U.S. Losing Control of Bombs to China Neodymium Monopoly

[TalkingDog]

http://www.bloomberg.com/video/63400346/

China has become the world's leading supplier of components crucial to U.S. defense systems, products once supplied by American companies such as Magnequench Inc. and Molycorp Inc.

Teri Luna, a former employee at Magnequench says: They told us, "We don't care if you work for nothing, we're still moving this plant."

[aquart]

1. IOW, we can't have a war without China's permission.

So you can figure right now that our targets suit them. How does it feel to be China's Hessians?

[Edweird]

2. I don't see how anything could possibly go wrong with that...

[Hannah Bell]

3. um, that's ridiculous. there's neodymium elsewhere in the world.

Although classed as a "rare earth" it is no more rare than cobalt, nickel or copper <2>, and is widely distributed in the Earth's crust.

Neodymium is never found in nature as the free element; rather, it occurs in ores such as monazite and bastnäsite that contain small amounts of all the rare earth metals.

The main mining areas are China, United States, Brazil, India, Sri Lanka and Australia; and reserves of neodymium are estimated at about 8 million tonnes.

Although it belongs to "rare earth metals," neodymium is not rare at all - its abundance in the Earth crust is about 38 mg/kg, which is the second among rare-earth elements after cerium.

The world production of neodymium was about 7,000 tonnes per year in 2004.<7> The bulk of current production is from China, whose government has recently imposed strategic materials controls on the element, raising some concerns in consuming countries.<8>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neodymium


The United States, which was once the world leader in the mining of rare earths, hasn’t produced any since 2002. However, that is changing.

In September, operations commenced at the Mountain Pass Mine and are expected to produce around 10 million pounds of rare earths in 2008. Mountain Pass is the world’s largest developed deposit mined exclusively for rare earths.

Rare Earth Elements (REE) are relatively unknown to the average person. With a few names such as europium, praseodymium, neodymium, lanthanum, samarium, cerium and gadolinium rarely get mentioned in chemistry classes, much less normal conversation.

Although called “Rare Earths,” they are abundant in the Earth’s crust. It was the fact that they were hard to extract and purify that led early scientists to think they were rare.

Before World War Two, the world’s supply of many of these elements was measured in grams and merely laboratory curiosities. And, the lack of samples guaranteed that scientists didn’t spend much time studying their properties.

http://www.minersnews.com/Dec07Jan08/Domestic.htm


I'd bet the reason China is currently the primary source is their lack of environmental & labor regulations = cheapest price.

Big fucking deal, more propaganda from Bloomberg's money machine.

[FreakinDJ]

4. She means "Poor Me - Upper Management is loosing my job"

It is perfectly fine to move all those menial Blue Collar skilled jobs out of the country - "But Oh Gawd what are we going to do without my job"

Welcome to the world of Globalization - Biaach

[Amonester]

5. Gosh... Even the bloated MIC is sending jobs overseas now....

Sheesh...