[InterceptPoint]

Thanks to our “progressive” regulatory system, we did everything but outright ban mining for them (though the “progressive” regulations wound up becoming in fact, a de facto ban).
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Not surprising. Do you have a good reference?

[Sonny M]

This was just from googling the words rare earth minerals and regulation, here is one link, its short but to the point,also the WSJ (those were subscriber articles) had some write ups about this earlier in the year when China was sabre rattinling with us and japan.

http://www.kidela.com/kidela/no-shortage-of-rules-for-rare-earth-miners-in-america

[muawiyah]

Unless you’ve got news to the contrary, we have finished refurbishing our biggest rare earth mine and it’s opening up this Summer (See: Mountain Pass mine). http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardware/2011/07/04/japan-finds-rare-earth-mineral-deposits/1 also reveals a new rare earth find in Japan that increases world supply 1000 times.

[muawiyah]

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.

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.