Clean and Green? Rare Earth Elements and Technology

toxicree

Tox­ic waste being pumped into a tail­ings pond at a Rare Earth Ele­ment Mine.

toxicree

Tox­ic waste being pumped into a tail­ings pond at a Rare Earth Ele­ment Mine.

Maybe things aren’t as clean as they seem….  The Moth­er Nature Net­work describes the scene pret­ty well, “Lots of green tech­nolo­gies rely on rare earths [ele­ments], but iron­i­cal­ly, rare earth pro­duc­ers have a long his­to­ry of harm­ing the envi­ron­ment to get the met­als. Like many indus­tries that process min­er­al ores, they end up with tox­ic byprod­ucts known as ‘tail­ings,’ which can be con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed with radioac­tive ura­ni­um and tho­ri­um.”

With the re-open­ing of MolyCorp’s Moun­tain Pass mine in Cal­i­for­nia, Rare Earth Ele­ment (REE) min­ing came back on the scene in the U.S.  Ever since 2002 when that same mine had a 60 record­ed spills, result­ing in 600,000 gal­lons of radioac­tive water leak­ing into the Mojave desert, REEs have been com­ing only from Chi­na.  But with Chi­na restrict­ing some exports, and cut­ting back on the mines due to envi­ron­men­tal con­cerns, min­ing com­pa­nies in the U.S. are out look­ing for more.

A report by Bloomberg, details some of the tox­ic rea­sons to leave REEs alone.

  • China’s rare-earth indus­try each year pro­duces more than five times the waste gas, includ­ing dead­ly flu­o­rine and sul­fur diox­ide, than the total flared by all min­ers and oil refin­ers in the U.S.
  • Rare earth min­ing in Chi­na pro­duced 25 mil­lion tons of waste­water laced with can­cer-caus­ing heavy met­als such as cad­mi­um.
  • It takes more chem­i­cals to sep­a­rate rare earth ele­ments from ore than it does for base met­als such as cop­per, zinc and lead.
  • Low lev­els of radioac­tive tho­ri­um and ura­ni­um also occur in min­er­als con­tain­ing many rare-earth ele­ments.
  • In a Decem­ber 2012 report, the Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion Agency said that as yet, the agency has no for­mal strat­e­gy for man­ag­ing and min­i­miz­ing rare-earth mining’s risks.

The Bloomberg arti­cle also points out why they are still being mined, “Rare earth met­als are key to glob­al efforts to switch to clean­er (sic) ener­gy — from bat­ter­ies in hybrid cars to mag­nets in wind tur­bines”.

There are plans quick­ly spread­ing across the coun­try for REE mine explo­rations.  While some point out the grow­ing con­cerns; oth­er orga­ni­za­tions (like the Depart­ment of Defense) are going gang busters to get new REE mines oper­at­ing.