"The mining of rare-earth minerals was at one time dominated by the United States. The People's Republic of China has since come to dominate the market."
If it'd be pure economics, then yes. But Japan and China are not necessary the best friends, so there is a strong geopolitical factor at play. China has the (quasi) monopoly and China with strategic embargo/tariffs/creative strings attached could easily grind the tech manufacturing in Japan to halt, impacting it's economy severely. This is not theoretical, they already impacted Japanese economics this way.
So now Japanese politics has a strong incentive to change the situation, creating a second source. It might be more expensive as long as the supply lines are still open, but it's a strong hedge against politically motivated supply line disruptions.
Simply said, exploiting these deposits even if they are more expensive than the market price can be seen as an insurance. It also strengthens Japan's negotiating position when their industry can't be held hostage so easily.
ps.: Also keep in mind, that it takes considerable time (years) to develop a mining and refining operation, so they can't just wait until a disruption occurs before starting with the mining.
You do not find them individually, which means you have to separate elements with close chemical properties.
More often than not, the deposits contains relatively low concentrations of the stuff along with other minerals.
To quote Wikipedia¹
> (...) during the extraction of the ores from rocks, a significant amount of water usage and wastewater production. Also, acidic substances are used during the extraction process, which can leach in to the soil and surrounding environment. In addition, due to the low abundance and varying spatial distribution of REEs, the mining process uses a significant amount of energy(...)
I assume it would not be one process common to all of them, but more like with some you will have to mine additional stuff like Thorium which you have nothing to do with later, or you will have to wash them with other chemicals and stuff to separate them, sometimes they are radioactive themselves etc... tedious in any case
There is a step in monazite processing when thorium and its decay products are seperated out. The thorium-containing phosphate mud is surprisingly radioactive.
If these are underwater and the mining process on land is already extremely toxic. Does this mean that mining them underwater will release large amounts of toxins into the ocean?
My limited understanding is the toxic part is less the mining and more the refining — the acid baths that raw material goes into to extract the metals. I’d assume that’d need to be on land.
China has controlled the market on these for some time, using this control to its geopolitical advantage many a time. If Japan wants the right to merely compete in the market, they're in for a fight.
It is interesting that the newest Pacific Rim mentions that the alien's objective is the "rare-earth" minerals in Japan.
Was this just a coincidence or did the writers do some actual research?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare-earth_mineral
Presumably because China doesn't mind the cost to its miners or the environment (for now).
If that should change then it might start to be viable to mine this deposit.