Nothing is that easy. Processing plants for rare earths are not built over night so in the interim China has a lot of power of Western economies. The good news is that rare earths are not rare, they are abundant so once the plants are built they will simply become commodities.
The issue is that the processing does result in radio active by products so it can get a bit sensative re location. The funny thing is that a mineral sands producer in Australia, Iluka, used to generate waste products, they would sort it and dump it into pits. Those waste products are now known as rare earths. Iluka is building a large processing plant with Govt backing (problem has been knows for some time) and will just open these pits and away she goes.
I wonder whether the radio active by products become valuable in the future.
Nothing is that easy. Processing plants for rare earths are not built over night so in the interim China has a lot of power of Western economies. The good news is that rare earths are not rare, they are abundant so once the plants are built they will simply become commodities.
The issue is that the processing does result in radio active by products so it can get a bit sensative re location. The funny thing is that a mineral sands producer in Australia, Iluka, used to generate waste products, they would sort it and dump it into pits. Those waste products are now known as rare earths. Iluka is building a large processing plant with Govt backing (problem has been knows for some time) and will just open these pits and away she goes.
I wonder whether the radio active by products become valuable in the future.