''Japan discovered the rare minerals at the bottom of the Pacific SRNA-Reuters | 04 07th 2011th - 08:43 pm | Comments: 4 Japanese scientists said on Thursday that at the bottom of the Pacific found large amounts of rare earth minerals essential for the production of high tech electronics and that can be drawn immediately. "The sites of the high concentration of rare earth minerals. With just one square kilometer will be able to pay one fifth of current consumption at the global level," said Professor Yasuhiro Kato of Geology at the University of Tokyo. Minerals found on this led by Kato and where they were and researchers from the Japanese Agency for marine-geological science and technology. The researchers found minerals in the sea mud at depths of 3,500 to 6,000 meters below the ocean surface at 78 locations. According Kohath words, one-third of newly discovered site was found a large amount of minerals and metals of yttrium. Professor Kato said that the site in international waters, which extends east and west of Hawaii and east of Tahiti in French Polynesia. According to his hypothesis, the newly discovered sites have 80 to 100 billion tons of minerals, which is a huge amount when one considers that the global reserves are about 110 million tons, which are mainly found in China, Russia and other former Soviet republics and the USA. Details of the discovery were published in the online edition of the British journal "Natural Earth Sciences." ''
The billion dollar question would be: is it a economically viable mineral resource? Or in laymen's terms, can it can mined for a real profit?
The Chinese have been too clever by half, and in the process have woken up the West to the danger of PRC dominance in RE production. The situation now will trigger major exploration and development of REs in Australia and elsewhere and soon counter balance the supply demand equation. "According to his hypothesis, the newly discovered sites have 80 to 100 billion tons of minerals, which is a huge amount when one considers that the global reserves are about 110 million tons," My BS Detector just went off! OC
Check a startup mining company called GGG. They have a project in Greenland with massive deposits (including Uranium). Don't think there is a problem with China having most of it.
China only has a monopoly for now because they ignore all environment regulations and have low labor costs. I remember reading that the US were restarting their RE production, first mines to be completed by 2014 or 2015. Pretty sure RE isn't actually that rare, it's just not really financially feasible in most places.
This. Most rare earths aren't rare - they're just hard to process and refine and the technology to do so has basically all moved to china.
