RE: Japan initiativeMore hack reporting. It won't be happening and the billions of tons is fabricated by the press. See the response form Gareth Hatch.
https://www.techmetalsresearch.com/2011/07/is-someone-manipulating-the-story-about-rare-earths-under-the-pacific-ocean/
Therewere a number of reports over the weekend, about a group of Japaneseresearchers who say that they have found significant quantities ofrare-earth elements (REEs) at multiple sites on the seabed of thePacific Ocean. In a paper published in Nature Geoscienceon July 3, 2011, lead author Yasushiro Kato and his colleagues sharedthe extensive work that was undertaken, to obtain and to analyze 2,037samples from 78 different sites across the Pacific Ocean.
Reuters, the BBC, Nikkei and others reported that there is an estimated 100 billion tonnes of rare earths in these deposits. Which is rather interesting, because the scientists themselves made no such claim in their paper…
What they do report, are two regions of the sea bed with so-called REE-rich muds:
- one in the eastern South Pacific containing 0.1-0.22% total REEs (including 0.02-0.04% heavy REEs), in layers 10 to 40 meters thick;
- one in the central North Pacific, containing 0.04-0.1% total REEs (including 0.007-0.02% heavy REEs), in layers 30 to greater than 70 meters thick.
The authors compare these muds to the ion-absorption-type clays foundin China, which are presently the world’s primary source of heavy REEs.They comment that the mud in the eastern South Pacific has heavy REEcontent that is “nearly twice as abundant as in the Chinese deposits“. Of course, those Chinese deposits are not sitting under “great water depths (mostly 4,000-5,000 meters)”and below the surface of the sea floor. It is because they are readilyaccessible and processable, that the Chinese ion-absorption deposits areexploited, despite their very low concentrations of REEs (heavy orotherwise).
Doing a couple of rough calculations, the authors estimate that a 10meter-thick bed of mud in the eastern South Pacific, with an area of 1square kilometer, could yield approximately 9,000 tonnes of rare earths.They also estimate that a 70 meter-thick bed of mud in the centralNorth Pacific, with an area of 1 square kilometer, could yieldapproximately 25,000 tonnes of rare earths. These numbers are not tooshabby (if we again forget about the 2.5-3 miles of water sat abovethem, and their remote location from any significant land masses). As I’ve said elsewhere,I can’t see these deposits ever being commercially exploited, but theempirical work done by the Japanese researchers which is presented inthis paper, is impressive.
What the authors do NOT estimate, is a size of thetotal mineral resource, and wisely so. While they mention that the thickdistributions of mud at numerous sites might mean that the REEs on thesea floor “could exceed the world’s current land reserves of [110 million tonnes]“, they acknowledge the considerable challenges and significant variability present on the seafloor, and thus state that “resource estimates for large regions cannot be made until more detailed data are available for areas lacking cores.”
Perhaps the lead author later just threw out a wild-ass, ridiculousguess at the size of the deposits, in response to a reporter’s question.But if he did not, and if the scientists themselves are not making the claim that there are “an estimated 100 billion tonnes of rare-earth deposits”, as reported by Reuters, Nikkei, and the BBC – just who IS making this claim?Who has inserted these comments into this story, and fed them to themainstream media, and why might they have done that? Can we find cluesin the current pricing turmoil, worries about supply from China, and theincreasing politicization of the rare-earths story?
I leave those questions as an exercise for the reader to ponder….
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Gareth Hatchanalyzes the role of rare & strategic metals in the technologysupply chain. He has particular expertise in permanent magnet materials,devices & systems. Gareth is a Founding Principal of Technology Metals Research, LLC, and is President and Director of Innovation Metals Corp. Originally from the UK, he has finally become used to living in the suburbs of Chicago, Illinois. Check out Gareth's full bio for more details.
