Mythbusting

[John Roberts]

Re: Mythbusting

I'm not holding my breath... I just don't see how it would be cost competitive anyhow. Maybe 20 years down the road if China improves safety in both the processing and mining.

The law was interested in availability of critical materials with strategic importance for the military. These days that could be IPHONEs and the cloud...

JR

 

[Bennett Prescott]

B&C makes all our loudspeakers in Italy, but we ship a lot to China. The Chinese themselves want a better product nowadays.

 

[Rob Spence]

Re: Mythbusting

On a related note, the house just passed legislation making it easier to open new rare earth mines here, but it still has to get through the senate and signed, not likely in the current political environment.
JR

Getting it mined is a ways off from getting it processed. If I remember a thread a while back, the big problem here in the US was the closing of the processing facilities?

 

[John Roberts]

Re: Mythbusting

Both mining and processing are dirty businesses and incrementally costly to provide comprehensive worker safety for. Exactly the kind of business that China routinely embraces with their historically lax worker safety standards. The shift to China driven by lower cost left us without any market leverage when China controlled almost all sources, not to mention strategic supply for national security.

Ironic perhaps that these dirty materials are so useful in green technology (electric cars).

JR

PS speaking of worker safety I just saw a report of children laborers in Afghanistan mines. :-( Mineral resources are one possible source of (legal) revenue that could drag Afghanistan out of poverty, but not with child labor thank you.