
A Visit to the Only American Mine for Rare Earth Metals - DanBC
http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2012/02/a-visit-to-the-only-american-mine-for-rare-earth-metals/253372/
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mcone
This article didn't really discuss the environmental impacts of the mines,
which is probably substantial. Is that why the mines are so expensive to
operate in the US? And is that why China produces so many more rare earth
metals -- because they skimp on environmental protections?

~~~
dangrossman
It is. This mine was shut down after an environmental accident, and it's cost
them over $1 billion to recover from that and prepare to reopen, split between
new environmental licenses and new processing equipment that allows them to
mine without trucking in dangerous chemicals to separate the materials in the
ores. The new process is based on high-pressure recycled salt water, doesn't
leave behind toxic tailing ponds that can leak into waterways, and isn't how
the Chinese run their mines.

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nnq
> What’s rare is finding deposits that can be mined profitably, in part
> because most contain radioactive thorium. (from the linked older article)

Sounds a bit weird: Would mining a thorium rich deposit have higher
environmentally related costs? Isn't the thorium itself valuable as well?

~~~
jofer
> Would mining a thorium rich deposit have higher environmentally related
> costs?

Yes, absolutely!

> Isn't the thorium itself valuable as well?

Not at present. It's basically a waste byproduct at the moment. If it becomes
widely used as a nuclear fuel in molten salt reactors, that might change. It
is used in a few alloys, etc, but there aren't a large number of industrial
uses for it.

~~~
adventured
Sounds like a classic scenario in which one should massively stockpile
thorium, or find a way to buy ownership in such. We seem to find valuable uses
for nearly everything over time (and history is littered with examples of
'tossed to the side' materials that are later worth a fortune).

~~~
Tuna-Fish
Thorium prices are really not going to rise all that much.

People have a hard time understanding what the six-seven orders of magnitude
difference in energy density between nuclear and chemical fuels means in
practice. Basically, even if the entire world switches to being powered only
by thorium, thorium will still mostly be a waste product.

For the amount of digging you need to power a single coal plant you could
power the entire earth and still have most of your production idle.

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DanBC
There's a claim that rare earth minerals cannot be reclaimed from recycled
electronics. Is that true?

~~~
wuschel
Depends which elements you want to recover. The main problem is the economic
aspect of recovery - this is due to the fact that one has to collect the
materials from a multitude of electronic devices and bring them through a
chemical purification process.

Rising rare element prices might change this in the future.

Addendum: quick google search gave
[http://www.molycorp.com/](http://www.molycorp.com/) as a developer of
recycling technology.

~~~
Tuna-Fish
> Rising rare element prices might change this in the future.

They can't. The mining of rare elements isn't constrained by resources, only
cost. Setting up the kind of infrastructure needed for REE recovery would
always cost more than mining, so if the prices start going up again, mining
will just be expanded.

~~~
DanBC
I don't quite understand how it's cheaper to dig massive holes in the ground
and process that dirt to extract REE than it is to grind up all the waste
electronics and extract copper, tin, gold, REE from that.

~~~
Tuna-Fish
Digging holes in the ground is actually much easier and cheaper than you'd
think. Almost all of the costs of a running REE mine are in the separation
part.

REE is usually used in small amounts in alloys, or especially in electronics,
in very thin films and such. Because of this, simply shredding it doesn't
quite do it -- after you ground it, what you have is basically a very poor ore
of the material, and rather than extracting things from it, it would be
cheaper to just get better stuff from the ground.

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guiliop
Promoting their stock again?

~~~
dangrossman
This article is from February 2012. Do you think DanBC is promoting a stock?
He's never mentioned Molycorp on HN before so far as Google knows. What
compelled you to register just to ask that?

~~~
adventured
By his own logic, he's obviously short their stock /s

