8 ms·

Your Smartphone's Dirty, Radioactive Secret

136 points by sc68cal 14y ago

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
fleitz 14y ago
Wait til motherjones finds out that their servers are just as dirty as Apple's iPhone. Rare Earths are essential to all electronics, not just smart phones.
- DanBC 14y ago
  > Rare Earths are essential to all electronics The article says that.
- hdevalence 14y ago
  > Walk down the aisles of your local Best Buy and you'll be hard-pressed to find a phone, laptop, or TV that doesn't contain at least one of the rare earths. The elements are also key to all kinds of green technology: Neodymium is found in wind turbines; hybrid and electric cars often contain as many as nine different rare earths. Yttrium can form phosphors that make light in LED displays and compact fluorescent lightbulbs. Rare earths are also crucial for defense technology—radar and sonar systems, tank engines, smart bombs. From the second page of the article. Nobody is denying whether or not they're essential. The issue is that they're produced in poor countries so that the refiners can offload most of the cost of refining rare earth metals in the form of environmental damage.
- tomaskafka 14y ago
  That's not the point of the article. Read again.
DanBC 14y ago
This article isn't very good. It starts by mentioning some information about Foxconn. Suicides, for example, are less common at Foxconn than in the general population. So things are a bit more complicated than this article portrays.[1] The article talks about the radioactive waste products. That's normally thorium. But the Lynas site (Mount Weld) has high concentrations of rare earths, is a huge site, and has low levels of thorium contamination. People are rightly concerned about radioactive waste being left in Malaysia. Lynas wanted to ship the radioactive waste back to Australia for processing, but they are forbidden from doing so by Australian law. Some people are suggesting that Lynas is using Malaysia to avoid environmental laws thus cutting costs. But Malaysia gave them a 12 month tax break, and was already cheaper than Australia, so environmental laws don't appear to be the main motivator. (Although cheaper costs because of less strict environmental protections is probably an important factor.) It is frustrating that all reporting about this is emotive or otherwise sub-optimal. [1] I think that conditions at Foxconn are appalling and need to be improved.
- sc68cal 14y ago
  > But Malaysia gave them a 12 month tax break, and was already cheaper than Australia, so environmental laws don't appear to be the main motivator I don't believe that the government offering tax breaks to entice a company to relocate their plant implies that. In addition, environmental laws in developing countries are lax, if not non-existent. Furthermore, if Australia is blocking the shipment of these waste products into the country, surely that implies that this is a serious environmental problem. Australia is willing to lose business over the matter, because they feel there are hidden costs (environmental, health, safety) that are not easily quantified directly. From the article: Shipping ore thousands of miles is extremely expensive. But the company says the cheaper labor, electricity, and chemicals in Malaysia make it worthwhile. Malaysians who oppose the plant see a much more troubling dynamic. "Australia is a first-world country that wants the developing world to do its dirty work," says Fuziah Salleh, Kuantan's parliamentary representative and an outspoken critic of the Lynas project. "Our environmental laws are very lax, and Lynas knows exactly where to take advantage of it. If you look at Australia, there are very strict laws about controlling the waste, dust, and air quality. But here in Malaysia—even if we have those laws—it is very hard to enforce." >It is frustrating that all reporting about this is emotive or otherwise sub-optimal. We're talking about materials that have half-lives on the order of billions of years and have caused miscarriages and childhood leukemia in residents, decades after a previous plant was closed.
  - zokier 14y ago
    > We're talking about materials that have half-lives on the order of billions of years and have caused miscarriages and childhood leukemia in residents, decades after a previous plant was closed. I find it very hard to believe that materials that "have half-lives on the order of billions of years" produce enough radiation to be noticeable from the background radiation. That is exactly the kind of scaremongering that makes the reporting "emotive or otherwise sub-optimal".
    - freshhawk 14y ago
      Your argument from incredulity is ignoring the mechanisms of health damage from the physical dispersal of materials with long half-lives. Don't complain about fact poor reporting by countering with your own.
sp332 14y ago
How is the waste radioactive? Doesn't that mean that the original materials were also radioactive?
- sc68cal 14y ago
  > Rare earths always occur alongside the radioactive elements thorium and uranium, and safely separating them is a complex process. http://www.motherjones.com/documents/463290-ntn-lynas-report http://www.motherjones.com/documents/463290-ntn-lynas-report
- stcredzero 14y ago
  When you mine rare earths, you often get Thorium.
  - sp332 14y ago
    OK I guess my question is, how does processing make the radiation more dangerous? Can't they, I don't know, put the material back near where they found it?
    - sc68cal 14y ago
      It's a question of exposure. When the material is encased in solid rock hundreds, if not thousands of feet blow, the exposure risk is very low. Once you pull it out of the ground - exposure becomes a real problem. They mention that some of the materials must be kept in liquid, so it does not become a dust that can get blown away. At the same time, they need to line the storage pool with a material that will block it from seeping into the groundwater. For centuries.
      - ars 14y ago
        > At the same time, they need to line the storage pool with a material that will block it from seeping into the groundwater. For centuries. Not for thorium. The stuff is almost harmless, and is insoluble in water, so tends to just stay put. Plus, even if you did have to isolate it, centuries would be nothing. It's has a half life of 14 billion years! Just bury it back in the ground and that's all - it's really not very radioactive. (Just deep enough that it won't be dug up by accident and that's all - you don't need to block the radioactivity, since even a piece of paper is enough shielding.) A little knowledge is a dangerous thing since you are confusing cesium from nuclear reactors and thorium.
stcredzero 14y ago
The radioactive waste discussed is Thorium. If we develop Thorium reactors, we could have carbon-free power with greatly reduced weapons proliferation risk, two orders of magnitude more plentiful fuel, and less waste which only lasts 300 years, as opposed to 100,000+. Also, this would open up domestic US reserves of rare earth metals.
- tarre 14y ago
  I do hope, that we will have thorium reactors soon, but I don't completely agree with the reduced proliferation risk. In thorium reactor you would have weapon-grade uranium (isotope 233 and a hint of 232), which can be chemically isolated. Sure due to U-232 it will have radioactivity of levels, which in long term are harmful. However the levels aren't so high, that they would prohibit the handling of the material by people, who don't care about radiation safety that much and I can easily think that to be the case with nations and groups most eagerly trying to achieve a nuclear bomb.
rdl 14y ago
It is always amusing when people without even a high school science education seem to write science/engineering articles. A long half life is inversely related to activity. Heavy radioactive metals like uranium and thorium are toxic heavy metals, but negligible radioactivity, precisely because their half lives are so long. Until recently we didn't even think natural thorium isotopes were radioactive, since the half life is close to the age of the universe. The really dangerous radioactive isotopes either have fairly short half lives or decay into isotopes with short half lives. A few hundred thousand years is the upper bound for caring, and most of the bad stuff is under a decade. Basically by simple logic none of this will be naturally occurring or it would be gone already. Plenty of non radioactive material is dangerous, though.
- uvdiv 14y ago
  Until recently we didn't even think natural thorium isotopes were radioactive, since the half life is close to the age of the universe. Huh? Thorium was the 2nd element Marie Curie discovered to be radioactive, in 1898 according to wikipedia [0]. In fact the whole thorium decay chain [1] was classified even before anyone could identify what elements they were, resulting in the historic names "mesothorium", "radiothorium", etc [1]. Were you thinking of bismuth? [2] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Curie#New_elements https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Curie#New_elements [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decay_chain#Thorium_series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decay_chain#Thorium_series [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bismuth-209 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bismuth-209
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - rdl 14y ago
    Yes, I was thinking of Bismuth :(
guelo 14y ago
When western countries moved their manufacturing to China and other developing countries they also shipped their pollution over there, which is one of the reasons it is so much cheaper. But we are all living on one single planet. That is why free trade agreements aren't really free, they should include western environmental standards as well as labor standards. Of course that will never happen since giant corporations are the ones that really write our laws. At the current rate we won't be leaving much resources for our grandchildren.
- ZoFreX 14y ago
  When I worked in procurement at <large engineering corp> I was really happy that we ran QA and H&S checks on all suppliers, but environmental standards literally weren't a factor in deciding whose bid to go with. Wasn't encouraging. I think the QA and H&S checks were a legal requirement, I am certain that your proposal for environmental standards to be upheld would do much to alleviate the problem.
- Symmetry 14y ago
  I think we should be very conscious of our material privileges as rich westerners before we start demanding that people in third world countries live up to the same safety and environmental standards that we hold ourselves to. $1000 in safety equipment isn't a big deal in the US, but it could be more than a third world-worker makes in entire year. And if you complain that the problem is that we aren't paying third world worker enough, that's because they don't have enough capital to be as productive as workers in developed nations. You would need a really massive transfer of wealth from the developed world to the third world for their adopting western labor standards to not result in mass starvation. Safety conditions in third world factories might be bad, but third world farms are actually much more dangerous. All of this isn't to say that the specific behavior in the article is acceptable, it's obviously going beyond the pale and ought to be stopped. It's just that your proposed solution is entirely unworkable.
  - omegaworks 14y ago
    >$1000 in safety equipment isn't a big deal in the US, but it could be more than a third world-worker makes in entire year. We're not talking $1 a day subsistance farmer when we talk free trade agreements. We're talking about the standards billion dollar multinational companies must comply with to do business between countries. Indeed, $1000 in safety equipment means almost nothing to these companies, but they'll only do it if we force them to. Our efficient free market system favors those that can reduce their costs of operations to the minimum level possible. If we don't make the rules of the playing field encompass these standards, everyone will be beholden to the guy that meets only the bare minimums, because he can sell his stuff the cheapest.
downandout 14y ago
I may be alone in this, but I have a hard time giving credence to any article posted on a site with a specific political agenda.
- e12e 14y ago
  So, you don't read news, then? The idea that you can find "objective reporting" anywhere is a dangerous illusion (or delusion). Just because something comes from a "good" source, doesn't mean it's true. Personally I prefer it when the agenda is (seems) obvious -- that makes it easier to read responsibly.
- Karunamon 14y ago
  Forget the political slant; either their writing is correct or it is not. Fox isn't evil because they're a right wing propaganda machine, they're evil because they lie. This article is weak, not because Mother Jones is left slanted, but because the writing shows a profound lack of basic science understanding and carries a lot of unsourced scaremongering.
tomaskafka 14y ago
I feel sad that no comments got to the core - the unchanging corporate mentality of "man, here's some fertilizer, cement or whatever, dump it somewhere and you'll get bonus if it's fast". This happens right now too, as you can see from the totally void answers of anyone from Lynas, and that's the main reason why they want to spend huge ammounts of money for shipping to Malaysia - it's still much cheaper than respecting the western environmental laws.
guscost 14y ago
An efficient modern wind turbine uses at least 82kg of neodymium. Older designs use much more. http://www.vestas.com/en/about-vestas/sustainability/sustainable-products/life-cycle-assessment/rare-earth-elements.aspx http://www.vestas.com/en/about-vestas/sustainability/sustain... http://pubs.usgs.gov/sir/2011/5094/pdf/sir2011-5094.pdf http://pubs.usgs.gov/sir/2011/5094/pdf/sir2011-5094.pdf
venomsnake 14y ago
The problem with the radioactive waste is not its radiation. Its usually in check unless it is pulled out of reactor core. The problem for the people in contact with it more often is that it is extremely poisonous.
johngalt 14y ago
Motherjones as top result on hacker news? Linkbait article rife with poor understanding of radioactivity and economics. Who's up for another erlang day?
agentultra 14y ago
Maybe this is a crazy idea, but wouldn't market forces drive down the costs of mining/processing the material if the consumer or the companies purchasing/processing REEs had to pay into cleanup efforts? Apple makes some pretty serious claims about its environmental impact (http://www.apple.com/environment/ http://www.apple.com/environment/). But it doesn't mention refining REEs. Lots about carbon, reducing chemicals such as PVCs, and recycling... Perhaps the market forces that brought carbon to the fore could help correct REEs and reduce the impact on the environment these mining operations incur. If I were a resident of that area I would be concerned about the plant. While I am suspicious of the technical reporting it seemed clear to me that Lynas isn't being entirely transparent about its environmental assessments and who exactly is approving their projects. When engineers involved are talking to reporters about suspicious activity and large firms are pulling out of the project it does raise some concern that perhaps Lynas isn't doing as much as it could be to ensure even minimal safety concerns are met. Either way I don't think it's unreasonable for Malaysia and other countries in these sorts of situations to raise awareness about the environmental impacts these kinds of projects have and to enforce a higher degree of scrutiny in approving them. It may raise prices on consumers receiving these goods but it's clear that enough wealth is being generated that we could afford a price-bump. With enough investment in better recycling technology and hazardous materials management we might be able to slowly reduce that price-bump over time. But then again, I don't understand enough about economics to believe that is even possible. The article may be making a rather strong appeal to emotion but it does raise the question of whether there is enough being done from an investigation and regulation angle to protect people from the hazardous side-effects of mining REEs.
shawn-butler 14y ago
It should come as little surprise for readers to learn that the US government has used its occupation of Afghanistan to survey regions rich in rare earth deposits [0]. USGS geologists working under direct cover of military protection in a war zone. I can't wait for the movie version. Some have argued that part of the reason for prolonging the US engagement has been that these resources are located in regions of Taliban control, but that seems highly speculative. Developing that resource would certainly alter the economic history of that nation. [0] http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=afghanistans-buried-riches http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=afghanistan...
anonymous 14y ago
So is there any product that hasn't been somehow manufactured with the help of chinese atrocities? Tomorrow: The insane secrets behind bottled water (spoiler: the guys driving the trucks hauling the water check their deliveries on a touchpad device that uses one gram of a rare earth metal that came from China!)
Karunamon 14y ago
Something that bothered me about this article was the subtext that "treating" the waste wasn't good enough. How much of that scaremongering is justified?
briandw 14y ago
Are there any journalists that understand radio isotopes? "OMG a half-life of 14 billion years" as if thats a bad thing. An extremely long half-life means it's not very radio active, thus not a big problem. Just wait until they hear how long the half-life of a proton is, 6.6×10^33 years! I'd be much more concerned with the swimming pools of sulfuric acid and chemical by products than the radioactivity.
natar 14y ago
Well, I hope http://www.fairphone.com/ http://www.fairphone.com/ will do a good job, then.

136 points by sc68cal 14y ago

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

Wait til motherjones finds out that their servers are just as dirty as Apple's iPhone. Rare Earths are essential to all electronics, not just smart phones.

DanBC 14y ago
> Rare Earths are essential to all electronics The article says that.
hdevalence 14y ago
> Walk down the aisles of your local Best Buy and you'll be hard-pressed to find a phone, laptop, or TV that doesn't contain at least one of the rare earths. The elements are also key to all kinds of green technology: Neodymium is found in wind turbines; hybrid and electric cars often contain as many as nine different rare earths. Yttrium can form phosphors that make light in LED displays and compact fluorescent lightbulbs. Rare earths are also crucial for defense technology—radar and sonar systems, tank engines, smart bombs. From the second page of the article. Nobody is denying whether or not they're essential. The issue is that they're produced in poor countries so that the refiners can offload most of the cost of refining rare earth metals in the form of environmental damage.
tomaskafka 14y ago
That's not the point of the article. Read again.

DanBC 14y ago

This article isn't very good. It starts by mentioning some information about Foxconn. Suicides, for example, are less common at Foxconn than in the general population. So things are a bit more complicated than this article portrays.[1] The article talks about the radioactive waste products. That's normally thorium. But the Lynas site (Mount Weld) has high concentrations of rare earths, is a huge site, and has low levels of thorium contamination. People are rightly concerned about radioactive waste being left in Malaysia. Lynas wanted to ship the radioactive waste back to Australia for processing, but they are forbidden from doing so by Australian law. Some people are suggesting that Lynas is using Malaysia to avoid environmental laws thus cutting costs. But Malaysia gave them a 12 month tax break, and was already cheaper than Australia, so environmental laws don't appear to be the main motivator. (Although cheaper costs because of less strict environmental protections is probably an important factor.) It is frustrating that all reporting about this is emotive or otherwise sub-optimal. [1] I think that conditions at Foxconn are appalling and need to be improved.

sc68cal 14y ago
> But Malaysia gave them a 12 month tax break, and was already cheaper than Australia, so environmental laws don't appear to be the main motivator I don't believe that the government offering tax breaks to entice a company to relocate their plant implies that. In addition, environmental laws in developing countries are lax, if not non-existent. Furthermore, if Australia is blocking the shipment of these waste products into the country, surely that implies that this is a serious environmental problem. Australia is willing to lose business over the matter, because they feel there are hidden costs (environmental, health, safety) that are not easily quantified directly. From the article: Shipping ore thousands of miles is extremely expensive. But the company says the cheaper labor, electricity, and chemicals in Malaysia make it worthwhile. Malaysians who oppose the plant see a much more troubling dynamic. "Australia is a first-world country that wants the developing world to do its dirty work," says Fuziah Salleh, Kuantan's parliamentary representative and an outspoken critic of the Lynas project. "Our environmental laws are very lax, and Lynas knows exactly where to take advantage of it. If you look at Australia, there are very strict laws about controlling the waste, dust, and air quality. But here in Malaysia—even if we have those laws—it is very hard to enforce." >It is frustrating that all reporting about this is emotive or otherwise sub-optimal. We're talking about materials that have half-lives on the order of billions of years and have caused miscarriages and childhood leukemia in residents, decades after a previous plant was closed.
- zokier 14y ago
  > We're talking about materials that have half-lives on the order of billions of years and have caused miscarriages and childhood leukemia in residents, decades after a previous plant was closed. I find it very hard to believe that materials that "have half-lives on the order of billions of years" produce enough radiation to be noticeable from the background radiation. That is exactly the kind of scaremongering that makes the reporting "emotive or otherwise sub-optimal".
  - freshhawk 14y ago
    Your argument from incredulity is ignoring the mechanisms of health damage from the physical dispersal of materials with long half-lives. Don't complain about fact poor reporting by countering with your own.

sp332 14y ago

How is the waste radioactive? Doesn't that mean that the original materials were also radioactive?

sc68cal 14y ago
> Rare earths always occur alongside the radioactive elements thorium and uranium, and safely separating them is a complex process. http://www.motherjones.com/documents/463290-ntn-lynas-report http://www.motherjones.com/documents/463290-ntn-lynas-report
stcredzero 14y ago
When you mine rare earths, you often get Thorium.
- sp332 14y ago
  OK I guess my question is, how does processing make the radiation more dangerous? Can't they, I don't know, put the material back near where they found it?
  - sc68cal 14y ago
    It's a question of exposure. When the material is encased in solid rock hundreds, if not thousands of feet blow, the exposure risk is very low. Once you pull it out of the ground - exposure becomes a real problem. They mention that some of the materials must be kept in liquid, so it does not become a dust that can get blown away. At the same time, they need to line the storage pool with a material that will block it from seeping into the groundwater. For centuries.
    - ars 14y ago
      > At the same time, they need to line the storage pool with a material that will block it from seeping into the groundwater. For centuries. Not for thorium. The stuff is almost harmless, and is insoluble in water, so tends to just stay put. Plus, even if you did have to isolate it, centuries would be nothing. It's has a half life of 14 billion years! Just bury it back in the ground and that's all - it's really not very radioactive. (Just deep enough that it won't be dug up by accident and that's all - you don't need to block the radioactivity, since even a piece of paper is enough shielding.) A little knowledge is a dangerous thing since you are confusing cesium from nuclear reactors and thorium.

stcredzero 14y ago

The radioactive waste discussed is Thorium. If we develop Thorium reactors, we could have carbon-free power with greatly reduced weapons proliferation risk, two orders of magnitude more plentiful fuel, and less waste which only lasts 300 years, as opposed to 100,000+. Also, this would open up domestic US reserves of rare earth metals.

tarre 14y ago
I do hope, that we will have thorium reactors soon, but I don't completely agree with the reduced proliferation risk. In thorium reactor you would have weapon-grade uranium (isotope 233 and a hint of 232), which can be chemically isolated. Sure due to U-232 it will have radioactivity of levels, which in long term are harmful. However the levels aren't so high, that they would prohibit the handling of the material by people, who don't care about radiation safety that much and I can easily think that to be the case with nations and groups most eagerly trying to achieve a nuclear bomb.

rdl 14y ago

It is always amusing when people without even a high school science education seem to write science/engineering articles. A long half life is inversely related to activity. Heavy radioactive metals like uranium and thorium are toxic heavy metals, but negligible radioactivity, precisely because their half lives are so long. Until recently we didn't even think natural thorium isotopes were radioactive, since the half life is close to the age of the universe. The really dangerous radioactive isotopes either have fairly short half lives or decay into isotopes with short half lives. A few hundred thousand years is the upper bound for caring, and most of the bad stuff is under a decade. Basically by simple logic none of this will be naturally occurring or it would be gone already. Plenty of non radioactive material is dangerous, though.

uvdiv 14y ago
Until recently we didn't even think natural thorium isotopes were radioactive, since the half life is close to the age of the universe. Huh? Thorium was the 2nd element Marie Curie discovered to be radioactive, in 1898 according to wikipedia [0]. In fact the whole thorium decay chain [1] was classified even before anyone could identify what elements they were, resulting in the historic names "mesothorium", "radiothorium", etc [1]. Were you thinking of bismuth? [2] [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Curie#New_elements https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Curie#New_elements [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decay_chain#Thorium_series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decay_chain#Thorium_series [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bismuth-209 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bismuth-209
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- rdl 14y ago
  Yes, I was thinking of Bismuth :(

guelo 14y ago

When western countries moved their manufacturing to China and other developing countries they also shipped their pollution over there, which is one of the reasons it is so much cheaper. But we are all living on one single planet. That is why free trade agreements aren't really free, they should include western environmental standards as well as labor standards. Of course that will never happen since giant corporations are the ones that really write our laws. At the current rate we won't be leaving much resources for our grandchildren.

ZoFreX 14y ago
When I worked in procurement at <large engineering corp> I was really happy that we ran QA and H&S checks on all suppliers, but environmental standards literally weren't a factor in deciding whose bid to go with. Wasn't encouraging. I think the QA and H&S checks were a legal requirement, I am certain that your proposal for environmental standards to be upheld would do much to alleviate the problem.
Symmetry 14y ago
I think we should be very conscious of our material privileges as rich westerners before we start demanding that people in third world countries live up to the same safety and environmental standards that we hold ourselves to. $1000 in safety equipment isn't a big deal in the US, but it could be more than a third world-worker makes in entire year. And if you complain that the problem is that we aren't paying third world worker enough, that's because they don't have enough capital to be as productive as workers in developed nations. You would need a really massive transfer of wealth from the developed world to the third world for their adopting western labor standards to not result in mass starvation. Safety conditions in third world factories might be bad, but third world farms are actually much more dangerous. All of this isn't to say that the specific behavior in the article is acceptable, it's obviously going beyond the pale and ought to be stopped. It's just that your proposed solution is entirely unworkable.
- omegaworks 14y ago
  >$1000 in safety equipment isn't a big deal in the US, but it could be more than a third world-worker makes in entire year. We're not talking $1 a day subsistance farmer when we talk free trade agreements. We're talking about the standards billion dollar multinational companies must comply with to do business between countries. Indeed, $1000 in safety equipment means almost nothing to these companies, but they'll only do it if we force them to. Our efficient free market system favors those that can reduce their costs of operations to the minimum level possible. If we don't make the rules of the playing field encompass these standards, everyone will be beholden to the guy that meets only the bare minimums, because he can sell his stuff the cheapest.

downandout 14y ago

I may be alone in this, but I have a hard time giving credence to any article posted on a site with a specific political agenda.

e12e 14y ago
So, you don't read news, then? The idea that you can find "objective reporting" anywhere is a dangerous illusion (or delusion). Just because something comes from a "good" source, doesn't mean it's true. Personally I prefer it when the agenda is (seems) obvious -- that makes it easier to read responsibly.
Karunamon 14y ago
Forget the political slant; either their writing is correct or it is not. Fox isn't evil because they're a right wing propaganda machine, they're evil because they lie. This article is weak, not because Mother Jones is left slanted, but because the writing shows a profound lack of basic science understanding and carries a lot of unsourced scaremongering.

tomaskafka 14y ago

I feel sad that no comments got to the core - the unchanging corporate mentality of "man, here's some fertilizer, cement or whatever, dump it somewhere and you'll get bonus if it's fast". This happens right now too, as you can see from the totally void answers of anyone from Lynas, and that's the main reason why they want to spend huge ammounts of money for shipping to Malaysia - it's still much cheaper than respecting the western environmental laws.

guscost 14y ago

An efficient modern wind turbine uses at least 82kg of neodymium. Older designs use much more. http://www.vestas.com/en/about-vestas/sustainability/sustainable-products/life-cycle-assessment/rare-earth-elements.aspx http://www.vestas.com/en/about-vestas/sustainability/sustain... http://pubs.usgs.gov/sir/2011/5094/pdf/sir2011-5094.pdf http://pubs.usgs.gov/sir/2011/5094/pdf/sir2011-5094.pdf

venomsnake 14y ago

The problem with the radioactive waste is not its radiation. Its usually in check unless it is pulled out of reactor core. The problem for the people in contact with it more often is that it is extremely poisonous.

johngalt 14y ago

Motherjones as top result on hacker news? Linkbait article rife with poor understanding of radioactivity and economics. Who's up for another erlang day?

agentultra 14y ago

Maybe this is a crazy idea, but wouldn't market forces drive down the costs of mining/processing the material if the consumer or the companies purchasing/processing REEs had to pay into cleanup efforts? Apple makes some pretty serious claims about its environmental impact (http://www.apple.com/environment/ http://www.apple.com/environment/). But it doesn't mention refining REEs. Lots about carbon, reducing chemicals such as PVCs, and recycling... Perhaps the market forces that brought carbon to the fore could help correct REEs and reduce the impact on the environment these mining operations incur. If I were a resident of that area I would be concerned about the plant. While I am suspicious of the technical reporting it seemed clear to me that Lynas isn't being entirely transparent about its environmental assessments and who exactly is approving their projects. When engineers involved are talking to reporters about suspicious activity and large firms are pulling out of the project it does raise some concern that perhaps Lynas isn't doing as much as it could be to ensure even minimal safety concerns are met. Either way I don't think it's unreasonable for Malaysia and other countries in these sorts of situations to raise awareness about the environmental impacts these kinds of projects have and to enforce a higher degree of scrutiny in approving them. It may raise prices on consumers receiving these goods but it's clear that enough wealth is being generated that we could afford a price-bump. With enough investment in better recycling technology and hazardous materials management we might be able to slowly reduce that price-bump over time. But then again, I don't understand enough about economics to believe that is even possible. The article may be making a rather strong appeal to emotion but it does raise the question of whether there is enough being done from an investigation and regulation angle to protect people from the hazardous side-effects of mining REEs.

shawn-butler 14y ago

It should come as little surprise for readers to learn that the US government has used its occupation of Afghanistan to survey regions rich in rare earth deposits [0]. USGS geologists working under direct cover of military protection in a war zone. I can't wait for the movie version. Some have argued that part of the reason for prolonging the US engagement has been that these resources are located in regions of Taliban control, but that seems highly speculative. Developing that resource would certainly alter the economic history of that nation. [0] http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=afghanistans-buried-riches http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=afghanistan...

anonymous 14y ago

So is there any product that hasn't been somehow manufactured with the help of chinese atrocities? Tomorrow: The insane secrets behind bottled water (spoiler: the guys driving the trucks hauling the water check their deliveries on a touchpad device that uses one gram of a rare earth metal that came from China!)

Karunamon 14y ago

Something that bothered me about this article was the subtext that "treating" the waste wasn't good enough. How much of that scaremongering is justified?

briandw 14y ago

Are there any journalists that understand radio isotopes? "OMG a half-life of 14 billion years" as if thats a bad thing. An extremely long half-life means it's not very radio active, thus not a big problem. Just wait until they hear how long the half-life of a proton is, 6.6×10^33 years! I'd be much more concerned with the swimming pools of sulfuric acid and chemical by products than the radioactivity.

natar 14y ago

Well, I hope http://www.fairphone.com/ http://www.fairphone.com/ will do a good job, then.