Source:
The GuardianApproval secured to restart operations, which could be crucial in challenging China's stranglehold on the market
Suzanne Goldenberg in Mountain Pass | Sunday 26 December 2010 16.54 GMT
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The mine is the largest known deposit of rare earth elements outside China. Eight years ago, it was shut down in a tacit admission that the US was ceding the market to China. Now, the owners have secured final approval to restart operations, and hope to begin production soon. "We will probably never be the largest (mine) in the world again. It will be hard to overcome China's status in that regard, but we do think we will be a very significant supplier," Mark Smith, chief executive of Molycorp Minerals which owns the mine, told reporters during a tour of the site.
So far as the Obama administration is concerned, the mine can't open soon enough. A US department of energy report warned on 15 December that, in the absence of mines such as this one, America risks losing control over the production of a host of technologies, from smart phones to smart bombs, electric car batteries to wind turbines, because of a virtual Chinese monopoly on the rare earth metals essential to their production.
China controls 97% of global rare earth metals production. Such total domination of a strategic resource became impossible to ignore in October when China cut exports of rare earth elements by more than 70% over the previous year, disrupting manufacturing in Japan, Europe and the US. Prices of even the cheapest of the 17 rare earth elements rose 40%.
Now America, like Japan and Europe, is desperate to find alternatives. "Reopening domestic production is an important part of a globalised supply chain," David Sandalow, the energy department's assistant secretary for international affairs told a seminar in Washington.
Read more:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2010/dec/26/rare-earth-metals-us
Very important article which deserves to be read in full.
The site of the rare earth metals mine in the Mojave desert.Previous articles on this posted here...
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=103&topic_id=562775">Rare Earth Metals: China's Death Grip on the Trade War