KAT Exploration Inc (KATX)

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The Battle Over Rare Earth Metals
Tuesday, 12 January 2010 00:00 Jack Lifton

This is an incredible and truly inconvenient truth. It should also be noted that Canada also has large and high grade deposits under development

The theme of the story was that the levels of pollution in the Bayanobo region of China where most of its and the world’s production of the rare earth metals takes place, are now so high that industry must be reformed if new mineral production is to continue.

Even existing mineral production may be in danger. The necessity for industry restructuring seems to be the case. It is obvious that in order to clean up the damage from decades of mining and refining operations, China’s rare earth industry must slow or even stop temporarily its activities. This must be carried out in order to assess the environmental impact of past mining operations and then to plan strategies for mitigating future environmental damage. Such steps would allow China to resume and perhaps ultimately to enlarge its production of the rare earth elements.

http://www.ensec.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=228:the-battle-over-rare-earth-metals&catid=102:issuecontent&Itemid=355

By way of example, according to a December New York Times article two elements, “dysprosium and terbium, are in especially short supply, mainly because they have emerged as the miracle ingredients of green energy products. Tiny quantities of dysprosium can make magnets in electric motors lighter by 90 percent, while terbium can help cut the electricity usage of lights by 80 percent. Dysprosium prices have climbed nearly sevenfold since 2003, to $53 a pound. Terbium prices quadrupled from 2003 to 2008, peaking at $407 a pound, before slumping in the global economic crisis to $205 a pound

For example, China has announced that over the life of the next two five-year plans, 2010-2020, it will construct some 133 gigawatts of wind turbine generated electricity. This is likely to dramatically impact the supply of the rare earth metal neodymium. (it could take up to half a ton of neodymium to make a permanent magnet for a very large wind turbine) If China chooses to go with the wind turbine generator design that uses a rare earth permanent magnet based on neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium, and terbium, (the last two of which are among the rarest of the rare earth metals) then this will require that China increase its current production levels in order to meet additional demand. The alternative is that China substantially reduce its exports of the required metals under the terms of present production levels. Modern, smaller, high performance and high efficiency electric motors and generators are also increasingly dependent on the unique properties of these metals.

Transportation alternatives such as electric cars, electricity generating technologies such as wind turbines, communications’ technologies, such as iPhones, and even medical equipment such as X-ray machines and MRI machines all require rare earths for their manufacture.

Getting onto the green road is not the same as staying on it