Rare earth crisis: Innovate, or be crushed by China | Hacker News Reader

Rare earth crisis: Innovate, or be crushed by China

extremetech.com

64 pointsllambda22 comments

This article consists of speculation, factual misstatements, and some jingoistic China-bashing. Terrible journalism:

"Many rare earths are also geochemically rare". No, they're actually as common as many industrial metals, including copper.[1] China does control 97% of world supply, as the article states several times, but that's largely due to a lack of developed mines in the Western countries.

"If geochemistry and politics weren’t enough, though, we even have to factor in ethical concerns: Just like blood/conflict diamonds — diamonds that originate from war-torn African nations, where forced labor is used and the proceeds go towards buying more weapons for the warlord — some rare metals could be considered “blood metals.” Tantalum, an element that’s used to make the capacitors found in almost every modern computer, is extracted from coltan — and the world’s second largest producer of coltan is the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the home of the bloodiest wars since World War II." True that the mining of these minerals has occurred in the midst of some of the worst conflicts of the 1990s and 2000s, but neither tantalum nor coltan are rare earth elements, as the diagram immediately above the text clearly shows. This is just hysterics.

"Just like oil and energy, this will probably require drastic technological leaps. Instead of reducing the amount of tantalum used in capacitors, or indium in LCD displays, we will probably have to discover completely different ways of storing energy or displaying images. My money’s on graphene." That's nice, although again neither tantalum nor indium are "rare earth elements", nor does graphene possess many of the unique geochemical qualities of rare earths.

It's very difficult to accept any of the author's articles on face given this level of inaccuracy and distortion (and that's only errors via a quick skim).

[1] http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2002/fs087-02/

(Edit: Added last line)

The U.S. has sizable rare earth metal reserves http://topicsnw.com/r/map-of-rare-earth-metal-reserves-in-th.... However, when China began selling them on the cheap, the U.S. shut down those mines. Environmental regulations will make reopening these mines costly and a long-term endeavor.

Essentially, environmental and safety standards, along with mandatory wages, have driven almost every activity that the Chinese can do to China, because they'll do it cheaper. It won't last forever though - Chinese standards are rising, and while there may be a shortage for a short while, if the Chinese don't balance their exports right, the high prices they're forcing will drive other mines to open and destroy any control that they had over the market.

Westerners like to think that we have great environmental standards, but that's only because we export our environmental atrocities elsewhere. There's a large embedded cost in our gadgets, and we ignore it because it makes us uncomfortable.

Yes, the hypocrisy here is just screaming...

The US and/or the WTO could have created trade/tax structures that would have penalized environmentally devastating activities like poor mining practices and removed the incentive to shunt these things to poor countries. This would have also removed the "monopoly" that China is now "exploiting". Crocodiles tears all round...

Edit: typos

As I see it, its not really crocodile tears, but the end result of evolution, becoming the apex predator on our planet, and with a society based on our innate dichotomous nature.

Someone else bears the true costs - example, say some random Chinese factory worker at Foxconn who though is able to survive on meagre wages, is unable to spread his genes since he is not able to find a wife and set up a family - while you reap the rewards and go on to sire a new generation which has the incentive to behave in a similar manner.

I use to be very high falutin about all this thing, thinking some true Marxist society will emerge eventually when capitalism collapses. Now, after looking at all the neuroscience and psychology research that has been done, I'm not so sure if we can ever escape the more primal and insidious parts of our nature.

The US has large amounts of natural resources that are untapped for various reasons; forcing us to purchase these resources from other countries. Sometimes I wonder if the goal is to force others to use/sell up their resources first.

I sure hope so. This is an ideal, long-term strategy. Whenever I hear the "reducing dependence on foreign oil by exploiting ours" argument, I think, "Perfect!". Our resources are not going anywhere, and are there for the taking if ever seriously needed, not just to save a few bucks.

Canada also has significant rare earth deposits, including one of the world's largest deposits of indium in New Brunswick. China has a stranglehold on rare earth production because their labour is cheap and environmental standards are, shall we say "flexible".

If it truly becomes a matter of "national security" you will see those environmental regulations issues evaporate.

Well, your Mountain Pass Mine is reopening this upcoming year. It appears to have passed most of the required regulations already. If they can match their previous output, this single mine alone will be able to supply a substantial fraction of China's current output. China has been tightening supply for a number of years now. While reopening mines is a long term project, we've had 2-5 years to begin reopening mines already (as Mountain Pass's progress shows).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Pass_rare_earth_mine

It is worth noting, however, that Mountain Pass primarily produces "light" rare earths, while the mines in southern China will remain the predominant source of several "heavy" rare earth metals for several years to come (e.g., dysprosium).

That said, such a nuanced argument appears nowhere in the linked article.

We operate in this space and have certainly seen an increase in prices. A product not mentioned in the article that has had explosive growth is solar panels.

We've see the price of Tellurium dioxide move from $13 to $215/KG from 2002 to today. Manufacture's are now requiring that all broken panels be returned for recycling.

Tellurium's not a rare earth element though. It is currently produced only in very small quantities, but my understanding is we just don't know much about how much of it's available due to the fact that we didn't really use it for anything until CdTe photovoltaics came along.

Worth noting too that this is only one of a number of thin film solar technologies, and that silicon rather than thin film still accounts for the vast majority of all production.

> As a result, demand outside China now outstrips supply by some 40,000 tons per year

This statement doesn't square with an understanding of basic econ 101. It renders the rest of the article pretty suspect, if it wasn't already due to the breathless tabloid tone.

It's just a statement that we aren't at equilibrium... i.e. that prices would have to go higher to reach equilibrium.

The article might not be the best, but the problem is very real, at least on the commercial level for now.

I use rare earth magnets and also buy motors and the like.

The availability went down recently and the price went very much up.

They all come from China, because, well, can't really get it anywhere else right now.

I also got a few warnings over the past couple of month from the distributors that "prices on this are going to rise and probably wont go back down, if you wanna get more stuff before the current stock's out, feel free".

Well, rare earths are not all that rare. I think the actual short term problem is actually Lithium. AFAIK the only economically feasible producers are Chile and Bolivia. But I actually don't believe these crises are all that bad: if the electric vehicle market becomes large enough, we'll find a way to use another more abundant resource.

What the hell have they done to that website to make it impossible to read on an iPhone?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9M__yYbsZ4&t=1h42m05s

(skip to 1:42:05)

Thorium comes up with rare earth minerals.. we can use it as a sustainable source of energy.

What a ridiculous tabloid article.

Clueless I might be about the article but it seems to me that there's really no point in offering a public opinion that 'it's ridiculous' while not providing the slightest support or argument as to why that might be so. I'm none the wiser for your contribution. Who are you that we should be interested or persuaded by your unsupported light abuse?

Well said.

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