Worth reading on RRE separation
I have read that rare earths aren’t really rare, just hard to process. From the link:
“Extraction is both difficult and potentially damaging to the environment…The newly discovered raw materials may not reach the market before 10-15 years’ time, the LKAB mining company’s CEO Jan Mostrom said. Permitting processes take time due to environmental risk evaluations.”
While lithium is not a rare earth, the EU has issues:
And NIMBY is alive and well:
"But for the Europeans who live near mineral-rich grounds, opening new mines — with their potential for local environmental damage — is out of the question…The pushback from campaigners like Gustafsson around the bloc is causing a headache for EU leaders… Environmentalists warn that the possibility of opening new mines within the block risks harming biodiversity and polluting groundwater…
“The trade-off is being felt acutely in Jönköping county, Sweden, home to the EU’s most notable deposit of heavy rare earth metals, an area of forest and farmland named Norra Kärr.”
DB2
Rare earths have high environmental costs that should not be ignored.
There is an interesting bit of history with Sweden and rare earths.
https://www.nature.com/articles/nchem.2442
@PucksFool - was aware of the more recent history (last 7-8 years) of Mountain Pass. The Science News article was very informative to the older news and causes for the current challenges. Somehow, these costs don’t get factored into the real costs of smart phones, turbines, EVs etc.
While a big fan of all things electric I agree with that assessment. But its not just confined to the materials for batteries. The price of petroleum does not reflect the cost of the US Navy patrolling sensitive parts of the global shipping lanes (I’m looking at you, Middle East). The price of the effect of acid rain was never factored into coal-fired electricity rates. Fossil fuels do not reflect the cost of climate change. You get the idea.
It’s actually NOT a surprise these costs do not get factored in. Historically they never have been. Probably because it’s difficult to, as well as gets huge pushback from corporations. Or even outright denial.
That is called “socializing the costs” of IGNORING future problems that will NOT be paid directly by the company (and thus, those costs are NOT included in the cost of an item/service today).
Nice find, Puck.
DB2
But my recent laptop purchase does have a “disposal” fee associated with it
People complain about the regulations and costs of environmental type stuff in California, but they at least attempt to turn these indirect costs into actual costs. If you want to know how CA got to this place look at the history of the gold rush. Miners were heavily polluting the rivers, which causes massive issues for farmers. And of course the miners saw this as an unnecessary expense, even though it caused a real financial cost on someone else. So they shifted the financial burden to where it belonged.
Interestingly, I worked for Gillette at one time I’m my IT career and Duracell (the battery company) was a division of Gillette. My team had to write a report for the European Finance group to summarize the number of batteries and types of batteries we were selling in the EU, as Gillette was responsible for paying a disposal fee to the EU for every battery that we sold there. This would have been back in about 2003.
'38Packard