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Rare Earth 9 June 2024 #150

150 posts

Why put so much work into this? After all drilling down into details, collecting data and cutting through corporate and political fog, while not losing sight of technological developments and new applications, is a lot of work.

Compared to other industrial metals rare earth is a small business, US$6-7 billion per year, sometimes more. Peanuts in comparison to the large volume industrial metals.

Rare earths have enormous leverage. Tiny quantities of rare earths directly enable core functionality of products which are worth trillions of dollars, kick-on effects not even counted. One example of a kick-on effect would be rare earth permanent magnets, enabling miniaturisation of electric motors, which then enable factory automation and almost everything that moves in industrial robots. The kick-on effect can’t even be calculated, but it sure is massive.

Applications range from pig feed via computers to diagnostics, radiotherapy and precision laser surgery, performed by rare earth magnet enabled robotic arms, to pick just a few.

Rare earth are incredibly relevant and absolutely worth attending to.

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Via REIA

Vietnam not to export rare earth elements, says Deputy PM

Vietnam will not export raw rare earth elements, affirmed Deputy Prime Minister Tran Hong Ha at the question-and-answer session of the National Assembly in Hanoi on June 4.

In his view, the exploitation and processing of essential minerals such as rare earths must take into account deep and fine processing in order to support industrial production and development.

“We are determined not to export raw rare earths, instead we need to promote the development of industrial sectors with demand for rare earths, thereby ensuring more sustainable supply and demand. This is also an opportunity to attract investment,” he affirmed.

The emphasis here is on “raw” which means are rare earth ores concentrates like monazite and bastnaesite. Chinese interests have been pushing Vietnam to export these to China.

Vietnam has an ambitious rare earth development plan. It plans to produce 62,500 t/y of rare earth oxides by 2030. This would be twice as much as the U.S., EU, Korea, Japan and Taiwan combined imported from China in 2023.

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Jack Lifton

It will take a village for America to lead again in critical materials.

In the 1960s and '70s, America, not China, invented and rolled out the technologies that China now masters. We made the necessary metals critical by increasing their demand with the total cost of exploration, mining, refining, and fabricating less than its marketable selling price in a global supply chain!

Today, Chinese policy has shifted to MCGA, "Making China Great Again," and exposed the short-sighted folly of the domestic "no mining" and "no processing" policies of the West.

China will not give its customers an option of decoupling from Chinese export production and will not supply the raw materials or the processing to competitors.

A free-speech opinion piece and a very interesting view of history, how we got from there to here.

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Drone wars are exposing America’s Achilles heel

The surge in small drones has turned the front lines into a no-man’s land for soldiers and vehicles alike. As one Ukrainian commander told The Washington Post, those who dare to move day or night under the prying eyes of enemy drones are hunted.

There’s a race happening between Ukraine and Russia to build vast drone fleets. Ukraine is trying to make more than a million drones this year to halt Russian advances and get back on the offensive.

Both Ukraine and Russia are rushing to develop drones guided by artificial intelligence. These drones lock onto their targets without the need for communication with a remote pilot, making them impervious to efforts to scramble their feed.

A promising answer appears to be the introduction of energy weapons. One such system, the Epirus, can put out a directed field of energy that fries the electronics of incoming drones, sending them crashing to the ground. The system, which is already being tested with the army and navy, can be scaled up to protect ships, or down to far smaller sizes for hand-held use with individuals.

But directed energy systems like Epirus require unique materials. And for use away from the power sources of a ship they require energy storage.

But all the incentives in the world will be toothless if we can’t permit mines and streamline a painfully slow permitting process.

So far the NdFeB magnet demand of the U.S. military is quite small.

That is why China’s firebrand rare-earth-export-boycott proponent Hu Xi Jin was made to officially backpedal in 2021, before he was relieved of his job as editor of the CPC’s Global Times:

Hu Xijin: If China stops supplying rare earths, the impact on the US may not be that strong

On the other hand, it should be noted that China is not an absolute monopoly on rare earth exports, and the actual impact of cutting off the supply of rare earth products is uncertain. Its "precision destruction capability" may not be as strong as some people imagine.

General Atomics’ Rare Element Resources, with their pilot rare earth processing plant scheduled to start next quarter, could sure use some permitting-process improvement.

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You can download the report from this link.