Rare Earths Leave Toxic Trail to Toyota Prius, Vestas Turbine

Hi Rybold,

Well, its disappointing that China got so greedy to put foriegn competitors out of buisness, that it did not require proper ecological controls on its mines. So, yes, we can expect the cost of these materials to go up.

It seems whenever there is a tremendous price benefit to a Chinese product or service, the whole story includes something other than the lower cost of Chinese labor (thanks to the lower cost of living in China and other reasons). And many times, its some kinda unethical behavior that is getting the price down below 1/2 to 1/3 rd that of western sources.

The world still does use cadmium and yet they did not recover it out of the waste water, leaving a toxic mess. And of course, the uranium, both U235 and U238 are valuable too.

Yes, the Prius uses neodynium magnets, and with each generation of the Prius the size of these magnets has gotten smaller.

But, its really poor journalism to always point to the Prius whenever something like this comes along. When long before the Prius these magnets have been used in a myriad of uses and other motors. These little ear-buds that everybody with an MP3 player has stuck in their ears use the neodynium magnets. Magnetic latches on high end cabinetry often use these very powerful permanent magnets. And then there is Brushless DC motors (BLDC).

BLDC's use a larger mass of neodynium magnets per power output, than the Prius hybrid motor (partially a Brushless DC motor, parially an induction motor). BLDC motors are used in a wide variety of applications. Model airplane motors, computer disk drive spindle motors, computer disk drive head motors, and are favored for machine tool servo drives because of the the high torque at low speeds - which gives greater tool locating accuracy. And of course, we know that the biggest use of these machine tools is to make parts for all kinds of cars and trucks. Let alone every other modern convience. The high energy efficiency clothes washing machines in Japan and other asian nations, are transmission-less, again using the low-speed torque capabilty of the BLDC motor with neodynium magnets to get the needed functionality. These clothes washers are marketed in the USA as well.

If a journalist does not point out the wide uses of a modern material and just zeros in on the Prius use of the material, you gotta think he has an hidden agenda. Yes, the Prius uses modern materials - but its not like these materials just materialized and were applied to a car. They have a life of their own out there in industry and commerce. And in this instance, one has to think the mass of neodynium magnets in discarded computers to date is similar to the mass of the magnets used in the Prius to date. With increased neodynium prices, there should be economic pressure for those computer magnets to be recycled.




An equally appropriate title for this piece would be " Chinese Government Ecological Failures cause toxic trail to Google Server Farms, Apple IPOD Ear Buds and the Washing Machine in your Basement" ...




Interestingly, the Tesla uses a copper squirel cage pure induction motor, without the use of permanent magnets.

 

I guess I'm shocked, shocked to see that the Chinese used a cheap and dirty approach and ruthlessly extinguished competition. Who'd have thought they'd operate that way?

I'd call this the equivalent of the Sudbury nickel mine story, only we're getting to see it in real time. Smelting nickel generates a lot of sulphur dioxide. Sudbury really was that dirty, 50 years ago. There's no doubt that refining rare earths generates a lot of byproducts that need to be dealt with. The Chinese were 50 years out-of-date on environmental protections. But I don't think the process has to be inherently as harmful as currently practiced by the Chinese, any more than the area around every metal smelter has to look like Sudbury did.

What's more troubling, I think, is to question whether this is just a ploy by the Chinese to cash in on their near-monopoly position, or whether this is a genuine reduction in supply from closing the dirtiest mines. Oh, gosh, sorry, for the good of the planet we have to quadruple the price. Could be true. Could be not. In many ways, China is still a centrally planned communist economy. Stupid communists, we can deal with. Shrewd communists, who have you by the short hairs for a critical material -- that's another issue entirely. (OTOH, Russia controlled most of the world's titanium during the cold war, and we still managed to build military aircraft out of it. So it's not like this is unprecedented. According to the Wikipedia, we finally depleted our cold war stockpile of titanium in 2005.)

I looked around for some solid research and came across a Congressional Research Service report http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/natsec/R41347.pdf

This is a significant national defense issue, and among the options being considered is just building a large enough domestic stockpile that we could at least continue weapons production without imports for a few years. Again, plenty of precedent for that.

In the long run it comes down to elasticity of supply. US mines couldn't hack it at $20 a pound while paying US prices and complying with US environmental standards. But at $80? Yeah, I bet they can. Having not bothered to look up the data on that.

Bottom line to me, I think all this means in the long run is that we pay more for rare earths, China may lose its near-monopoly, and we'll have some domestic supply.

 

Neodymium is also used in a lot of speaker magnets as well. So next time someone wants to grill you about rare earth metals in your Prius just point to their car and ask them where all the materials for their speakers, multi-function display, chrome bumpers, electrical systems and catalytic converters came from.

 

I guess everybody forgets about the non-rare earths like coal, which is so dirty and toxic, we've been using it for well over a century, and we still depend on it for over 50% of our electricity generation in the US, let alone China and India. Anyone want to talk about oil? Or how about gold and silver? Or any other metal that's not so rare. I'm not saying we shouldn't be concerned about rare-earths, but let's keep things in perspective.

 

Nothing new here, it's what I would expect from China!!!

 

It seems that many appear to miss the point that the Prius and the Vestas turbine are used in the article as counterpoints to the "dirty" mining methods required to produce the raw materials for these "green" products. These are not products made from lollipops and puppy sneezes. Although the government is obviously culpable in its lack of regulation, I still find it somewhat jarring that a number of comments resemble "those evil chinese!"

 

Well, the Chinese are in fact notorious for their lack of environmental standards. They are certainly trying to improve,but surely you've seen satellite photos of Chinese air pollution? It's particularly relevant here because (see the CBO study cited above) stricter US environmental regulations, starting in the 1980s, were part of what shut down new rare-earths extraction in the US. I.e., China got the business in part because they were more willing to ignore the pollution.

And I'll willingly trade few tens of pounds of dirty rare earths (which will largely be recycled when the vehicle is scrapped), against tons of gasoline not burned by substituting a Prius for a conventional US auto. Roughly how many tons? At a 150,000 mile lifetime, compared to the US fleet average of about 21 MPG, I make that out as 13.5 tons less gasoline.

So it's no different from looking at lifecycle energy costs and realizing that, while the Prius is better than any other fossil-fueled vehicle I can buy here in the US (eh, except possibly some of the newer diesels, I haven't done the math there), once you factor in the energy cost of manufacture, the Prius' advantage is not quite as large as the simple difference in mileage suggests. So the Prius drives pretty clean. Pity it has to use some rare earths that are currently mined in a dirty fashion. But I don't think that shifts the Prius into being a net environmental negative, compared to a conventional car, not by a long shot.

Somebody wants to play neener-neener, your car isn't as green as you thought, fine. Probably true, but so what? It's still greener than a conventional car.

 

Did someone say they waned to see a picture of the Chinese Air Polution.....



Can you say YEEECHHHH, sure ya can, see, I new you could!!

 

To put it into perspective, Prius only use about 30 lbs of rare metals, just 1% of the car weight. I wonder how much the Volt and the Leaf use.

 

One of the things overlooked is that environmentally responsible mining could be more productive than the exploitive mining that has been the standard since mining started.

As a simple example, think of how natural gas was treated as a oil extraction waste product that had to be burned at the site. If we were to rewind history, a whole lot of natural gas burning operations would have been changed to natural gas delivery operations. The extra capital investment would have paid off.

Usually, most mining operations bring up ore that has lots of different valuable metals and minerals that could be valuable. An amazing number of present specialty metals are actual extracted from the waste stream of copper and other large metal mines. The sad part is that mining financiers have a long history of being crafty exploiters. The good news is that it only takes one forward thinking mining visionary to start a dramatic change.

 

Um, yeah, I'd say that's putting it mildly.

I certainly wouldn't say that to anyone who owns half of my country.

 

My point exactly. Why did the writer of this article use the Prius in his title, when its at best only a moderate users of the materials, and there are so many other technologies that use as much, if not greater densities of these materials?

When I see such an agreegous over assignment of guilt like that, it makes it tough to believe anything else in the article....

 

This is yet another illustration that the choices we make in this life about what we buy, and how we live our lives have consequences beyond the up front cost.

It is easy to pick on any and every single thing we do, to the exclusion of others. For example, building and driving a Prius comes at environmental cost(s) that we both don't see and don't pay, at least up front.

The real question is how do our choices compare with alternatives? Does driving a Prius have a smaller net/net environmental foot print than driving some other vehicle? Do my solar panels have a smaller environmental foot print net/net than other energy sources?

To blame the Chinese (although there is plenty of blame that they deserve) is to miss the point. As Pogo said, we have met the enemy and he is us! Rail against the Chinese for this, but to continue to burn coal, (or buy extra stereo speakers) is an attempt assuage our own sense of guilt, and to avoid actually making the lifestyle choices to ultimately use less (fewer) resources in our daily lives.

Icarus

 

what i read is
--
four-story tailing dam containing radioactive waste 12 kilometers (7 miles) from Baotou has been “a serious problem†and polluted rivers, Chen Zhanheng, director of the academic department of the Chinese Society of Rare Earths, said in an interview.
Baotou Steel Group, which operates the Baiyun Ebo mine, has spent 500 million yuan ($75 million) with the local government to relocate five villages after seepage from the dam polluted agricultural land and drinking water, China’s official Xinhua News Agency reported on Nov. 7.
Uranium Disposal
--
so when mining these there is always radioactive radiation?
would the miners not be exposed to deadly radiation?
i dont think thats the case because then that plant needs to be robot operated or just like in a radioactive power plant poeple with special cloths.

 

Mining often produces radioactive materials. The radiation from a coal fired electrical plant is higher than that from a nuke.

Tom

 

I know the LEAF at least uses considerably less given that it uses AC synchronous motor - no neodymium. I believe the Volt is the same - and both use Lithium batteries so no extra nickel mined for their battery packs, either.

Of course, the LEAF weighs a couple hundred pounds more than the Prius - and the Volt even more than that and weight is often a decent indicator of manufacturing expense/resources.

 

I don't know enough about Lithium mining to comment/compare with Nickel mining.

 

This story really only points out the typical pattern of industrialization, when a poor country begins to get rich--any one, not just China. First, they're dirt poor; then, they discover a means to exploit their resources, and do so in the least expensive way possible, which usually means no complicated and expensive mitigation of the unavoidable environmental damage. Then, as the society gets more wealthy, there is both the demand and the means to clean up. We followed this pattern in the USA during the industrial revolution (as other posters pointed out, an example being the flaring of natural gas, which we would now in hindsight love to have captured, both to use as fuel and avoid its impact as a greenhouse gas). The Sudbury mine is another example--horrible at first, cleaner later. The shame is that while we might as a species be able to learn from our collective mistakes, we seem doomed to keep repeating them, almost always for the same economic reasons.

Take a look at US environmental history; before the CWA, CAA and ESA were signed in to law, we had burning rivers (Cuyahoga in Cleveland); air quality far worse virtually everywhere than it is now despite the fact that we now have almost 2x the population driving 3x the distance as in 1970; and our national symbol, the bald eagle, among many species, on the verge of extinction due to (among many things) the profligate use of DDT. Sure, we have lots of problems still, but we have come a long way. It's the typical industrial (and demographic) transition in progress. You can expect China to clean up its act as it gets wealthier, and, yes, prices of these commodities will rise.

What I've written is obviously a gross oversimplification of the whole thing, but not nearly so much so as was pointing fingers at the Prius and at wind turbines. The latter makes for "good press" as they say--nothing better than a 'man bites dog' headline.

~T

 

Dirty operations are not a law of nature. China will get tired of living in their own waste products and start cleaning up their act, just as the West did about 40 years ago.