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by Animats
2 days ago
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Right. Since the 1980s, the Mountain Pass mine has gone bankrupt and shut down twice. Not because they did anything wrong, but because the prices of rare earths temporarily dropped below their production cost. Here's a general rare earth price graph.[1] It's tough having a business with fixed costs with a 10:1 price variation. MP Minerals is now getting subsidies from both the U.S. Government and General Motors, both of which want a reliable source of magnets outside China.
There are other sites in the US and Australia which could be developed if it was profitable. (Operating in Greenland, per Trump, is silly. The costs of operating anything big there are very high. No roads, no infrastructure, only a few months a year of ice-free construction time...) [1] https://www.mining.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/image-9-76... |
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