US Urgently Needs to Challenge China's Chokehold on Rare Earth Materials -- the raw minerals vital to the manufacture of advanced weapons and communication devices

Gatestone Institute ^ | 11/22/2020 | Lawrence Franklin

[Navy Patriot]

US Urgently Needs to Challenge China's Chokehold on Rare Earth Materials

Too late, unless the option of Military Force is used.

[Navy Patriot]

The Space Force can venture into other galaxies and find that these materials aren’t so rare.

And bring loads of them right back in about a million years...

[GOPJ]

A Biden administration will continue to help them strengthen that stranglehold ... just as Clinton and Obama did.

And with Washington's 'OPEN FOR BUSINESS' under Biden, lots of 'public servants' will trade that advantage to China for down payments on their new DC mansions.

[diatomite]

Some of the critical rare earths are abundant in certain Appalachian basin coals and their fly ash. There are other coal basins in the US that also have lower levels of REEs in their coals. Extraction from these Appalachian sources may be a way to keep eastern coal mining and coal power generation alive.

https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2019/3048/fs20193048.pdf

[Cobra64]

The market will address this condition.

[SeekAndFind]

RE: The market will address this condition

There is the market, and then there’s government obstruction and regulations (Executive decrees, EPA rules, Green New Deal from Congress, etc. ).

[mowowie]

I am sure joe will get right on this important issue..

[sergeantdave]

FYI - Background story:

How the US lost the plot on rare earths
Rick Mills, January 25, 2019, Battery Metals Rare Earth

https://www.mining.com/web/us-lost-plot-rare-earths/

[lepton]

Those colors are severely enhanced. you can tell that by looking at plants and other objects.

That said, even allowing for that, it is pretty spectacular.

[rlmorel]

Yeah… It sounds like the same kind of people who want to take away our right to own firearms, but also want to defund the police

[JohnBovenmyer]

Environmentalists would rather there be a much bigger mess in areas controlled by their Chicom friends than a properly managed mess in the US. They are willfully blind to the former. What we need is certainly available here, but the greenies either ban it or try to price it out of the market with excessive regulation. But one factor has been overlooked in this thread. Many otherwise viable 'rare earth' containing ores are also rich in Thorium. Thorium not only currently has virtually no commercial uses. Moreover it is radioactive. So what's left from the ore after extracting the valuable rare earths is classified as "radioactive waste" and has to be expensively stored indefinitely. The US thorium waste storage costs exceed the value of the rare earths. China probably just throws it a big pile then ignores it.

Start using thorium fission plants and convert that expensive waste into valuable fuel. Which would be considered 'green' fuel if the left were honest. Moreover, in addition to expending the better than free thorium containing ore 'waste' thorium based fission plants can also consume several other categories of radioactive 'waste.'

[rlmorel]

You and I sir, are on the same page.

I have experience in working with radioactive materials, and have long advocated Thorium reactors. It baffles me that we don’t pursue it. We have the know-how to make it work.

Bloody environmentalists, we should be doing this in spite of them.