satellite surveillance of enemy territory with automated flagging of suspicious activity.
rocqua 3y ago
The 'rare' comes from the fact that the ore is not at all concentrated. The material is 'rare' within your earth.
Animats 3y ago
Refinery capacity, big problem. There's a lot of talk. Here's a rare earths refinery site in Fort Worth, TX, supposedly under construction for MP Minerals, the Mountain Pass mine people. Press release from 18 months ago.[1] Current view in Google Street View.[2] Some heavy equipment, and a billboard with the same picture as the press release, but they haven't even excavated the foundation as of that 2023 picture. US DoD put $35 million into this project. [1] https://mpmaterials.com/articles/mp-materials-begins-construction-on-texas-rare-earth-magnetics-factory-to-restore-full-us-supply-chain/ https://mpmaterials.com/articles/mp-materials-begins-constru... [2] https://earth.google.com/web/search/Independence+Parkway,+Fort+Worth,+TX/@32.98151158,-97.25098424,211.82402039a,0d,15y,9.2788606h,94.21537428t,0r/data=CigiJgokCclw4RfogEBAEVAY2dlUgEBAGQkTz7qoUljAIV33lYJQU1jAIhoKFk1BZGhpajhmTUJXMnVkUkJNTVFoeFEQAg https://earth.google.com/web/search/Independence+Parkway,+Fo...
jasonwatkinspdx 3y ago
Yes, "rare" in this context doesn't mean the materials are rare geographically, but rather that they occur in very low concentrations which requires processing large volumes of ore. This is environmentally very destructive so in recent decades the world has been happy to let places like China do it.
- wnevets 3y ago
  > but rather that they occur in very low concentrations which requires processing large volumes of ore. IIRC those concentrations are similar to copper and other metals

shagmin 3y ago

When I first read the headline China immediately came to mind. Just recently the US started investing in ports in other countries, just like China has done. And now the US will probably start competing on another front that China has taken a lead role in.

seanmcdirmid 3y ago
It’s weird, because the USA had done that investing long before China started belt and road, what was innovative about belt and road were the risk increase of the projects the Chinese took on, investments that western countries wouldn’t go anywhere near.
- infecto 3y ago
  I think the take generally is that China was fairly naive about its investments. Thats the belt and road projects would easily payoff as this has historically been working inside of China. I do think the US/EU could learn a bit from China here. My take is that the Chinese way has been something along the lines of, here take this loan, we will build some infrastructure, and at the same time move in some mining equipment, port or whatever is needed. The loan terms are way over ambitious but China is not trying to tell them how to govern. When the US goes in, its all about cleaning up the politics/human rights/something other clauses that all get tied to the money.
  - seanmcdirmid 3y ago
    This works for China ATM because they have a lot of excess labor (migrant workers) that they can send abroad, like India does (though on their own accord, not via SOEs). It also gives their SOEs something to do other than keep over investing in domestic infrastructure. So I get why they do it (and why they won’t be able to do it in a coupes of decades). But they take risks, like lending money to an unstable dictator who is unlikely to last more than a few years, it isn’t politics/human rights or whatever else, it’s simply that the countries are poorly governed and risk citizen revolts. China always has a shocked pikachu face when the unstable dictator they’ve been supporting gets overthrown/arrested/killed/etc… but anyone could have predicted it when they made the investments.

QwertyPi 3y ago

[flagged]

civilitty 3y ago

Finding a place to mine ore containing rare earth metals is easy, it's purely the refinery capacity that's the bottleneck with environmental laws being the limiting factor to building them. The vast majorities of countries will let you mine them but they're always in such low concentrations (hence "rare" earth) that it's not economical to haul massive amounts of crushed rock to a refinery in another country. Due to their chemistry they don't form very concentrated veins like a lot of other minerals do - the key is just collecting lots and lots of crushed rock. All of the methods use extremely nasty liquid-liquid extraction [1] techniques that require massive pools of toxic and corrosive extractants that are difficult to dispose of afterwards because they're quickly used up in the chemical reactions but remain very toxic. Anyone who allows cheap refineries pays a very heavy price long term [2]. Several other countries are actually pretty well set up to refine them on short notice but that infrastructure is reserved for refining uranium and other considerably more valuable metals. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid%E2%80%93liquid_extraction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid%E2%80%93liquid_extracti... [2] https://e360.yale.edu/features/china-wrestles-with-the-toxic-aftermath-of-rare-earth-mining https://e360.yale.edu/features/china-wrestles-with-the-toxic...

joe_the_user 3y ago
Indeed, The thing I'd want to add is that it's not technologically impossible to build a safe Lithium mine (or a safe nuclear power plant or a safe oil transportation infrastructure). It can be much more costly and so in these days of cost-cutting, unsafe operation is common. But one should still keep in mind safety isn't theoretically impossible.
perihelions 3y ago
That yale.edu article needs additional context. It's verbatim repeating the PRC's talking points on the US-China trade dispute, the one over China's rare earth tariffs that was litigated before the WTO. The US position is that the export tariffs are a tactic to subsidize Chinese consumers of rare earths—their manufacturing sector—by giving them preferential prices for Chinese rare earths, the raw inputs. That's illegal under WTO rules. The PRC's position, what e360 is legitimizing (and amplifying), is that the West *morally deserves* to compensate China for the ecological costs of China's own mining industry, because we are its end consumers; and that these tariffs should be permitted under WTO rules as an environmental measure, not a protectionist one. e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_earths_trade_dispute https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_earths_trade_dispute https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-trade-idUSTRE6BM3S420101223 https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-trade-idUSTRE6B... https://ustr.gov/about-us/policy-offices/press-office/press-releases/2014/March/US-wins-victory-in-rare-earths-dispute-with-China https://ustr.gov/about-us/policy-offices/press-office/press-... It's jarring to suddenly be reading CPC foreign policy talking points in a random environmental article!

defrost 3y ago

> Right now I believe the only refineries are in Australia and China and Malaysia, with a new spodumene conversion facility being built in Texas by Tesla.

Tagbert 3y ago
isn't Spodumene a source of lithium instead of rare earths?
- defrost 3y ago
  Right - brain fart - I was thinking of rare-metal pegmatites found at (say) Greenbushes W.Australia that gets mainly mined for Li for batteries, but additionally for Be, Cs, Ta. Wrong class of 'rare'. That said, Malaysia stands - Mt. Weld here in W.Australia refines there: https://lynasrareearths.com/ https://lynasrareearths.com/ The Lynas Mt Weld mine in Western Australia is acknowledged as one of the world’s premier rare earths deposits. Lynas also operates the world’s largest single rare earths processing plant in Malaysia where it produces high-quality separated rare earth materials for export to manufacturing markets in Asia, Europe and the United States. I'd have to check but IIRC the industry release re: Tesla also outlined including rare earth processing - which makes sense, pooling all the toxic by product processing to a single location to avoid multiple hellscapes.

perihelions 3y ago

The US' other major known deposits are in California. This discovery might actually be consequential, because Wyoming's an unregulated mining state (coal and stuff), while California's... the opposite of that. For historical background: California formerly extracted the majority of the world's rare earth elements, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Pass_mine#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Pass_mine#History

beambot 3y ago
Those regulations seem well-founded: California has a population density of 258.21 per mi² compared to 5.9 per mi² in Wyoming. And that doesn't even start to account for agricultural production for human consumption (versus livestock). Those limitations are reasonably founded if human wellbeing is the metric. Thus: This is good, despite any feelings about regulatory burdens.
- perihelions 3y ago
  Sure, but this is in the Mojave desert.
  - gotoeleven 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - defrost 3y ago
      Oak Flat is another sacred site .. but with an estimated 64 billion US of copper lying below. https://www.afr.com/world/north-america/rio-bhp-s-seek-resolution-of-us-copper-mine-stand-off-20211129-p59cyc https://www.afr.com/world/north-america/rio-bhp-s-seek-resol... I've got my fingers crossed for the discovery of a squintillion dollers worth of unobtanium beneath the Vatican and the White House to see how this plays out elsewhere. For social science!
    - sgentle 3y ago
      I'm not sure exactly where the appropriate place is to mock the victims of genocide while they try to preserve what remains of their culture and land, but it's definitely not here.

wnevets 3y ago

#3 would probably be government subsidies. China spent a lot of money to drive competitors out of business.

photochemsyn 3y ago

Rare earth refining traditionally generates a lot of toxic waste of various sorts. This could likely be mitigated but it would raise the cost of the finished product well above current market norms, so unless universal standards were applied, it would become unprofitable relative to China. There's a good overview of the difficulties involved (and some alternative approaches and replacement materials) here: https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2023/04/05/the-energy-transition-will-need-more-rare-earth-elements-can-we-secure-them-sustainably/ https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2023/04/05/the-energy-tran...

gustavus 3y ago
I don't think competing with China will be a major concern domestically in the US in a few years as I anticipate a renewal and resurgence of the trade war.
chii 3y ago
> well above current market norms which just indicates that the cost is externalized, and the current market price is too low. But it would take international cooperation to force such externalized costs back into the supply chain, and no gov't wants to do if not doing so is advantageous geopolitically and economically.
jeff_carr 3y ago
> Rare earth refining traditionally generates a lot of toxic waste of various sorts. Could someone explain why? It certainly seems obviously easier than radioactive waste. All that has to happen is a stable solid. Why are there liquids?
- defrost 3y ago
  > All that has to happen is a stable solid. What does that mean? Rare earths are "rare" for two reasons - they are spread about and don't appear in high concentrartions - at least one is "as common" in the crust as copper but it doesn't form in massive lumps of "quite a lot together" in the manner of copper (which forms in several types of clumps, eg [1]). The other reason they are rare is that they are mostly geochemically bound to other things in the way that silver and gold are not - a strong chemically reaction is required to free them and make them appear - that's a lot of wetwork with acids | reactive gases | etc [2]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porphyry_copper_deposit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porphyry_copper_deposit [2] https://www.britannica.com/science/rare-earth-element/Processing-ores https://www.britannica.com/science/rare-earth-element/Proces... Additionally (each ~ an hour) The Chemistry and Geology of the Clay Rare Earths: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFwrg4wWsm4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GFwrg4wWsm4 Options for the separation of Rare Earth Elements: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMbsOjj_hls https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMbsOjj_hls (or search and find a lecture | paper of your preference)

kevin_thibedeau 3y ago

The push to roll out new semi fabs is only to add redundancy for defense purposes. They absolutely will not be rolling out cutting edge consumer ICs and they'll be perpetually running under capacity without ever turning a profit.

jl6 3y ago
What if defense wants cutting-edge ICs?
- injeolmi_love 3y ago
  Generally speaking, defense prefers older, reliable, and well understood technology rather than the cutting edge stuff. It’s cheaper, easier to mass produce, and less likely to fail under extreme conditions.
- kevin_thibedeau 3y ago
  They don't and they haven't since the 80s. The military needs reliability in harsh conditions above all else and modern processes can't deliver that. The military also doesn't care about the economic benefits of die shrinks so that driver is missing.
  - jl6 3y ago
    Front-line needs reliability, but the military has a lot of backend too, and they may well be interested in a secure supply of powerful GPUs running all kinds of AI-type workloads that don’t need to be on the battlefield. Something like continuous satellite surveillance of enemy territory with automated flagging of suspicious activity.

rocqua 3y ago

The 'rare' comes from the fact that the ore is not at all concentrated. The material is 'rare' within your earth.

Animats 3y ago

Refinery capacity, big problem. There's a lot of talk. Here's a rare earths refinery site in Fort Worth, TX, supposedly under construction for MP Minerals, the Mountain Pass mine people. Press release from 18 months ago.[1] Current view in Google Street View.[2] Some heavy equipment, and a billboard with the same picture as the press release, but they haven't even excavated the foundation as of that 2023 picture. US DoD put $35 million into this project. [1] https://mpmaterials.com/articles/mp-materials-begins-construction-on-texas-rare-earth-magnetics-factory-to-restore-full-us-supply-chain/ https://mpmaterials.com/articles/mp-materials-begins-constru... [2] https://earth.google.com/web/search/Independence+Parkway,+Fort+Worth,+TX/@32.98151158,-97.25098424,211.82402039a,0d,15y,9.2788606h,94.21537428t,0r/data=CigiJgokCclw4RfogEBAEVAY2dlUgEBAGQkTz7qoUljAIV33lYJQU1jAIhoKFk1BZGhpajhmTUJXMnVkUkJNTVFoeFEQAg https://earth.google.com/web/search/Independence+Parkway,+Fo...

jasonwatkinspdx 3y ago

Yes, "rare" in this context doesn't mean the materials are rare geographically, but rather that they occur in very low concentrations which requires processing large volumes of ore. This is environmentally very destructive so in recent decades the world has been happy to let places like China do it.

wnevets 3y ago
> but rather that they occur in very low concentrations which requires processing large volumes of ore. IIRC those concentrations are similar to copper and other metals