Human beings usually can't see that radiation or feel its effects, but we have a relatively low tolerance for the stuff ~ so all the existing rare earth mines in the US were simply shut down while the ore processing steps were improved to remove dangerous radioactivity first.
China is doing something quite similar. Most of their operators were taking no care to protect people from the radiation danger ~ because, as it turns out, in China they don't particularly care about that one way or the other.
I think some of the big dogs do care because they don't want to eat any of it in their morning ricebowl.
Now the Japanese are different. Most of them are very concerned about radiation ~ at the same time they need rare earths ~ so while they're up to their armpits in alligators up there at the radioactive Tsunami site they'll start mining this stuff anyway.
They will continue to be very concerned.
[ OK ~ now, the hard part. Rare earths aren’t all that rare. Actually they are common as dirt ~ the problem arises in their origin ~ which is almost always in rocks containing concentrations of THORIUM, and thorium is a tad radioactive and as it sits there for billions of years fissiling away, it yields up certain radioactive materials that need to be REMOVED during the processing of the ore with the rare earths. ]
If we were burning Thorium the problem would solve itself.