$26B in rare earth nuggets sitting on the sea floor off the coast of Japan this is political as it provides additional resources to help offset the chinese stranglehold on rare earth materials. don't think most people realize how much China has restricted exports and how much it's costing us Japan Discovers Massive Treasure Trove Worth Over $26B, Enough to Support The Economy For Years Japan has made a groundbreaking discovery: a vast reserve of rare materials valued at over $26 billion. This monumental find promises to bolster the country's economy and position it as a key player in the global rare-earth market. The materials, critical for cutting-edge technology, were located in the deep waters around the Minami-Tori-shima island. Here's how this discovery could reshape Japan's economic landscape and its role in the tech industry. Japanese researchers, supported by the Nippon Foundation, uncovered over 230 million tons of rare materials during a survey of over 100 sites on the seabed, some as deep as 5,200 meters. These deposits include manganese, cobalt, and nickel, crucial components for the production of lithium-ion batteries and other high-tech applications. The survey area spans 10,000 square kilometers, revealing a dense field of "easily minable" manganese nodules, making extraction feasible and efficient. .................. The reserves include 610,000 tons of cobalt and 740,000 tons of nickel. This supply is enough to meet Japan's domestic demand for cobalt for 75 years and nickel for 11 years. This stockpile ensures Japan's ability to support its technology and manufacturing sectors without external dependency. ...................................... The discovery positions Japan as a competitive player in the rare-earth market. This could alter the geopolitical landscape, reducing China's monopoly over these critical materials. It also opens doors for Japan to lead innovation in electric vehicles, renewable energy technologies, and advanced electronics, enhancing its global influence in the tech industry.
These nodule discoveries are likely very bad for our oceans and maybe future viral impacts on humans. I would rather have tried and true oil and gas extraction with carbon capture than indiscriminate ocean floor vacuums.
I’d like to the risk and toxicity analysis before jumping to this conclusion. Oil and gas extraction in the Gulf is a major contributor to heavy metals being concentrated at the top of the food chain. Can deep sea exploitation be done in a way that minimizes unintended contamination? Are the nodules stable enough to prevent “shedding” potentially toxic elements into the environment? I simply don’t know enough about the proposed exploitation methods and their impact. I do know O&G extraction has a very measurable impact, both locally and with global environmental issues. Curious if there more data on this potential extraction.
I'd be lying if I said that I knew that anything 5200 meters below the surface of the ocean was "easily minable". Jeez. Thats way down there.
A little over 17,000 feet! How can that be extracted? By huge vacuums.... and with what else in the process?
I may be confusing the two, but weren't such nodules also located in the Gulf of Mexico? Happy Turkey Day G8tr.
Not in nearly the same ready-to-exploit form. From what I can parse from just the abstract, deposits aren’t even fully hardened into “rocks” and are pretty buried under sediment. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0009254179901311
als in parts of the Pacific Ocean. these particular find near japan seems to be cleaner, easier pickings than anything else I can recall and in territorial waters of a major importer Sadly, the USA is one of the only industrialized nations nto engaged in setting up the rules for deep sea mining in intl waters AI overview... The United States is the only major global economy that is not a member of the International Seabed Authority (ISA) and is not involved in deep sea mining laws. This is because the U.S. has not ratified the United Nations' Law of the Sea Treaty, which established the ISA. Some Republican senators have said that the treaty undermines American power. The ISA is an authority that authorizes international seabed exploration and mining. The ISA is made up of 167 member nations, plus the European Union. China is currently the leading country in terms of contracts for permitted deep sea mining exploration. Some governments have voted to ban deep-sea mining in their own waters, including New South Wales, New Caledonia, and several US states and territories. However, other states, including India, China, and Norway, are still in favor of deep-sea mining. Conservationists are concerned that deep-sea mining could damage ecosystems, especially without environmental protocols.
Wow! They may not have one that long, but maybe they could make one that long, but the entire edifice would be monstrous, don’t you think?
If the CIA can haul an entire Russian submarine up from the bottom of the Pacific Ocean (also three miles deep), I'm guessing someone can figure out the details of a 3-mile-long dragline. Incidentally, the cover story for the ship that pulled up the sub was that it was surveying for minerals on the sea floor. During the Cold War, the CIA Secretly Plucked a Soviet Submarine From the Ocean Floor Using a Giant Claw | Smithsonian.
There may be a much easier place to look for rare earth metals: in the fly ash of coal-burning power plant landfills. There are about 2 billion tons of fly ash currently in the U.S. https://www.cnn.com/2024/12/06/climate/coal-ash-rare-earth-elements/index.html
This raises the question: what are they waiting for? A layman like me supposes it's an expensive process to extract the rare earth elements.
Expensive and dirty. Fly ash contains all kinds of poisonous metals, including mercury, arsenic, and lead. The process requires large amounts of acids and bases, which have their own hazards and high cost. And apparently not all of the RE metals are recoverable. From the article, Appalachian coal ash has the most RE minerals, but only 30% of them can be extracted, for some reason. Coal ash from Wyoming & Montana has a lower concentration, but 70% of them can be extracted. The gov't is going to have to sponsor this, at least on a pilot scale, before a company takes a chance on it.
