APP - Rare earths are vital, and China owns them all

evince said:
That is the reason you look into how to recycle different elements.

There are many things that were Impossible in the past that we are now capable of doing.

In the search for answers there is always a benifit and it is often not exactly what you expected to find.
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Yes but as is always the case with recycling, it must be cost affective. That's not always the case.
 
evince said:
Recycling those elements will take all the power from China.

Recycling is the answer to keeping ourselves free of other countries lockup on any needed resources.

Funny how some just hate the word.
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the prius battery needs replacing at approximately 120,000 miles...just out of warranty
 
evince said:
how do you make it cost effective without investing time in reseach?
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That's driven by economic demand. The cost benefit for recycling has to be there or there's no incentive to do such research and even if the economic incentive is there, that's no gaurentee that a viable recycling process can be developed. Look at the problem with recycling tires for example.
 
Which is why corporate investesting often fails us in long term planning and supporting science driven investigations needs to be a priority of any society.
 
Mott the Hoople said:
Really? And when was the last time you were not able to go buy gas at the pumps cause OPEC was strangling the market?

Besides, your comparing apples to oranges. We have the rare earth reserves, we lack processing facilities. If China squeezes to hard, then the profit incentive would be there to create our own processing facilities. China might be able to significantly influence the market but there's a limit which they cross they would undermine their own position. Why would they do that? Again, much ado about nothing.
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I'm not comparing apples to oranges, Watermark is. And you're still pwned. OPEC has been able to cause gas lines, and could go further than that.
 
It's a boogie. In order for China to strangle the supply of REMs, they'd have to stop exporting manufactured goods using REMs. There is no way they're going to shut down that sector of their own economy to gain a slight - and temporary - advantage in one type of natural resource.
 
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