控制稀土，就等于控制高新技术

伤我心太深

Rare earth metals mine is key to US control over hi-tech future控制稀土金属是美国操控控高新技术的关键

获得重新开发，这可能是对抗中国对稀土矿石市场垄断的关键一步




这相当于是莫哈韦沙漠的深处挖了个深坑。是美国应对中国对21世纪的高新技术统治的高招。





在晶莹的翠绿湖水（20英尺）下方6米处是储量丰富的矿石，这本来不被人所知但却迅速地被认定是高科技的未来的基石

这是中国最大的境外知名稀土矿床。八年前，美国秘而不宣地将市场拱手让给中国。现在，业主已获得重新开发的批准，并希望能开始生产。





“我们可能永远不会再次成为世界上最大的矿，难以挑战中国在这方面的地位，但我们将会成为一个非常重要供应商，”马克·史密斯，Molycorp矿山的拥有者，告诉一个在实地考察的记者.




  中国控制了全球97％的稀土金属生产。比前一年十月,中国降低了超过70％的稀土出口后，这种战略资源总量控制不可能被忽略，这一举措扰乱了日本、欧洲和美国制造业，即使最便宜的17种稀土元素的价格也上涨了40％。




现在，美国和日本和欧洲一样，都急于找到替代品。 “重新开放国内的生产是一个全球化的供应链的重要组成部分，”大卫·桑德罗，美国能源部国际事务的助理部长，当天在华盛顿的研讨会上如是说。


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对于史密斯而言，稀土金属具有战略意义得到官方确认可谓是姗姗来迟。 “
我往华盛顿已经奔走了大约两年，每隔一周都去宣讲稀土元素的意义。”他说。




华盛顿方面现在已经引起重视。12月15日，美国战略与国际问题研究中心研讨会，PowerPoint演示文稿显示，在稀土矿区域只有中国国旗飘扬，这一事实令人感到紧张。


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到2015年，全球对稀土的需求预计将达到205,000吨。 “如果我们得不到替代品供应和运行，这种供应缺口将导致很多问题，”史密斯说。




这些问题迫使政府将此事提到议程，今年秋天美国政府开始挤中国稀土矿物原料出口。

美国一些媒体猜测中国企图控制稀土金属的供应线作为一个政治筹码。但许多分析家认为中国正在努力改善昂贵，肮脏和危险的开采过程，并得到更多的工厂在国内设立商店。露天开采稀土矿会产生放射性废物。




“我不认为中国会拦腰斩断西方市场，但国内市场的需求增加，使他们减少了出口量。”加雷斯哈奇，一位金属研究所分析师说。 这就是Molycorp——目前全球发展稀土材料的替代生产的领跑者——希望介入的原因。





自去年七月上市，公司已筹得超过5亿美元（约合三百二十三亿英镑），用以改进其20世纪50年代的生产设施，扩大开发入口。本月，日本住友集团保证供应稀土在未来七年投资回报将达1.3亿美元。该公司还向能源部门申请了贷款。到2012年中期，Molycorp目标是每年生产20,000吨的17种稀土元素中的9种或者当今西方每年从中国进口的大约25％。史密斯建议公司可以逐渐提升产量，有可能在未来的18个月生产40,000吨。他说Molycorp现在只开发了了2200亩中的55英亩。





即使在这种规模的生产也不足以保证清洁能源经济的金属供应：用在混合动力汽车的电池需要镧元素，风力涡轮机上的永久磁铁需要钕元素，特别是近海，铕元素被用于高效照明。 “你会需要七个Molycorp的大小矿井来满足风力涡轮机对钕的需求，但是这意味着马达或任何其他方面对钕的需求便无法供应了，”美国地质调查稀土专家吉姆·赫德里克说。 “很显然，有10个或20的这样的矿井才能满足所有产品的不同需求。”




有些公司，例如通用电气，已经开始改进技艺，以减少稀土金属的使用。 “我们必须做的是拓宽资源并优化这些材料在制造过程的使用，”负责通用电气公司全球研究部门的史蒂夫·杜克洛说。





与此同时，日本的日立已经开始回收稀土金属用于硬盘和其他材料的制作。除了原料，目前还不清楚美国是否拥有将矿石开采变清洁专门技术。一个铀矿勘探无意中发现了稀土蕴藏量丰富的从拉斯维加斯只有一个小时的车道，半世纪前这种挑战是不敢想象的。





到60年代，主要是通过销售用于生产彩电的铕，稀土开采蓬勃发展。中国以低成本的优势进入稀土市场以来，其价格开始下跌。 20世纪90年代中后期发生的管道事故，流入附近的城镇放射性液体，进行了昂贵的清理。该矿于2002年关闭。55英亩的场地中央坑变成了亮绿色的水池。八年前一些矿物被储存，直至价格将上涨的今天。





这一次，Molycorp声称，是应对中国的机会，如果它能够完全达到采矿去磁的入口设施。该公司还相信它可以阻止一场来自澳大利亚，美国怀俄明州，魁北克省和南非的竞争。 “对这些矿物质的需求增长是太奇妙了，”史密斯说。 “我们6％的平均增长幅度将非常，非常好，但是当你开始关注如混合动力汽车和风力涡轮机的对稀土的需求，那将是两位数字的增长，你还不知道在哪里将结束。“





在这一点上，Molycorp不是始作俑者。 “从黑色的稀土开采驶向未来开始的绿色世界。你必须首先得到地面的材料，”海特说。 “整个清洁能源产业都链接着它。” “稀土”是一种自然产生的17组金属元素，从大马力磁铁电池到电子电路都会使用。材料（包括钪，钇及镧系元素组名为）的化学和物理性质，在提高计算机的硬盘驱动器和转换器，手机，高科技电视，太阳眼镜和激光性能都有效用。





在过去的十年，高新技术的发展使全球对稀土金属的需求提高增加了一倍。尽管被叫做“稀土元素”，实际上并不是稀有的元素。中国对稀土金属的开采近于垄断。英国地质调查局今年发表的一份报告声称，英国境内稀土金属的蕴藏量与铜，铅的储量一样丰富。据英国地质调查局资料，中国拥有世界上37％的储量，约3600万吨，但中国控制着97％的产品。前苏联集团拥有约1900万吨，美国与澳大利亚，印度，巴西和马来西亚等储量大约1300万吨。




其他来源，包括尚未开发的格陵兰。估计其稀土元素的储量能满足25％的全球需求。南非，马拉威，马达加斯加和肯尼亚等国家也拥有稀土金属丰富的矿床，具有开发的潜力



原文：

Approval secured to restart operations, which could be crucial in challenging China's stranglehold on the market

It's a deep pit in the Mojave desert. But it could hold the key to America challenging China's technological domination of the 21st century.
At the bottom of the vast site, beneath 6 metres (20ft) of bright emerald-green water, runs a rich seam of ores that are hardly household names but are rapidly emerging as the building blocks of the hi-tech future.
The mine is the largest known deposit of rare earth elements outside China. Eight years ago, it was shut down in a tacit admission that the US was ceding the market to China. Now, the owners have secured final approval to restart operations, and hope to begin production soon.
"We will probably never be the largest [mine] in the world again. It will be hard to overcome China's status in that regard, but we do think we will be a very significant supplier," Mark Smith, chief executive of Molycorp Minerals which owns the mine, told reporters during a tour of the site.
So far as the Obama administration is concerned, the mine can't open soon enough. A US department of energy report warned on 15 December that, in the absence of mines such as this one, America risks losing control over the production of a host of technologies, from smart phones to smart bombs, electric car batteries to wind turbines, because of a virtual Chinese monopoly on the rare earth metals essential to their production.

China controls 97% of global rare earth metals production. Such total domination of a strategic resource became impossible to ignore in October when China cut exports of rare earth elements by more than 70% over the previous year, disrupting manufacturing in Japan, Europe and the US. Prices of even the cheapest of the 17 rare earth elements rose 40%.

Now America, like Japan and Europe, is desperate to find alternatives. "Reopening domestic production is an important part of a globalised supply chain," David Sandalow, the energy department's assistant secretary for international affairs told a seminar in Washington.
For Smith, the official recognition of the strategic importance of the metals was a long time coming. "I've been going out to Washington DC every other week for about two years trying to tell the rare earths story," he said.
They are listening in Washington now. At the 15 December seminar at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, one PowerPoint presentation lingered on a slide that showed only the Chinese flag. The room filled with nervous laughter.
By 2015, global demand for rare earths is expected to reach 205,000 tonnes. "If we don't get alternative supplies up and running we are going to have this supply gap that is going to cause a lot of issues," Smith said.
Those issues forced their way onto the government's agenda this autumn when China began squeezing raw material exports of rare earth minerals.

Some US media reports have speculated China is trying to use its control over the supply lines for political leverage. But a number of analysts say China is trying to get better control over an expensive, dirty and dangerous mining process, and to get more factories to set up shop inside the country.

Rare earths are extracted through opencast mining and generate radioactive waste.
"I don't believe that China is trying to chop the west off at the knees but it has a growing internal market that is driving the demand," said Gareth Hatch, an analyst at Technology Metal Research. "That reduces the amount they are willing to export." That is where Molycorp – the frontrunner for now in a global race to develop alternative production of rare earth materials – hopes to step in.
Since going public last July, the company has raised more than $500m (£323m) to expand its production facilities at Mountain Pass, a collection of rusting buildings that date from the 1950s. This month, Sumitomo Corp of Japan invested $130m in return for guaranteed supplies of rare earths for the next seven years. The company has also applied for department of energy loans.
By mid-2012, Molycorp aims to produce 20,000 tonnes a year of nine of the 17 rare earths or about 25% of current western imports from China. Smith suggested the company could possibly ramp up production to 40,000 tonnes within the next 18 months. He says Molycorp has exposed just 55 acres of the 2,200 acre site.
But even production on that scale may not be enough to guarantee the supply of metals needed to move to a clean energy economy: lanthanum for batteries for hybrid cars, neodymium for the permanent magnets for wind turbines, especially offshore, europium for energy efficient lighting.
"You would need seven mines the size of Molycorp's just to meet the demand for wind turbines and that would mean no neodymium for motors or any other applications," said Jim Hedrick, who until last year was the rare earth expert at the US Geological Survey.
"Obviously there is a demand for 10 or 20 mines through the world to meet all the different demands for these products."
Some companies, such as General Electric, are already moving to reduce their use of rare earths. "What we are going to absolutely have to do is diversify our sources and optimise the use of these materials in manufacturing," said Steve Duclos, who heads GE's global research division.
In Japan, meanwhile, Hitachi has started a recycling effort to recover rare earths from hard drives and other materials.
Aside from raw materials, it is also unclear whether the US still has the expertise for the complicated process of turning minerals into usable clean tech components.
Such challenges were unthinkable half-a-century ago when prospectors looking for uranium stumbled instead on a rich deposit of rare earths about an hour's drive from Las Vegas.
By the 1960s, the mine was booming, largely through sales of europium, used to produce the bright red tones of colour televisions.
But prices fell as China came on the market, with its low production costs. A pipeline accident in the late 1990s, which leaked radioactive fluid into the desert and a nearby town, led to an expensive clean-up.
The mine closed in 2002. The central pit in the 55-acre site became a pool of bright green water. White bales of minerals – some mined eight years ago – were stockpiled until such time as prices would rise.
This time around, however, Molycorp claims it has a fighting chance against China, especially if it is able to meet its goal of complete mines-to-magnet processing at the Mountain Pass facility.
The company is also confident it can head off competition from a slew of new mines due to begin coming online from Australia, Wyoming, Quebec and South Africa. "The growth in demand for these minerals is just phenomenal," Smith said. "A 6% average growth rate for us would be very, very good but when you start adding things like hybrid vehicles and wind turbines to the rare earth sectors now you are talking about double digit growth, and you still don't know where that will end."
At this point, though, Molycorp is not even at the beginning. "The road to the green world of the future starts from the black earth. But first you have to get the materials out of the ground," said Hatch. "The whole clean-tech energy industry is hinging on it."
The "rare earth elements" are a group of 17 naturally occurring metallic elements used in small amounts in everything from high-powered magnets to batteries and electronic circuits. The materials (including scandium, yttrium and a group of elements called the lanthanides) have chemical and physical properties that make them useful in improving the performance of computer hard drives and catalytic converters, mobile phones, hi-tech televisions, sunglasses and lasers.
With global demand for hi-tech goods increasing the market for rare earth elements has doubled in the past decade.
Despite their name, rare earth elements are not actually all that rare, but China has a near-monopoly on mining the elements. In a report on the elements published this year, the British Geological Survey put their natural abundance on the same level as copper or lead.
According to the BGS China has 37% of the world's estimated reserves, about 36m tonnes, but controls more than 97% of production. The former Soviet bloc has around 19m tonnes and the US 13m, with other large deposits held by Australia, India, Brazil and Malaysia.
Other sources, untapped as yet, include Greenland. Estimates suggest the land mass could meet 25% of global demand for REEs. South Africa also has potential for rich REE deposits, as do Malawi, Madagascar and Kenya.