A Visit to the Only American Mine for Rare Earth Metals | Hacker News Reader

A Visit to the Only American Mine for Rare Earth Metals

theatlantic.com

41 pointsDanBC21 comments

This article didn't really discuss the environmental impacts of the mines, which is probably substantial. Is that why the mines are so expensive to operate in the US? And is that why China produces so many more rare earth metals -- because they skimp on environmental protections?

It is. This mine was shut down after an environmental accident, and it's cost them over $1 billion to recover from that and prepare to reopen, split between new environmental licenses and new processing equipment that allows them to mine without trucking in dangerous chemicals to separate the materials in the ores. The new process is based on high-pressure recycled salt water, doesn't leave behind toxic tailing ponds that can leak into waterways, and isn't how the Chinese run their mines.

> What’s rare is finding deposits that can be mined profitably, in part because most contain radioactive thorium. (from the linked older article)

Sounds a bit weird: Would mining a thorium rich deposit have higher environmentally related costs? Isn't the thorium itself valuable as well?

> Would mining a thorium rich deposit have higher environmentally related costs?

Yes, absolutely!

> Isn't the thorium itself valuable as well?

Not at present. It's basically a waste byproduct at the moment. If it becomes widely used as a nuclear fuel in molten salt reactors, that might change. It is used in a few alloys, etc, but there aren't a large number of industrial uses for it.

That's one of the major problems with thorium. It is much more abundant than uranium, but uranium is mined from uranium-dense deposits. There are no equivalent thorium-rich deposits. Instead, thorium is sprinkled across the Earth's surface. So one has to sift through more earth to mine thorium than it takes to mine an equivalent amount of uranium, which is an often overlooked environmental disadvantage of the thorium cycle.

Sounds like a classic scenario in which one should massively stockpile thorium, or find a way to buy ownership in such. We seem to find valuable uses for nearly everything over time (and history is littered with examples of 'tossed to the side' materials that are later worth a fortune).

Thorium prices are really not going to rise all that much.

People have a hard time understanding what the six-seven orders of magnitude difference in energy density between nuclear and chemical fuels means in practice. Basically, even if the entire world switches to being powered only by thorium, thorium will still mostly be a waste product.

For the amount of digging you need to power a single coal plant you could power the entire earth and still have most of your production idle.

Like gasoline.

Yeah, but you need extra protection for your workers, handling the ore, not contaminating everywhere between the mine and your eventual customer. All this costs money, and thorium is available from many sources so it may cost more money than your customer is willing to pay.

Mining's a messy business, it's not like you just bring a lead box with you and drop an occasional nugget of thorium in while you get on with your other work.

There's a claim that rare earth minerals cannot be reclaimed from recycled electronics. Is that true?

Depends which elements you want to recover. The main problem is the economic aspect of recovery - this is due to the fact that one has to collect the materials from a multitude of electronic devices and bring them through a chemical purification process.

Rising rare element prices might change this in the future.

Addendum: quick google search gave http://www.molycorp.com/ as a developer of recycling technology.

> Rising rare element prices might change this in the future.

They can't. The mining of rare elements isn't constrained by resources, only cost. Setting up the kind of infrastructure needed for REE recovery would always cost more than mining, so if the prices start going up again, mining will just be expanded.

I don't quite understand how it's cheaper to dig massive holes in the ground and process that dirt to extract REE than it is to grind up all the waste electronics and extract copper, tin, gold, REE from that.

Digging holes in the ground is actually much easier and cheaper than you'd think. Almost all of the costs of a running REE mine are in the separation part.

REE is usually used in small amounts in alloys, or especially in electronics, in very thin films and such. Because of this, simply shredding it doesn't quite do it -- after you ground it, what you have is basically a very poor ore of the material, and rather than extracting things from it, it would be cheaper to just get better stuff from the ground.

> The mining of rare elements isn't constrained by resources, only cost.

Ok, I am not an expert on the topic of REE mining, consumption and recovery, but I would say that availibility and access of mining sites are a strong factor e.g. at some point of rare earth element consumption the parties mining these elements might be able to dictate prices. I am pretty sure that RE mined in China might have a special tax for export.

Might be interesting to look up some cost information regarding the recycling and mining processes.

REE can be mined almost everywhere. Almost every country larger than Luxembourg has multiple rich REE deposits. Traditionally, the location providing their supply has depended on where mining and separation has been the cheapest, meaning usually the place with the laxest labor and environmental laws. (It's also been somewhat influenced by political stability, since separation requires capital-intensive equipment. This is the only reason all your REE doesn't come from Africa.)

It's hard to build a monopoly on a resource when basically anyone can just start a new mine if you ask too much for it.

China does not have a separate export tax -- they have strict export quotas. This makes sense, as given how high the externalities of cheap REE mining are, it makes little sense for them to mine cheaply and then give it to foreigners.

Promoting their stock again?

This article is from February 2012. Do you think DanBC is promoting a stock? He's never mentioned Molycorp on HN before so far as Google knows. What compelled you to register just to ask that?

By his own logic, he's obviously short their stock /s

Just to clarify: I have no connection with the atlantic, molycorp, etc etc.

Did you seriously create a new account just to troll this thread?

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