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Comment by bdamm | Hacker News Reader

This is actually super interesting to me. Given that the US is actually blessed with mineral concentrations, why is it so assumed that only China can produce rare earths? Is it the land opportunity cost? Is it the cost of labor? Is it the cost of regulation? And in the end, this is only a motor, or a battery, and the actual rare earth content is not very high. If the cost of rare earths was double or even triple the amount of sourcing them from China, how much does that actually impact the end price of a consumer good?

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Rare Earths aren't rare in the "there is a small supply" sense, but in the "very dilute" sense. Rare earths don't concentrate into ores the way that say copper does. Rare earth deposits are just places where you happen to have 300 ppm instead of the crust average of 220 ppm.

The only way to mine rare earths is to just process massive quantities of earth. Typically this is done as part of another mining operation, like mining nickel. It's labor intensive and requires nasty chemicals. Places with cheap labor, weak environemental regulations, and extremely large scale mining operations that they are going to be operating anyways are always going to be able to produce the cheapest rare earths. It's very easy to see why China naturally dominates the market.

Yep! And we just struck graphite in the US, in the middle of bumfuck nowhere in New York. A little county (well, geographically large), 2800 square miles, 100,000 or so people, and we've struck the first graphite in the US...

...and we were just looking for zinc!

https://www.northcountrypublicradio.org/news/story/52342/202...

There have been other graphite mines in the US.

An analogy is that rare earths are less like something you "have" and more like something you "make". Mining and processing are manufacturing skills.

The US can and does produce rare earth elements:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Pass_Rare_Earth_Mine

The Mountain Pass Rare Earth Mine and Processing Facility, owned by MP Materials, is an open-pit mine of rare-earth elements on the south flank of the Clark Mountain Range in California, 53 miles (85 km) southwest of Las Vegas, Nevada. In 2020 the mine supplied 15.8% of the world's rare-earth production. It is the only rare-earth mining and processing facility in the United States. It is the largest single known deposit of such minerals.

Look at the history section to see how this mine initially dominated rare earth element production, then shut down due to low price competition, then reopened, then shut down due to low prices, then reopened.

The total addressable market for rare earth elements is small in dollar and tonnage terms, but opening mines and processing plants is expensive. One big new mine could tank the global market price.

The US used to maintain large stockpiles of many mineral resources for defense purposes, but mostly stopped in the 1990s after the end of the Cold War. The pendulum may be swinging the other way now. The Mountain Pass mine received DoD grants in 2022 and 2023 to support continued operation, regardless of open market prices.

It is regulatory costs these days. Most mines currently operating in the US were grandfathered into current regulatory regimes, they'd likely never be developed today.

This creates a perverse incentive where it is often cheaper to reprocess low-grade ore from an existing mine than to jump through the regulatory hoops and decades of lawsuits to develop a new mine with high-grade ore. Refining a low-grade ore in the US often is not cost competitive on the global market, so there isn't much incentive to do so even though you've already mined the material.

The US needs to make it fast and efficient to develop new high-grade ore deposits. America has extraordinary mineral wealth as a matter of geology but we barely even explore in the US anymore because even if you find it you can't develop it. This has been the case since circa the 1980s or 1990s.

Price controls on gold up until the late 1970s didn't help either, since it discouraged gold exploration. Many high-value mineral deposits in the US have been discovered as a side-effect of gold exploration. The price controls disappeared but were almost immediately replaced with regulatory regimes that made it unprofitable to develop new mines.

Many rare earth deposits in the US were discovered as a side-effect of uranium prospecting. The US government stopped subsidizing uranium mining ~1970, which was the main reason it was being done at all, and so people stopped discovering associated minerals around the same time.

Should the price of these domestically-produced minerals include the environmental impacts on the watersheds, superfund'd land, and Americans living next to the mining operation?

Or is that just the inefficiency introduced by them pesky regulations you're trying to make more "fast and efficient"?

If you don't price all that in, some might say you're asking some locals and counties to give a pretty major subsidy to some private mine owner.

> why is it so assumed that only China can produce rare earths?

Simplistic thought, but, they're the only ones willing to ignore and cover up the insane pollution it causes. Rare earth is somewhat synonymous with "exceptionally toxic."

I was going to say the same. Let China destroy their land and everyone else just buy what they need. When that’s all gone only then mine your own land.

It takes nearly a decade to get a mine online, under optimal conditions. If a conflict breaks out and China embargoes the West, what's your plan then?

We're reasoning about the current state of things. We're /not/ suggesting this is good or should continue.

The unwritten implication is, we can do it ourselves, but the price will skyrocket as a result. I personally think that would be fine. Wait a minute and someone else will come by to yell about this the other way.

Stockpile it beforehand and don’t create pointless conflicts.

Stockpile 10 years worth of the entire west's consumption of rare earth minerals? That's not gonna be cheap. Would China even have the production capacity to handle it in a reasonable time frame?

Would China even want to sell it, even if they could? Letting a country stockpile doesn't seem in their interest: the whole reason you want to do it is to reduce reliance on them, they'd probably want to keep you hooked

We're letting them buy all our gold reserves and water rights (see alfalfa farming in the West), so everyone's got their price.

Question is whats more cost-effective: paying market rates to secretly stockpile, or paying for another Iraq or Afghanistan in the south china sea...

Refining. China has build up the entire pipeline from mining to raw ore to refining for industry use. It's the only place that has it all. Building the refining capacity took decades.

> why is it so assumed that only China can produce rare earths?

Pollution. The smokestack emissions are very toxic. The residue/slag is toxic and radioactive. One should remember that "rare earth metals" are not rare, they're the bottom 2 rows of the periodic table. They are rather hard to separate chemically and many people like to exclude the bottom row of the periodic table (the actinides) because that's where uranium and plutonium are located and those 2 elements terrify people enough to derail discussions about the materials.

> why is it so assumed that only China can produce rare earths

For the same reason that only China can produce t-shirts, or a quality sedan EV with a 5-star EU crash test rating and 350 miles of range for $15,000.

Subsidized by the Chinese government.

China isn't subsidizing BYD or some t-shirt sweatshop anymore than the US is subsidizing Ford.

Does that mean to say "the Chinese government regularly subsidizes BYD"? Because the US regularly subsidize Ford, and I don't think you'll find any one that disagrees with that.

> why is it so assumed that only China can produce rare earths

You want carcinogens in you water supply, and a whole NYT expose about it? That's why. Mining and processing is VERY VERY VERY dirty.

Countries like China, Vietnam, Indonesia, and India are choosing the accept the externalities and/or make deals with shady partners if needed.

Add to that spamoflauge campaigns lead by nation state competitors trying to stoke opposition to these projects [0], and it becomes hard.

[0] - https://cloud.google.com/blog/topics/threat-intelligence/dra...

Edit: can't reply, so replying here.

> mines many elements domestically, so why the sudden environmental concern specifically with rare earths

Optics mostly, along with a healthy dose of social media disinfo [0]. Processing is also a pain in the butt and causes severe externalities.

> while the US relied on market forces to handle supply chains.

Pretty much, but private sector firms are also worried/hemmed by the implications of litigation.

The recognition that the status quo is unstable arose after China weaponized exports to Japan during the Senkaku Diaoyu crisis (it was one of the first things I worked on in my short stint in policy), but "industrial policy" was a dark word you could never utter on the hill until the last 3-4 years.

Also, 13-15 years ago, China wasn't really viewed as a threat the same way it is today. Russia was viewed as the primary peer state competitor to the US back then. I yelled hoarse warning the people I reported to that we needed to deep dive into Chinese institutions back then, but no one listened.

Curious why this is downvoted, as this matches my understanding. We have strong (ish) environmental and worker protections in the US that other countries don't have.

These are good things, but they make it a lot more expensive to do this stuff domestically.

Mining and processing is very dirty.

Probably because it brings into focus the unconformable truth of what we have been doing.

In a similar vain, I was talking with a friend about plastic straws and the movement at the time to ban them. My friend was all on board and told me about the stainless steel ones they just bought from Amazon Prime. It's very convenient, delivers straight to your house and if you don't like it you just send it back.

So here we are worried about the straw but are having things shipped with 2 day delivery to the door. We live in a reasonable large city, drive to and from work past stores that are selling the same items. 2019 numbers have Amazon's van fleet at 30,000. Assuming 67 tons of GHG per vehicle(https://www.transportationenergy.org/resources/the-commute/l...) gets you 2 million tons.

I don't worry about the straws, I worry about the thinking that gets us to focus on the straws instead of the larger picture.

The vans are probably a wash, carbon-wise, because they are taking cars off the road.

I hardly ever drive anywhere these days. Pretty much everything we buy in the household comes through Amazon or another online seller, and gets delivered by vehicles that would have been on the road anyway, delivering other things to other people. The "larger picture" may be larger than you think it is.

Maybe, but we have how many competing delivery networks? If they all shared the same last mile delivery vans/routes, wouldn't that take many trucks off the road?

I'm not saying it's doable. I'm sure that in Soviet USA there'd only be one delivery service, but it'd be about as fast and reliable as UDP over avian carrier :)

Thank you for understanding!

Before Amazon Prime we had 2 major deliver services: UPS and FedEx as well as USPS.

Now we have 3.

I didn't include in my previous comment but most of the people using Prime that I know still drive everyday, many drop their kids off at school. Going past stores that sell the same sorts of things they are buying on Prime.

For them the main driver is convenience of not having to stop and the ability to tell Alexa to put it on a list and reorder periodically.

This seems to be the case for most of the customers, look at the rise of Instacart. Door Dash followed suite by expanded from just hot meal delivery to Retail and Grocery. Traditional grocery stores don't want to leave the margins on the table so they are launching their own efforts.

I leave some food for thought:) https://web.archive.org/web/20200612211824/https://www.thegu...

The US mines many elements domestically, so why the sudden environmental concern specifically with rare earths?

Is there evidence that China’s rare earth mining creates more environmental damage than US coal, gold, or other domestic mining operations?

The real issue seems to be strategic: China made rare earth supply security a policy priority, while the US relied on market forces to handle supply chains.

I like nature and care about the environment. I care about my fellow man, I want them to be able to work a safe job with good pay and have the ability to provide for their family.

With that being the case, how can I in good conscious take a position that would lead to mining and manufacturing being done in any country that is not enforcing environmental and safety regulations? In any country that is not paying a living wage?

So yes, I want mining and processing done here. I want the manufacturing jobs here. We want clean air and clean water, we have to pay for it.

This isn't manufacturing (though even that is very dirty depending on the industry). This is mining and processing. There is NO clean way to scar the earth and then leverage chemicals to separate and extract the materials needed.

As such, there will be environmental externalities no matter what, and wishing for "clean mining and processing" is the same as giving "thoughts and prayers" - essentially meaningless.

In my opinion, we need to accept that cost.

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