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The Great White North recognizes our need for more sources for these crucial elements.
The Canadian government released its Canadian Critical Mineral Strategy Annual Report 2024, highlighting the progress and further plans the nation has made in expanding its mining industry to produce critical minerals, including rare earth elements. The EE Times says that Canada’s Critical Minerals Center of Excellence at Natural Resources Canada works “to identify and support strategic projects within the semiconductor supply chain.”
The report defines a critical mineral with a threatened supply chain and must have a reasonable chance of being produced in the country. Furthermore, it must meet one or more of the following criteria: it is essential to Canadian economic and national security, it is needed for Canada to hit its net-zero target, and it allows the country to be a sustainable and strategic partner in the global supply chain. Currently, there are 34 critical minerals on the Canadian list, but the following six are a priority for the government: lithium, graphite, nickel, cobalt, copper, and rare earth elements.
Rare earth minerals are used to make the latest chips, but, as their name suggests, they’re not as abundant as other minerals like silicon or iron. The ongoing tensions between China and the rest of the Western world have even moved the former to tighten export controls for its supply of these crucial elements, leading to increased pricing of these products. This has led other countries like Australia to find alternative sources for these products to help alleviate the supply crunch and keep semiconductor production going. Aside from this, lithium, nickel, and copper are also crucial elements in producing EVs and the battery technology they require.
However, one industry executive says this move is too little, too late for Canada, noting that putting up a new mine in the country takes at least 10 to 15 years owing to strict regulations. CMC Microsystems CEO Gordon Harling said in his personal capacity that the U.S., China, and Australia already have a head start in production and are “much less likely to slow things down for environmental reasons” compared to Canada. He added, “The other fly in the ointment is that a new battery chemistry could show up at any moment, which eliminates the need for lithium.”
(Score: 4, Touché) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Monday January 06, @09:22AM (1 child)
What, you've never heard of fission chips?
(Score: 2) by janrinok on Monday January 06, @10:04AM
Ba-dum, tish.....
I am not interested in knowing who people are or where they live. My interest starts and stops at our servers.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by VLM on Monday January 06, @01:18PM (6 children)
But, they're also vastly more abundant than gold, platinum, etc.
There's really two separate problems:
Find the ore: Its all over the planet and in fairly high concentrations and there's huge amounts of it. Its not everywhere, but its HARDLY limited to China.
Process the ore: This requires relatively advanced industrial infrastructure (more than a refinery, less than nuke stuff) and plenty of cheap energy and it helps to have minimal environmental concerns. THIS is the part of the equation where "almost all rare earth metals come from China".
Technically, most countries on the planet have enough ore; very few have the desire or will or ability to refine it. The USA could flip a switch and be exporters in maybe a couple years, however, if China wants to burn coal and pollute their environment for us, and the "green" people here only care about "here" and don't care about pollution "over there by 'those' people" then we'll continue buying all our rare earth metals cheaply from China.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 06, @03:28PM (2 children)
> and the "green" people here only care about "here" and don't care about pollution "over there by 'those' people"
As usual, the dumbest possible interpretation. You really should ask yourself if that's how you want to live your life.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday January 07, @02:41PM
LOL "green" people don't reduce consumption, they just encourage other people to do so (whom promptly do not) and then they export pollution to poor 3rd worlders, "green" people are very racist in general.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday January 08, @05:43AM
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 06, @03:29PM (2 children)
(Score: 2) by VLM on Tuesday January 07, @02:44PM (1 child)
Exactly, yes. There's a lot of it, the refining process is a huge incredible PITA. Makes steel making look easy and environmentally cheap.
Its like asking why the Iron Age took so long to get started. Its not like its hard to find iron ore, even on the surface without "real" mining. Iron is a PITA to process which is why it took awhile to get rolling.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday January 08, @12:05AM
And in its mostly unalloyed form it's poor quality compared to bronze for tools. Alloying and working it with carbon to make steel took some serious know-how and a lot of experimentation.
I know of only one historical situation where iron (not steel) weapons were superior to bronze. That was in the days of the Late Bronze Age Collapse. The elite empires and city states of the era had great bronze weaponry, but it got taken down by what appears to be an iron-using mob (for example, the "sea peoples" invaders mentioned by the Egyptians). The reason is that almost nobody had both tin and copper - making bronze required an extensive trade network. But you could make soft iron weapons in any of the many places that had usable iron ore. So when the trade networks collapsed, the old powers were stuck with limited supplies of bronze. They could draft more troops from the populace but they couldn't properly arm them, while their foes could make weapons for their entire army.
(Score: 2) by looorg on Monday January 06, @07:30PM
Will they refuse export to non-friendly/allied/Nato countries? Such as China or just any BRICS countries?