Mines

From 2001 to 2011 China supplied 90 to 98 percent of rare earths in the global market. The cost of such market dominance, however, has also been large. One mine in Ganzhou City that produces 9% of China’s rare earth required $5.5 billion in clean up cost. Among the waste is radioactive thorium where in one mine 70,000 tons is stored in a large slurry lake. There are illegal rare earth mines all over China and there is no environmental control over them. As China crakes down on these mines the prices are rising quickly. Processing rare earths is a dirty business. Their ore is often laced with radioactive materials such as thorium, and separating the wheat from the chaff requires huge amounts of carcinogenic toxins – sulphates, ammonia and hydrochloric acid. Processing one ton of rare earths produces 2,000 tons of toxic waste; Baotou's rare earths enterprises produce 10m tons of wastewater per year. They're pumped into tailings dams, like the one by Wang's village, 12km west of the city centre. The push to get rid of fossil fuels has spawned many articles on the waste products from fracking but these pale in comparison to what happens at a rare earth mine. These rare earths are essential in the production of our high tech products such as solar panels and wind turbines. If it were not for those profiting from this new technology, information about these mines would be more public. A strong case can be made that environmentalist who oppose fossil fuel are politically motivated as evidenced by their lack of concern about rare earth mining.