Time for us to strip mine the mountains in Afghanistan.
What? Again?
Obviously gropey joe is OK with that because he’s letting the chicoms do whatever they want to the country he hates.
Yeah, it’s not like geology somehow decided to deposit every rare-earth mineral in China. Stop the EPA madness and start mining here.
China no longer accounts for all of the global REE supply due to increased production in the rest of the world. There are only four REE-specific mines that exist outside of China, two of which opened in the past year (other mines worldwide only produce REEs as a byproduct). These other mines are Mountain Pass in the United States, Mount Weld in Australia, Lovozero in Russia, and Kerala in India. However, these mines are not the only locations of REE deposits.
https://web.mit.edu/12.000/www/m2016/finalwebsite/solutions/deposits.html
We can go to India and South Africa. F China!
Rare earths, most of which aren’t all that rare, are a Chinese monopoly for economic and regulatory reasons, not technical ones. The Chinese can restrict the supply only in the short term. In the medium- to long-term, an embargo like that will only hurt them.
Xiden will use environmental regulations, as did Clinton, to force the closure of the remaining rare earths mines in the US.
20 years in Afghanistan and we never figured out how to secure access to their rare earth minerals....
We have more than enough rare earth minerals and other resources.
Our problem is getting the tree huggers and protectors of endangered snails out of the way.
10% for the big guy!
That’s weird graph, or maybe I need more coffee
I remember President Trump did an EO to restart our one REE mining refining processor.
I can’t believe that we have none of these minerals.
A couple of years back there were stories how Japan was looking at doing massive REE mining from the ocean floor.
Some background. The US was a dominant supplier of rare earth materials to the world, until the Clinton Administration had the EPA shut most of the mines.
China began buying up the world’s mines and took over as the dominant supplier. Incidentally, Chinese mining in China, Africa and South America makes the worst US mine look like a clean room. We’re talking massive strip mining and water cannons, as well as lots of people working with shovels as opposed to earth moving equipment.
Then, during the Trump years China threatened to stop selling all rare earth materials to the US as a trade negotiation tactic. Trump asked a company to reopen the largest US mine and it did so, meeting the most stringent EPA requirements of the time. I don’t know what percentage of US needs that company can supply, or which materials they mine, but the quote I read from the CEO said he expected it would supply a lot. Now, will Biden order the EPA to shut them again?
As far as the Left is concerned, things like Lithium for car batteries is fine, so long as it isn’t mined in the US, because the US must always remain pristine and untouched. Thus, places like California, that practically floats on oil, can’t pump it. There are hundreds of miles of electric lines down the California coast leading to two Mexican coal fired power plants, literally a stone’s throw from the California border. I didn’t see a single cable leading from those plants into Mexico. Just imagine how much copper had to be mined so that the coal smoke, which “totally” (valley speak) will not drift over California, could be kept in a foreign country. (Gawd, I hate liberals.)
As a matter of historical perspective, when a material, such as natural rubber in WWII, becomes unavailable, technology provides a substitute that is often better. So, go ahead and ban the sale. In a year the US need for the materials will probably disappear and the US will be supplying a superior substitute and competitive prices to the world.
There is a pretty good deposit of Bastnaesite (which contains some samarium, but mostly cerium and lananthium, not far from me that I did some development work on for a friend that owned the mines, back in the 1970s.) and a few other various rare earth deposits in this state, and neighboring states, and in California, (not that the government of California is going to cooperate with mining it any more than the current rulers of the nation would)
We also even have a little cobalt over in the western part of the state as a minor component of a once very rich silver mine, but unfortunately not a lot of cobalt in the US. Canada has a good amount of cobalt, but since Trudeau has turned Canada over to the Chinese I guess that won't be much help.
How did we make good weapons of war before the use of rare earths became common? I bet we could do that again, even if it adds to the weight and size of components to do the same tasks. We used to have some pretty good engineers in this country that could have figured it out. Not so sure we have that resource anymore though.
Greenland. Plenty of room on US base to process the plentiful elements.