I think the value of the rare earths content in the black sands is dubious. They may contain exotic elements, but they are not cost effective to recover.
A good example is the gold content in sea water. It's there, it can be measured, but it can't be extracted economically. Otherwise, everybody would be doing it.
To the best of my knowledge, "our neighbor" has not reported any black sand rare earth recoveries despite having made a lot of noise about them for 2 or 3 years now. Surely if they contained the 3-4,000 bucks per ton value they said they contained they would have recovered SOMETHING by now. Far as I know they haven't even reported a single ounce of gold recovered either.
I think the value of the black sands will be realized by the further recovery of the fine gold we didn't capture the first time around. John said there might be as much fine "flour" gold in the black sands as the bigger stuff we are currently recovering.
Of course I hope there are additional economic rare earths recoveries possible in the black sands, but in the absence of any ACTUAL recoveries, I think it's just as likely "our neighbor" has taken advantage of the rare earths craze and used them as a marketing tool. GL CC
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