Major Find By Japanese Scientists May Threaten Chinese Rare Earth Hegemony

cold fjord writes "It looks like deep sea exploration may pay off big time as Japanese scientists have located rich deposits of rare earth elements on the sea floor in Japanese Exclusive Economic Zone waters, following up on their find two years ago of huge deposits of rare earths in mid-Pacific waters. The cumulative effect of these finds could significantly weaken Chinese control of 90% of the world supply of rare earth metals, which the Chinese have been using to flex their muscles. The concentration of rare earth metals in the Japanese find is astonishing: up to 6,500 ppm, versus 500-1,000 ppm for Chinese mines. The newly identified deposits are just 2-4 meters below sea floor which could make for relatively easy mining compared to the 10+ meters they were expecting... if they can get there. The fact that the deposits are 5,700 meters deep means there is just one or two little problems to resolve : 'A seabed oil field has been developed overseas at a depth of 3,000 meters. . . But the development of seabed resources at depths of more than 5,000 meters has no precedent, either at home or abroad. There remains a mountain of technological challenges, including how to withstand water pressure and ocean currents and how to process the mining products in the ocean, sources said.'"

Dejavu

[SirDrinksAlot]

Seems like this just tells us the concentration, otherwise we already knew this in 2011.

http://science.slashdot.org/story/11/07/04/2058218/japanese-team-finds-new-source-of-rare-earth-elements [slashdot.org]

Plenty of deposits, just have to mine them

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm fairly sure that the reason China controls 90% of the market is because they're actually mining their deposits, not because they are the only ones who have deposits. I think there are plans in the U.S. to restart some mines, and surely this is the case elsewhere too. There was a time when it was very uneconomical to run these, so they were mothballed.

Issue was Never Access but Cost

[Koreantoast]

The issue with rare earth metals has never been access to them, contrary to the article, but cost. If it were simply a matter of access, the United States, Australia and other nations have massive supplies. However, producers in those nations were driven out of business because the cost of extracting them in a clean, (relatively) environmentally friendly manner was simply not competitive with the Chinese, who can afford to undercut foreign producers due to their notoriously lax environmental regulations. Now this new methodology may be helpful in that it drives down the cost of production to become competitive again, but I am concerned that it may create tremendous environmental damage.

Rare Earths are NOT Rare

[the eric conspiracy]

The problem with rare earths is that they are usually found in conjunction with radioactive ores, particularly containing thorium.

This makes recovery and refining a nasty and if you insist on environmental safety a quite expensive job.

China has been willing to do it on the cheap for the rest of the world. More recently they have realized that other nations have been exporting their environmental issue to China by buying cheap Chinese rare earths. This is coming to an end as China sensibly restricts exports of these materials.

Re:Oh good, undersea mining

[K. S. Kyosuke]

I guess the problem lies in the ecological effect of possible dispersion of the materials over large areas of the ocean. It's not like finely-grained materials don't create a freely-floating suspension in water. Although I guess that one could say that you have to solve the problem anyway, otherwise the machines won't be able to see where they are working, due to all the turbidity around them.

Re:REE aren't that rare after all

[K. S. Kyosuke]

The so-called "rare earths" aren't all that rare, the problem lies in the fact that geology-wise, they don't tend to form highly concentrated ore deposits, and basically have to be mined as less-concentrated admixtures in ores of other elements.

Special interest misrepresenting reality?

[0xdeadbeef]

Google "rare earth thorium regulation". Usually, anti-regulation whining like this gets plenty a mention in right-wing think tank-funded articles and political editorials.

This one gets YouTube propaganda from the thorium reactor proponents and some of their websites. Why is it that, at least in terms of web presence, the only people concerned about this care more about thorium than rare earth minerals?

Re:Herm...

[nomadic]

Only if you're invading China in a ground war. They are not able to move their troops effectively via sea and could not effectively invade Japan; hell, they couldn't invade Taiwan.