<story><title>The dystopian lake filled by the world’s tech lust</title><url>http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150402-the-worst-place-on-earth?p=1</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>Animats</author><text>The Mountain Pass, California rare earth mine, once the largest source of rare earths in the world, was shut down in 2002.  After a series of toxic spills, and price competition from China, it wasn&amp;#x27;t economic to operate any more.&lt;p&gt;Now it&amp;#x27;s back on line, after a huge rebuild.[1]  It wasn&amp;#x27;t easy to satisfy California environmental controls, but they did it. Even the Sierra Club is reasonably satisfied.[2] Rather than tailings ponds, they have a large back-end processing operation which gets the water out of the tailings. They can then reuse the water (a big deal during the drought), and they get a solid waste material out, which is essentially what was in the ground to begin with, minus the good stuff.&lt;p&gt;A few years ago, China tried cranking up the export price of rare earths, and refused to export them to Japan at all.  So users of rare earths came up with alternatives, and production restarted in the US, Australia, and Canada.  Rare earths aren&amp;#x27;t all that rare worldwide, it turns out. With demand down and production up, the price tanked.&lt;p&gt;Molycorp, which owns the US mine, is having terrible financing problems, but the mine and all the associated gear are up and running, producing about 4,000 metric tons a year of rare earth materials.  Rare earth supply is now mostly a solved problem.  China&amp;#x27;s mining operation remains a mess, but that&amp;#x27;s not inherent in rare earth mining any more.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=id8hDUT5nHQ&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.youtube.com&amp;#x2F;watch?v=id8hDUT5nHQ&lt;/a&gt;
[2] &lt;a href=&quot;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.desertreport.org&amp;#x2F;wp-content&amp;#x2F;uploads&amp;#x2F;2011&amp;#x2F;03&amp;#x2F;DR_Spring2011.pdf&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;http:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.desertreport.org&amp;#x2F;wp-content&amp;#x2F;uploads&amp;#x2F;2011&amp;#x2F;03&amp;#x2F;DR_Sp...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>
<story><title>The dystopian lake filled by the world’s tech lust</title><url>http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150402-the-worst-place-on-earth?p=1</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>devindotcom</author><text>Not to sound overly cynical, but this looks like another &amp;quot;naive reporter discovers how the sausage is made&amp;quot; story. It&amp;#x27;s always good to get some perspective on these things, but to this forum it doesn&amp;#x27;t seem like it will be a revelation. Tech manufacturing is an enormous and enormously dirty industry. We&amp;#x27;re all complicit, of course.&lt;p&gt;Separately, I&amp;#x27;m not sure I like his usage of &amp;quot;dystopian.&amp;quot;</text></comment>