Critical Minerals Policy Act (US)

TinWing said:
Oddly enough, underground resources frequently belong to the state in a surprising number of places. In the province of Alberta in Canada, for instance.
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On the other hand, if I am not mistaken, this regulation applied to resources that had already been legally found by, or sold to, private interests
 
TinWing said:
Oddly enough, underground resources frequently belong to the state in a surprising number of places. In the province of Alberta in Canada, for instance.
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Almost every nation state holds sovereignty over underground resources within its jurisdiction (unless those rights have previously been sold or transferred to inidivuals or corporate entities). The USA is an extreme outlier in this regard.
 
09:33

China's rare earth minerals are critical for aerospace industry
​


Jagdip Cheema
Business reporter

It looks like the Trump administration got wind of Beijing’s plan to restrict the export of 25 critical minerals.

On Monday, the US president mentioned he wanted Ukraine to guarantee the supply of more rare earth metals in exchange for Washington’s $300bn (£241bn) support.

Some of these metals, known as "REM", are key components for many electrical products.

On Beijing’s restricted list this morning is tungsten, which is difficult to source and a crucial material for the aerospace industry.

Also on the list is tellurium, which is widely used for solar panels and molybdenum, which is vital for planes.

China says the restrictions will protect its "national security interests", knowing it’s very difficult to find a replacement for its supplies.
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https://www.bbc.com/news/live/c8d90v1m6qvt
 
Apophenia said:
Almost every nation state holds sovereignty over underground resources within its jurisdiction (unless those rights have previously been sold or transferred to inidivuals or corporate entities). The USA is an extreme outlier in this regard.
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IIRC, outside of New England, land deeds only apply to the surface, so somebody in, say, Kentucky doesn't have property rights to the coal (or whatever) beneath their house and is due nothing for its extraction. In New England, land deeds go all the way to the core.
 
Apophenia said:
Almost every nation state holds sovereignty over underground resources within its jurisdiction (unless those rights have previously been sold or transferred to inidivuals or corporate entities). The USA is an extreme outlier in this regard.
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Same as Australia, Govt owns all the rights and can take your land if they find something with little compensation.

"landowners are owners of the surface of the land and have no automatic right to the minerals and petroleum, including unconventional gas, which may be on the land. They do not receive any royalties and cannot refuse access to holders of petroleum exploration or mining permits, licences or leases"

Regards,
 
Not sure it was misguided foreign policy, the US like most countries happily agree with all Chinese demands for doing business with them.

Make in Japan 50 years ago was not a great selling point, then all of a sudden made in Japan was actually very high-quality product.

Go to the late 90's made in China had the same stigma, later of course high-quality products were the result.

US instructions wanted to be doing business in China and gave away the farm to get in there, this was pushed by US corporations who in turn lobbied the Govt.

US wanted everything China made, hence the favoured trade status.

The US just never watched what they were creating.

Regards,
 
Not true. None of it. Do you want to be a billionaire? Then you must demand cheap. Cheap labor and cheap materials. It didn't matter from where. Japan, Taiwan. It didn't matter. You went wherever the cheap was.

Right now, in the UK, British Steel has changed hands. It was bought by China in 2020. Who allowed this? Who profited from this? Now, there is a question as to whether a supply of coal - from AFRICA - will arrive in time to keep the blast furnaces going. I suppose France was not an option.
 
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edwest4 said:
Jingye is listed as the owner from 2020.

https://apnews.com/article/britain-china-steel-jingye-takeover-b3f9937ab3eeeaa3d20113cb3de316b1
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Slight mix up by me. Tata sold the UK assets of what used to be Corus to Greybull in 2016, with those assets continuing as British Steel. In 2019 what was left of those UK assets was bought by Jingye. For a year, the operation was known as Jingye Steel. In 2020 Jingye Steel was, again, restyled British Steel. Tata still owns what's left of the Dutch assets - what used to be Koninklijke Hoogovens (KH), which faces an uncertain future. The current Dutch coalition government has trouble formulating consistent policies at all on any subject, so little hope of succour for KH short of a new, more talented administration in short order. Which is a pity, because KH sits on a pile of steel know-how.

Happy days.
 
What is going to happen is that the Western world will find elsewhere what it needs to survive: fracking instead of humiliation, new technologies that do not require the use of rare earths, recovery of 90% of valuable technical elements from discarded electronic equipment... and learn from past mistakes that there is no such thing as a free meal.
 
Grey Havoc said:
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/...earth-metals-needed-to-fuel-modern-technology
I am a bit sceptical here.
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As well you should be. There have been schemes for decades for using bioengineered crops to extract contaminants from soil. All of this is just a ploy to extract endless research grants to string along dubious bioengineering concepts for decades. Government money is being spent on genetically engineering wheat to make hybridized varieties. Why? So farmers can’t use a fraction of their own harvest as next year’s seed grain but have to buy far more expensive hybridized wheat to continue farming. At best, a lot of biotech is just wasting taxpayer money to create new pointless monopolies. At its worst, you have grant pursuing researchers unscrupulously filing federal grant applications for concepts that amount to science fiction. In general, if you meet a pHd who specializes in dubious biotech, or worse yet, genetic engineering on behalf of agribusiness, walk away. Many research scientists are sociopaths these days.
 
Arjen said:
Water hyacinth, a pest in one place, a way to separate heavy metals from waste water. No bioengineering involved.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pontederia_crassipes#Phytoremediation,_waste_water_treatmentOne example of why we should be serious about preserving species.
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The problem is what do you do with the contaminated water hyacinth after using it to remove naturally occurring arsenic from well water in South Asia? If you use it as an animal feed or a high beta carotene human food, it becomes a bioaccumulator of arsenic in the food supply. If you dry it, burn it as fuel, and use the ashes as a fertilizer, it’s yet another way of concentrating arsenic in crop land. Considering that rice paddies in Bangladesh are more likely to be watered by monsoon rains/flooding than pumped well water, using water hyacinth to purify well water might indirectly be putting arsenic into the Basmati rice supply, which makes it a potential global issue rather than a local drinking water issue.
 
TinWing said:
If you use it as an animal feed
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Simple: don't. It is toxic waste.

TinWing said:
If you dry it, burn it as fuel, and use the ashes as a fertilizer,
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Again: don't use it as fertilizer. Treat it like the hazardous waste it is. There are protocols for that.

Forty-five years ago I was attending a university lecture on how water hyacinth was used in a Nicaraguan water purification complex. During the course the lecture was part of, numerous other biological ways of dealing with toxic substances were presented, fascinating stuff for me, an ecologist in training.
 
Industry analysts hedging development new method Titanium production to hopefully vastly lower price. Normally this is done using expensive Kroll process usign toxoc chlorine and explosove magnesium. The process similar to Aluminum making Electrolytic reduction. Where titanium oxide mixed into a calcium salt bath, and current applied the titanium attracts to cathode and calcium attracts to the oxygen. The result is titanium sponge 1000042611.png

1000042610.jpg
 

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