Free Republic

It was revealed recently that North Korea is sitting on approximately $6 trillion worth of natural resources, which the country lacks the technology or expertise to extract. The impoverished nation is quite literally sitting on a goldmine, a significant portion of which is made up of rare earth metals. Rare earth metals are not - as you would expect - exceptionally rare, but are generally found in small trace quantities underground. What is rare is to find them in high concentrations, which is exactly what experts believe is present beneath the soil of North Korea. Not only are these resources...

It’s not far-fetched to consider ‘The Art of the Deal’ applied to North Korea’s allegedly vast rare earth resources. This may not be about condos on North Korean beaches after all. Arguably, the heart of the matter in the Trump administration’s embrace of Kim Jong-un has everything to do with one of the largest deposits of rare earth elements (REEs) in the world, located only 150 km northwest of Pyongyang and potentially worth billions of US dollars. All the implements of 21st century technology-driven everyday life rely on the chemical and physical properties of 17 precious elements on the periodic...

Researchers have found a deposit of rare-earth minerals off the coast of Japan that could supply the world for centuries, according to a new study. The study, published in the journal Nature on Tuesday, says the deposit contains 16 million tons of the valuable metals. Rare-earth minerals are used in everything from smartphone batteries to electric vehicles. By definition, these minerals contain one or more of 17 metallic rare-earth elements (for those familiar with the periodic table, those are on the second row from the bottom).

Oil and natural gas aren’t just fuels. They supply building blocks for pharmaceuticals; plastics in vehicle bodies, athletic helmets and thousands of other products; and complex composites in solar panels and wind turbine blades and nacelles. The USA was importing 65% of its petroleum in 2005, creating serious national security concerns. But thanks to fracking, imports are now 40% and the US exports oil and gas. Today’s vital raw materials foundation also includes exotic minerals like gallium, germanium, rare earth elements and platinum group metals. For the USA, they are “critical” because they are required in thousands of applications; most...

Scarce metals are found in a wide range of everyday objects around us. They are complicated to extract, difficult to recycle and so rare that several of them have become "conflict minerals" which can promote conflicts and oppression. A survey at Chalmers University of Technology now shows that there are potential technology-based solutions that can replace many of the metals with carbon nanomaterials, such as graphene. They can be found in your computer, in your mobile phone, in almost all other electronic equipment and in many of the plastics around you. Society is highly dependent on scarce metals, and this...

North Dakota coal companies are hoping to have a hand in solving the nation’s supply problem of rare earth elements. Europium, dysprosium, erbium, terbium, neodymium, holmium, scandium, lutetium, and yttrium, are just a few of these valuable materials. “They’re used in pretty much all of our modern electronics,” said Steve Benson, associate vice president for research at the Energy and Environmental Research Center in Grand Forks. Magnets, hard drives, alloys, batteries, catalysts in cars, lasers, even coal’s cleaner energy cousins wind turbines and solar panels rely on rare earth elements - and could, in turn, rely on lignite coal. And...

Sen. Christopher "Kit" Bond isn't going quietly. In his final days as a U.S. senator before retiring, Bond marched repeatedly to the Senate floor to deliver policy addresses on matters ranging from energy to national security to global trade. He even made a speech entitled "Rare Earth," a lesson on the strategic value of metallic elements in Missouri's soil. He recently introduced a bill to spend $50 million to secure a rare earth supply chain — even though he won't be in the Senate to shepherd it. On Dec. 14, Bond, R-Mo., stood to deliver his farewell address, a panoramic...

US scientists have found what it could be key for the future of the country’s ailing coal industry as they detected that ashes from local operations, particularly those around the Appalachian region, are very rich in rare earth elements. Researchers from North Carolina-based Duke University analyzed coal ashes from coal-fired power plants throughout the US, including those in the largest coal-producing regions: the Appalachian Mountains; southern and western Illinois; and the Powder River Basin in Wyoming and Montana. One of the team main conclusions was that coal waste generated by the Appalachian coal operations was the richest in rare earth...

In 1993, French astronomer Jacques Laskar ran a series of calculations indicating that the gravity of the Moon is vital to stabilizing the tilt of our planet. Earth's obliquity, as this tilt is technically known as, has huge repercussions for climate. Laskar argued that should Earth's obliquity wander over hundreds of thousands of years, it would cause environmental chaos by creating a climate too variable for complex life to develop in relative peace. So his argument goes, we should feel remarkably lucky to have such a large moon on our doorstep, as no other terrestrial planet in our solar system...

Flashing some interplanetary gold bling and sipping "space water" might sound far-fetched, but both could soon be reality, thanks to a new US law that legalizes cosmic mining.In a first, President Barack Obama signed legislation at the end of November that allows commercial extraction of minerals and other materials, including water, from asteroids and the moon. That could kick off an extraterrestrial gold rush, backed by a private aeronautics industry that is growing quickly and cutting the price of commercial space flight. The US Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act of 2015 says that any materials American individuals or companies find...

Our solar system may be unique after all, despite the discovery of at least 120 other systems with planets, astronomers said on Wednesday. All the other solar systems that have been found have big, gassy planets circling too close to their stars to allow them to be anything like Earth or its fellow planets, the British and U.S.-based researchers said. If that is the case, Earth-like planets will be very rare, the astronomers write in the latest issue of the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. "Maybe these other extrasolar systems ... contain only the giant planets," said Mario...

HIRSCHFELD, GERMANY - Scientists in Germany have come up with a method for extracting the precious element germanium from plants. The element is a semi-conductor and was used to develop the first transistor because it is able to transport electrical charges extremely quickly. Nowadays, silicon-germanium alloy is indispensable to modern life, crucial in making computers, smartphones and fiber-optic cables. Transparent in infra-red light, germanium is also used in intelligent steering systems and parking sensors for vehicles. Yet although germanium is present in soil all over the world, it is difficult to extract, and most supplies currently come from China. Now...

Last week China announced that it would adhere to a World Trade Organization (WTO) ruling from last year by removing export quotas among other restrictions on rare earth minerals (RE). After controlling the global market for a number of years and extracting handsome rents, why is Beijing suddenly deciding to comply? It probably has little to do with the Chinese deciding to play by the rules and more to do with the realization that their attempt to use their dominant position to coerce political concessions has backfired. China’s monopoly of RE production has been quickly slipping away due to market...

Shares of rare earth mining company Molycorp are down more than 70% in 2014. But the decline of Molycorp began quickly and brutally in 2011. Molycorp went public in July 2010 at $14 per share, right as the price of rare earth minerals started to take off. The price of Molycorp shares quintupled within a year, and peaked at $74 in 2011. But over the last three years, the stock has been on a steady march towards $0. The 2010 surge in rare earth prices prompted ZeroHedge to write: "Ever heard of the oxides of Lanthanum, Cerium, Neodymium, Praseodymium and/or...

NASA is now working with private companies to take the first steps in exploring the moon for valuable resources like helium 3 and rare earth metals. Initial proposals are due tomorrow for the Lunar Cargo Transportation and Landing by Soft Touchdown program (CATALYST). One or more private companies will win a contract to build prospecting robots, the first step toward mining the moon. The contract will be a "no funds exchanged" Space Agreement Act, which means the government will not be directly funding the effort, but will receive NASA support. Final proposals are due on March 17th, 2014. NASA has...

WASHINGTON, D.C. – U.S. Senator Roy Blunt (Mo.) and U.S. Senator Joe Manchin (W. Va.) introduced the “National Rare Earth Cooperative Act of 2014” this week, bipartisan legislation that relieves America’s dependence on China’s rare earth minerals, encourages private sector jobs and innovation, and preserves our the United States’ military technological edge. To read the bill, click this link: http://www.blunt.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/8385bd2e-0063-48eb-85ed-ab19dc713c55/2-7-14%20National%20Rare%20Earth%20Cooperative%20Act%20of%202014.pdf

The U.S. Department of Defense recently granted the manufacturer of the new F-35 fighter a waiver for having some illegal Chinese components in newly built F-35s. The cheap Chinese components were nothing exotic; they were $2 magnets and stuff like that. These items inadvertently got into the supply chain as a Japanese subcontractor built parts of the aircraft. An audit later discovered the Chinese parts. The manufacturer told the Department of Defense that it would cost over $10 million and weeks, if not months, to take apart the offending assemblies, replace the Chinese items with American ones and reassemble, test...

Greenland’s parliament voted on Thursday (24 October) to end a decades-long prohibition on mining for radioactive materials like uranium, further opening up the country to investors from Australia and China eager to tap its vast mineral resources. The move will not only allow the mining of uranium deposits, but also of rare earths, minerals used in 21st century products from wind turbines to hybrid cars and smart phones and that are currently mostly extracted by China. With sea ice thawing and new Arctic shipping routes opening, the former Cold War ally of the West has emerged from isolation and gained...

The Yomiuri Shimbun Japan has obtained exclusive mineral exploration rights for rare metals and other resources on the seabed about 600 kilometers southeast of Tokyo’s Minami-Torishima island. It is the first time in 26 years that Japan has obtained mineral exploration rights on the high seas. In an announcement Saturday, the Economy, Trade and Industry Ministry said it would begin full-fledged exploration next fiscal year at the earliest. To obtain exclusive exporation rights, a nation must first gain the approval of the United Nations’ International Seabed Authority. The U.N. authority gave its approval Friday, and the government is expected to...

Across the West, early miners digging for gold, silver and copper had no idea that one day something else very valuable would be buried in the piles of dirt and rocks they tossed aside. There's a rush in the U.S. to find key components of cellphones, televisions, weapons systems, wind turbines, MRI machines and the regenerative brakes in hybrid cars, and old mine tailings piles just might be the answer. They may contain a group of versatile minerals the periodic table called rare earth elements. "Uncle Sam could be sitting on a gold mine," said Larry Meinert, director of the...