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Reuters reports:
Japan plans to dispatch its largest warship on a three-month tour through the South China Sea beginning in May, three sources said, in its biggest show of naval force in the region since World War Two. China claims almost all the disputed waters and its growing military presence has fueled concern in Japan and the West, with the United States holding regular air and naval patrols to ensure freedom of navigation.
The Izumo helicopter carrier, commissioned only two years ago, will make stops in Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines and Sri Lanka before joining the Malabar joint naval exercise with Indian and U.S. naval vessels in the Indian Ocean in July.
President of the Philippines Rodrigo Duterte said he may visit the warship. The Chinese navy plans to "shadow" foreign military vessels and aircraft. The U.S. is deploying an attack drone to South Korea to respond to recent North Korean missile launches.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Gaaark on Tuesday March 14 2017, @08:27PM (17 children)
Does China care?
They'll just keep doing as they're doing, expanding islands and building bases in the area and ignoring all the sabre rattling. Expand, build, ignore.
It's going to take Japan or the US going and building a base on one of those islands as well: then see if China responds or not.
Non-Chinese forces need to force the issue, then see if China starts rattling sabres itself. Then diplomats might come in handy.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Ethanol-fueled on Tuesday March 14 2017, @08:44PM (10 children)
Rare-Earth metals.
When the Chinese get their grubby hands on all the world's rare-earth metals, they will have everyone by the balls. Meanwhile, America shut down their only rare-earth mine only to re-open it [gizmodo.com] fairly recently.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday March 14 2017, @08:56PM (4 children)
Simple solution (well, maybe not that simple):
Asteroid mining. You can probably find all kinds of rare-earth minerals in asteroids. We'd need to develop the infrastructure to prospect and capture them, and then mine them in orbit and transport the refined ores down to Earth. But if there's a lot of valuable minerals in a small number of asteroids, it could very well be worth it.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday March 15 2017, @01:56AM (3 children)
" You can probably find all kinds of rare-earth minerals in asteroids."
Wouldn't those be rare-asteroid minerals? ;^)
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday March 15 2017, @03:21AM (2 children)
I know you're kidding, but they're called "rare earth" because they're rare (relatively, not really *that* rare, but compared to silicon, carbon, titanium, etc. they are) in the Earth's crust. That doesn't mean they're rare somewhere else. They might be extremely plentiful in certain asteroids, though I really don't know (and I doubt anyone else has a really good idea since we haven't done enough research on asteroids).
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Wednesday March 15 2017, @03:50AM
Cerium is as abundant (on Earth) as copper.
They are not especially rare, but they tend to occur together in nature and are difficult to separate from one another. However, because of their geochemical properties, rare earth elements are typically dispersed and not often found concentrated as rare earth minerals in economically exploitable ore deposits.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rare_earth_element [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 15 2017, @05:32AM
I know you're kidding, but they're called "rare earth" because they're rare (relatively, not really *that* rare, but compared to silicon, carbon, titanium, etc. they are) in the Earth's crust.
No. The "earth" part in "rare earth" does not come from the name of the planet Earth. Rather, they both take the word "earth" from its original meaning of "soil", "ground", etc. You can have earth, aka soil, on Earth, Mars, Mercury, asteroids, TRAPPIST-1 c, wherever.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth_%28chemistry%29 [wikipedia.org]
The chemical term earths was historically applied to certain chemical substances, once thought to be elements, and this name was borrowed from one of the four classical elements of Plato. "Earths" later turned out to be chemical compounds, albeit difficult to concentrate, such as rare earths and alkaline earths.
Earths are metallic oxides, and the corresponding metals were classified into the corresponding groups: rare earth metals and alkaline earth metals.
(The quoted text is the entire article. It must be the shortest Wikipedia article I've ever seen.)
I still laughed at the GP's joke, BTW :)
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 14 2017, @09:29PM
The only reason China's the main exporter for those is that it's currently cheaper to have them do the mining, we have plenty of that stuff ourselves. 'Rare' in 'rare' earth is a misnomer, it doesn't mean that it's rare, just that it's rare as opposed to other kinds of dirt.
(Score: 2) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Wednesday March 15 2017, @12:19AM (2 children)
Rare-Earth minerals are not mined in the US due to the Thorium "problem". Essentially, it is regulated under the Nuclear non-proliferation treaty, so nobody wants to touch it.
THE THORIUM PROBLEM - Manufacturing & energy sector hobbled by thorium [youtube.com]
gordonmcdowell
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Wednesday March 15 2017, @05:56AM (1 child)
> [...] it is regulated under the Nuclear non-proliferation treaty [...]
I watched the first 12 minutes of your video, and didn't see that claim. Merely mining and purifying thorium ought not to be relevant to the NPT; loading it into nuclear reactors--as your video, predictably, urges us to do--is another matter. To make efficient use of thorium as a nuclear fuel requires breeder reactors and a reprocessing programme.
All reprocessing can present a proliferation concern, since it extracts weapons usable material from spent fuel.
-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breeder_reactor [wikipedia.org]
Under the NPT, unless I'm mistaken, such programmes may be undertaken in the pursuit of nuclear energy. The goal of the treaty is the elimination of nuclear weapons by lessening their spread to additional countries, with the countries that already have them dismantling their stock-piles (the latter is more often breached than observed).
With breeder reactors and reprocessing, one could also make use of 238U, which yields 239Pu, which in turn is easily separated and can be weaponised. The wastes from reprocessing are highly radioactive. The video says that thorium has a 12.5-billion-year half life; other sources say that the most common isotope has a half life of 14 billion years. Regardless, it's very long-lived, hence only mildly radioactive.
https://www.britannica.com/science/thorium [britannica.com]
That radioactivity seems like less of a problem than the potential problems associated with the proposed solution.
The video advocates increased mining of monazite, which also contains radium. Most of the radium would have to be disposed of, or a use found for it. Careless disposal of thorium, uranium and radium in the 1940s may have led to "higher-than-normal rates of cancer" in St. Louis. I'm sure we could do better today, were we to decide to.
http://www.nytimes.com/1990/03/24/us/mountain-of-nuclear-waste-splits-st-louis-and-suburbs-888.html [nytimes.com]
(Score: 1) by Scruffy Beard 2 on Wednesday March 15 2017, @07:51AM
The political problems are discussed at 20:40 [youtube.com]
The video does not actually use my exact wording.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 15 2017, @10:12AM
"Rare-Earth metals" ... are NOT rare. News at 11.
stop panicking about things you don't understand.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday March 14 2017, @08:56PM (5 children)
I'm definitely more worried about Trump having an impulsive moment than about any of the others crossing a line they can't walk back.
I also wish they would stop calling the US meddling "freedom of navigation". Ships can go through the disputed waters without any problems. The only ones bumping heads are the fishing boats, and that's not something I want Trump to start a war over.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 14 2017, @09:05PM (4 children)
You say ships can go through, but this isn't real unless you do it. If you are afraid or otherwise inhibited, then you have accepted the territorial claim and no longer really dispute it. As best you're still whining.
We do this all around the world, except for a weird agreement with Canada. We did it with Libya, which had a far better claim than China, and ended up shooting down a couple planes. We do it with Malaysia and Indonesia, which especially benefits China.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday March 14 2017, @09:12PM (3 children)
The Chinese want the islands, and the exclusive fishing and mining rights around them.
I may have missed every single report that random cargo ships weren't allowed "freedom of navigation" nearby, but it doesn't fit the Chinese needs, so why would they bother?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 15 2017, @07:56PM
Military ships count too.
The other nearby countries would also like to own those fishing rights. Failing that, they'd like to share (international waters) or have an off-limits area that might serve as a breeding ground.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday March 15 2017, @11:29PM (1 child)
China doesn't just want the existing islands. China is building islands:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mischief_Reef [wikipedia.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiery_Cross_Reef [wikipedia.org]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday March 15 2017, @11:48PM
"Islands" was almost hyperbolic for what was mostly inhospitable rocks and reefs ...
To achieve proper fait accompli, and guarantee that any competing claim (or international judgement) wouldn't be easily enforced, the Chinese needed enough room for a bunch of military equipment, including airstrips to conduct patrols.