Wyoming discovery could be America's first new source of rare-earths since 1952

https://www.wsj.com/business/energy-oil/the-2-million-coal-mine-that-might-hold-a-37-billion-treasure-181dbdcf

by jseliger • 3 years ago

137 85 3 years ago

wsj.com

jseliger• 3 years ago

https://archive.ph/Aawzz

sn0wf1re• 3 years ago

For those with CAPTCHA loop and Apple News -- https://apple.news/AujQtUvL-R9am2u1SlBgbrA

CSMastermind• 3 years ago

My understanding is that these rare-earths are not actually rare - what's rare is:

1. A country that will let you mine them

2. Refinery capacity

Right now I believe the only refineries are in Australia and China but for obvious reasons the US is quickly trying to figure out how to build on here along with semi conductor fabs.

shagmin• 3 years ago

When I first read the headline China immediately came to mind. Just recently the US started investing in ports in other countries, just like China has done. And now the US will probably start competing on another front that China has taken a lead role in.

seanmcdirmid2• 3 years ago

It’s weird, because the USA had done that investing long before China started belt and road, what was innovative about belt and road were the risk increase of the projects the Chinese took on, investments that western countries wouldn’t go anywhere near.

civilitty• 3 years ago

Finding a place to mine ore containing rare earth metals is easy, it's purely the refinery capacity that's the bottleneck with environmental laws being the limiting factor to building them. The vast majorities of countries will let you mine them but they're always in such low concentrations (hence "rare" earth) that it's not economical to haul massive amounts of crushed rock to a refinery in another country. Due to their chemistry they don't form very concentrated veins like a lot of other minerals do - the key is just collecting lots and lots of crushed rock.

All of the methods use extremely nasty liquid-liquid extraction [1] techniques that require massive pools of toxic and corrosive extractants that are difficult to dispose of afterwards because they're quickly used up in the chemical reactions but remain very toxic. Anyone who allows cheap refineries pays a very heavy price long term [2]. Several other countries are actually pretty well set up to refine them on short notice but that infrastructure is reserved for refining uranium and other considerably more valuable metals.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liquid%E2%80%93liquid_extracti...

[2] https://e360.yale.edu/features/china-wrestles-with-the-toxic...

joe_the_user• 3 years ago

Indeed,

The thing I'd want to add is that it's not technologically impossible to build a safe Lithium mine (or a safe nuclear power plant or a safe oil transportation infrastructure). It can be much more costly and so in these days of cost-cutting, unsafe operation is common. But one should still keep in mind safety isn't theoretically impossible.

perihelions3• 3 years ago

That yale.edu article needs additional context. It's verbatim repeating the PRC's talking points on the US-China trade dispute, the one over China's rare earth tariffs that was litigated before the WTO. The US position is that the export tariffs are a tactic to subsidize Chinese consumers of rare earths—their manufacturing sector—by giving them preferential prices for Chinese rare earths, the raw inputs. That's illegal under WTO rules. The PRC's position, what e360 is legitimizing (and amplifying), is that the West *morally deserves* to compensate China for the ecological costs of China's own mining industry, because we are its end consumers; and that these tariffs should be permitted under WTO rules as an environmental measure, not a protectionist one.

e.g.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_earths_trade_dispute

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-china-trade-idUSTRE6B...

https://ustr.gov/about-us/policy-offices/press-office/press-...

It's jarring to suddenly be reading CPC foreign policy talking points in a random environmental article!

partitioned3• 3 years ago

Well sounds like something the people of Wyoming will love. They hate big bad government trying to tell them what to do. Let them drink the slurry.

defrost3• 3 years ago

Right now I believe the only refineries are in Australia and China

and Malaysia, with a new spodumene conversion facility being built in Texas by Tesla.

Tagbert• 3 years ago

isn't Spodumene a source of lithium instead of rare earths?

perihelions3• 3 years ago

The US' other major known deposits are in California. This discovery might actually be consequential, because Wyoming's an unregulated mining state (coal and stuff), while California's... the opposite of that.

For historical background: California formerly extracted the majority of the world's rare earth elements,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Pass_mine#History

beambot2• 3 years ago

Those regulations seem well-founded: California has a population density of 258.21 per mi² compared to 5.9 per mi² in Wyoming. And that doesn't even start to account for agricultural production for human consumption (versus livestock). Those limitations are reasonably founded if human wellbeing is the metric.

Thus: This is good, despite any feelings about regulatory burdens.

tastyfreeze• 3 years ago

Alaska has a sizeable rare earth and uranium deposit that has been at some level of development since 2007 by UCORE.

jeffbee2• 3 years ago

I used to assume that California is generally anti-mining, but I can't explain that an open-pit gold mine was established in Napa County in the 1980s, well into the CEQA era. Maybe it's not so anti in practice.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/McLaughlin+Mine/@38.837955...

wnevets2• 3 years ago

#3 would probably be government subsidies. China spent a lot of money to drive competitors out of business.

photochemsyn• 3 years ago

Rare earth refining traditionally generates a lot of toxic waste of various sorts. This could likely be mitigated but it would raise the cost of the finished product well above current market norms, so unless universal standards were applied, it would become unprofitable relative to China. There's a good overview of the difficulties involved (and some alternative approaches and replacement materials) here:

https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2023/04/05/the-energy-tran...

gustavus• 3 years ago

I don't think competing with China will be a major concern domestically in the US in a few years as I anticipate a renewal and resurgence of the trade war.

chii2• 3 years ago

well above current market norms

which just indicates that the cost is externalized, and the current market price is too low.

But it would take international cooperation to force such externalized costs back into the supply chain, and no gov't wants to do if not doing so is advantageous geopolitically and economically.

jeff_carr• 3 years ago

Rare earth refining traditionally generates a lot of toxic waste of various sorts.

Could someone explain why? It certainly seems obviously easier than radioactive waste. All that has to happen is a stable solid. Why are there liquids?

kevin_thibedeau2• 3 years ago

The push to roll out new semi fabs is only to add redundancy for defense purposes. They absolutely will not be rolling out cutting edge consumer ICs and they'll be perpetually running under capacity without ever turning a profit.

jl62• 3 years ago

What if defense wants cutting-edge ICs?

rocqua3• 3 years ago

The 'rare' comes from the fact that the ore is not at all concentrated. The material is 'rare' within your earth.

Animats• 3 years ago

Refinery capacity, big problem.

There's a lot of talk. Here's a rare earths refinery site in Fort Worth, TX, supposedly under construction for MP Minerals, the Mountain Pass mine people. Press release from 18 months ago.[1] Current view in Google Street View.[2] Some heavy equipment, and a billboard with the same picture as the press release, but they haven't even excavated the foundation as of that 2023 picture. US DoD put $35 million into this project.

[1] https://mpmaterials.com/articles/mp-materials-begins-constru...

[2] https://earth.google.com/web/search/Independence+Parkway,+Fo...

jasonwatkinspdx• 3 years ago

Yes, "rare" in this context doesn't mean the materials are rare geographically, but rather that they occur in very low concentrations which requires processing large volumes of ore. This is environmentally very destructive so in recent decades the world has been happy to let places like China do it.

wnevets2• 3 years ago

but rather that they occur in very low concentrations which requires processing large volumes of ore.

IIRC those concentrations are similar to copper and other metals

hanniabu• 3 years ago

Rip Wyoming wildlife, the land will get ravaged and rivers will get contaminated

throwaway914• 3 years ago

I don't know why your comment is being invalidated. Even in the best of cases when we try to protect wildlife preserves, there is undoubtedly collateral damage, and it ebbs over 40-90 years.

JumpCrisscross2• 3 years ago

It’s an existing coal mine. In east Wyoming, well away from critical habitats. And rare-earth mining isn’t dirty, it’s the refining that pollutes.

DoreenMichele2• 3 years ago

Rare-earth elements are important to the green energy revolution. China controls a lot of rare-earth elements as well as rare-earth refining. This is worth enough money they are considering building a refining site locally, which would be a good thing.

Wyoming is the least densely populated state in the continental US. The only state more sparsely populated is Alaska. So I'm not surprised there are things we don't know about what is there.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_states_and_territories...

gexla• 3 years ago

Technically, Alaska is still part of the continental US as it's still part of North America. In Alaska, we would call the "contiguous US" as "the lower 48."

DoreenMichele2• 3 years ago

Thank you.

Mistranslation of military speak.

I actually think of it as conus.

s1artibartfast• 3 years ago

Personally, I prefer distinguishing between the lower 48 and the freak states

rocqua3• 3 years ago

How would the massive pollution from the refining be handled if it occurs locally?

gamblor956• 3 years ago

The important thing is that the source is an existing coal mine, meaning that they don't have to destroy/acquire any new land, so most (all?) environmental objections don't apply.

m463• 3 years ago

I still remember reading about people getting really sick living near tailings of a uranium mine, so there might still be things to watch out for.

JumpCrisscross2• 3 years ago

It’s also in Wyoming, which means it will actually get built.

mtnGoat2• 3 years ago

They will have to have room to refine as well as store most likely toxic tailings and byproducts. Coal is easier, just fill the hole back in (or don’t) and leave when it plays out. Rare earths, still have a massive clean up needed. Which based on western states’ history the cleanup seems to be funded by superfund, not the profiteers.

davidw• 3 years ago

New Longmire plot just dropped.

Edit: kind of surprised that got some attention... didn't think the HN set overlapped that much with the Longmire set.

NicoJuicy• 3 years ago

He bought an existing old mine for 2 million.

Did a rare earth test and it's now worth 37 billion $

---

Rare earth doesn't seem to be that rare

chii2• 3 years ago

rare earths are rare the same way common sense is common.

ZeroGravitas• 3 years ago

Rare Earths seem to be at the center of a misinformation perfect storm due to

a) the connection to China

b) the connection to renewables

c) their confusing name

And WSJ is a prime contributor to that.

Just someone I vaguely trust doing a series of blog articles by checking some sources and providing context to the Wikipedia article without an agenda would be nice.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare-earth_element

Some random highlights:

Through the 1960s until the 1980s, the Mountain Pass rare earth mine in California made the United States the leading producer.
Searches for alternative sources in Australia, Brazil, Canada, South Africa, Tanzania, Greenland, and the United States are ongoing.[68] Mines in these countries were closed when China undercut world prices in the 1990s, and it will take a few years to restart production
Significant quantities of rare-earth oxides are found in tailings accumulated from 50 years of uranium ore, shale, and loparite mining at Sillamäe, Estonia.[104] Due to the rising prices of rare earths, extraction of these oxides has become economically viable. The country currently exports around 3,000 tonnes per year, representing around 2% of world production
Ce and La are important as catalysts, and are used for petroleum refining and as diesel additives.

Diesel additives!

driggs• 3 years ago

A team at West Virginia University is trying to scale a process which extracts rare earth elements from coal mine "acid mine drainage". The hope is that the process helps to clean up AMD - itself an environmental hazard remaining after coal mining - and produce rare earth elements from what would otherwise be waste.

https://wvutoday.wvu.edu/stories/2023/04/05/wvu-researchers-...

https://wvwri.wvu.edu/divisions/critical-materials

Wyoming discovery could be America's first new source of rare-earths since 1952

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