
Rare Earth Elements could be big business for West Virginia - rmason
https://www.wowktv.com/news/west-virginia/rare-earth-elements-could-be-big-business-for-wv/2037113435
======
rmm
Mandatory toe dip. I’m in the mining game and stories about metals commodity
shortage like these come around all the time and it’s laughable.

You here about the popular ones (rare earth, lithium etc) but there are plenty
of others. (We just finished going through a vanadium shortage apparently).

It’s so bad all it takes for an exploration company to get a substantial bump
in share price is to mention it. During the great lithium shortage, the amount
of companies who had a large bump for just mentioning that they would be
investigating old core samples for lithium was ridiculous.

Argh.

~~~
pfdietz
Remember the big concern about cobalt in the 1970s (I think it was)? People
were talking about mining the sea floor for that one.

~~~
dredmorbius
Manganese, not cobalt. Glomar Challenger cover story.

Uni prof of mine was on the ship. Had no idea of the true mission until he
read about it in the papers.

~~~
pfdietz
Manganese nodules were being investigated not for their manganese -- they
would have totally flooded that market -- but for the less abundant but more
lucrative metals like cobalt they also contain.

~~~
dredmorbius
I conducted reasearch on the proposed enterprise in the 1980s. A goal, and the
primary one evident in the literature, was manganese nodule mining. Producing
manganese.

I don't have my original references handy, but some citations:

[https://epubs.siam.org/doi/abs/10.1137/0143008](https://epubs.siam.org/doi/abs/10.1137/0143008)

[https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0160932778...](https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0160932778900601)

[https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF03354283](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF03354283)

~~~
pfdietz
The market price of cobalt now is around $38/lb.

The market price of Mn ore is about $0.01/lb of contained Mn.

A good Mn nodule might contain 1% cobalt. It would be really stupid to mine
these things for their manganese. Of course you'd sell what Mn you could, but
that's not the value proposition here.

~~~
dredmorbius
Show me the contemporary (1970s) references stating cobalt, not manganese, was
the primary goal.

Keep in mind: this was a cover story. It needn't be rational, merely
plausible.

~~~
pfdietz
I can show you historical price data on the price of cobalt vs. the price of
manganese ore. If anything, the price ratio was even higher back then.

[https://pubs.usgs.gov/sir/2012/5188/sir2012-5188.pdf](https://pubs.usgs.gov/sir/2012/5188/sir2012-5188.pdf)

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mogadsheu
Last time this happened in 2008 Goldman pumped and dumped Molycorp. I don’t
know how banks get away with this behavior.

From what I gather, there is a decent stock of reserves in San Benito between
LA and Vegas. Before the ionic clays in China, the mine was responsible for
some 90+% of global rare earths production.

For those of you looking to trade off the info, Lynas on the ASX is the play.
The news is already priced in but it’s inexact.

~~~
0xffff2
>there is a decent stock of reserves in San Benito between LA and Vegas.

Do you mean San Bernardino? San Benito is a county in central California,
nowhere near "between LA and Vegas".

~~~
mogadsheu
San Bernardino you’re right. San Benito County has a different mine.

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grandinj
Simply doing an environmental assessment for the necessary processing
facilities will take years, that stuff is terrible to work with, both the
tailings and the required processing to extract rare earth elements.

On the upside, doing so properly could conceivably result in an actual
reduction in waste just lying around.

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souprock
Huh, acid mine drainage is a new one.

Others are coal ash and spent nuclear fuel rods.

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pizzazzaro
Weeell, there goes Virginia's craft beer industry. Having to filter this out
of their water is not gonna help flavor at all.

~~~
dillonmckay
WV and VA are separate states.

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mrfusion
The watershed laughs at human borders.

~~~
dillonmckay
What are you attempting to convey?

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theandrewbailey
Water flows downhill, ignoring man-made political borders.

~~~
dillonmckay
Geography and topography influence human-made political borders, particularly
in the regions referenced.

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neonate
[https://outline.com/h5wwjq](https://outline.com/h5wwjq)

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jacknews
Complete with photos of the facility, almost ready to go. This should neatly
parry the recent 'press speculation' about China banning rare-earth exports.

Who said governments use the press as unofficial communication channels, to
make threats etc, not to mention regional governments fishing for funding? Not
me...

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zeristor
Can anyone explain what makes the mining and processing of Rare Earth Metals
so toxic.

I've read in some places that it is normally found with Thorium, is that the
main problem?

~~~
MoveMyMobile
From what I have read (Im no expert on this) I think they basically have to
mine dirt and then put the dirt in a slew of toxic chemicals that break down
everything but the rare earth minerals. It leaves the issue of having large
amounts of toxic chemicals that need to be disposed of. So any country with
lax environmental laws don't have this huge cost (For example CHina just dumps
it in the rivers where in the US you would need to spend large amounts of
money disposing of it properly.

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mrfusion
Could rare earths be mined from sea water?

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driverdan
Yes but it's not economically viable.

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ptah
"This site is currently unavailable to visitors from the European Economic
Area while we work to ensure your data is protected in accordance with
applicable EU laws."

~~~
craigsmansion
Fair enough, I suppose.

Since I can't read the site, I can't draw any conclusions, but:

1\. Would it really be that hard to make a profile of the average European,
make a selection of advertisements on that profile and the subject, and serve
those statically (perhaps mining equipment or Holiday opportunities in
Virginia)?

2\. The less intrusive your behaviour is, the less you have to worry about the
GDPR. Aren't non-EU readers worried about visiting sites that completely block
the EU as a preventive measure?

I'm pretty happy to be blocked though. It's a lot more honest and better than
the song and dance some outlets put up trying to obfuscate compliance.

~~~
fred_is_fred
West Virginia != Virginia.

~~~
pge
only since 1863...

~~~
fred_is_fred
It was a rather important year. They were traitorous slaver-owners, we
weren't.

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deadmetheny
Plot twist: there's no miners available because they all learned to code
instead.

~~~
dang
Please don't post unsubstantive or snarky comments here. Also: "Eschew
flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely
new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents."

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

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skilled
I don't get it, what is the purpose of these elements? Is this jewellery or
what?

~~~
pfdietz
They have a wide variety of uses. Big ones include some varieties of
batteries, magnets (NdFeB, SmCo), phosphors, doped fiber optical amplifiers
(very important for global fiber optic networks), Nd-YAG lasers, catalysts for
oil processing, contrast agents for MRI (gadolinium). There's even a drug for
osteoporosis containing lanthanum.

Some rare earths have extraordinarily high thermal neutron capture cross
sections, in the millions of barns. Gadolinium is used as a "burnable
absorber" in some nuclear reactors, particularly naval reactors: as the fuel
is consumed, the absorber also burns down, reducing the reactivity change.

~~~
skilled
Thanks. I should have looked it up beforehand but the article definitely made
me feel frustrated.

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Tsubasachan
The import tariffs on foreign goods will definitely help US business. Less
competition the better after all. I remember reading US steel companies
raising prices when Euro and Canadian steel was slapped with punitive taxes.

~~~
pakitan
It will definitely help _some_ US businesses and will definitely hurt others.
The same way import tariffs on steel are good for US steel companies, they are
hurting the US companies who are using that US steel in their products. And
that's without taking retaliation tariffs into account.

~~~
gamblor956
It hurts the US companies until they go back to using higher-quality US steel,
which they should have been doing in the first place.

Chinese steel is of such low quality that, after wastage is accounted for, you
essentially end up paying just as much as you would have for US steel. The
companies that save on Chinese steel are just passing on the externalities to
their customers.

~~~
pakitan
Hmm...let's see. I know absolutely nothing about the quality of US-vs-Chinese
steel but, assuming everything you say is true, that means companies buying
steel are perfectly fine buying low quality steel. And they will be perfectly
fine buying low quality steel, regardless of where the supplier is located.
So, what will inevitably follow is that US steel manufacturers will lower the
quality of their steel to match Chinese's, while keeping the price high. The
result - US consumers paying more for the same shitty quality steel.

