A Visit to the Only American Mine for Rare Earth Metals
theatlantic.com
A Visit to the Only American Mine for Rare Earth Metals
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Re: A Visit to the Only American Mine for Rare Earth Metals
#2There's a claim that rare earth minerals cannot be reclaimed from recycled electronics. Is that true?
Re: A Visit to the Only American Mine for Rare Earth Metals
#3There's a claim that rare earth minerals cannot be reclaimed from recycled electronics. Is that true?
Depends which elements you want to recover. The main problem is the economic aspect of recovery - this is due to the fact that one has to collect the materials from a multitude of electronic devices and bring them through a chemical purification process.
Rising rare element prices might change this in the future.
Addendum: quick google search gave http://www.molycorp.com/ as a developer of recycling technology.
Re: A Visit to the Only American Mine for Rare Earth Metals
#4> What’s rare is finding deposits that can be mined profitably, in part because most contain radioactive thorium. (from the linked older article)
Sounds a bit weird: Would mining a thorium rich deposit have higher environmentally related costs? Isn't the thorium itself valuable as well?
Re: A Visit to the Only American Mine for Rare Earth Metals
#5Promoting their stock again?
Re: A Visit to the Only American Mine for Rare Earth Metals
#6Promoting their stock again?
This article is from February 2012. Do you think DanBC is promoting a stock? He's never mentioned Molycorp on HN before so far as Google knows. What compelled you to register just to ask that?
Re: A Visit to the Only American Mine for Rare Earth Metals
#7> What’s rare is finding deposits that can be mined profitably, in part because most contain radioactive thorium. (from the linked older article) Sounds a bit weird: Would mining a thorium rich deposit have higher environmentally related costs? Isn't the thorium itself valuable as well?
> Would mining a thorium rich deposit have higher environmentally related costs?
Yes, absolutely!
> Isn't the thorium itself valuable as well?
Not at present. It's basically a waste byproduct at the moment. If it becomes widely used as a nuclear fuel in molten salt reactors, that might change. It is used in a few alloys, etc, but there aren't a large number of industrial uses for it.
Re: A Visit to the Only American Mine for Rare Earth Metals
#8> What’s rare is finding deposits that can be mined profitably, in part because most contain radioactive thorium. (from the linked older article) Sounds a bit weird: Would mining a thorium rich deposit have higher environmentally related costs? Isn't the thorium itself valuable as well?
> Would mining a thorium rich deposit have higher environmentally related costs? Yes, absolutely! > Isn't the thorium itself valuable as well? Not at present. It's basically a waste byproduct at the moment. If it becomes widely used as a nuclear fuel in molten salt reactors, that might change. It is used in a few alloys, etc, but there aren't a large number of industrial uses for it.
Sounds like a classic scenario in which one should massively stockpile thorium, or find a way to buy ownership in such. We seem to find valuable uses for nearly everything over time (and history is littered with examples of 'tossed to the side' materials that are later worth a fortune).
Re: A Visit to the Only American Mine for Rare Earth Metals
#9Re: A Visit to the Only American Mine for Rare Earth Metals
#10Promoting their stock again?
Just to clarify: I have no connection with the atlantic, molycorp, etc etc.