Mining Helium-3 on the Moon is Nonsensical

In recent years the subject of sending humans back to the Moon has largely gone mute, initially overwhelmed by talk of NASA’s Asteroid Redirect Mission, and more recently by the agency’s media drumbeat about sending humans to Mars. Because of this, there is also subsequently very little talk about a weird bit of magical thinking that often accompanies discussions of humans on the Moon: mining the Moon for helium-3 to power nonexistent fusion reactors. But that magical thinking still lurks, like a small burning ember in a burned-down house, waiting for a chance to flare up again. Last month at the Mars Society convention in Washington, DC, the subject of helium-3 briefly sparked once more, brought up by one of its longtime proponents, Apollo astronaut Harrison Schmitt.

Schmitt is probably the smartest astronaut who walked on the Moon, and certainly the most educated. He is a Harvard-trained geologist who NASA admitted to the Apollo program under pressure from Congress, and his presence undoubtedly increased the scientific return of his Apollo 17 mission as well as the entire program considering his role in training astronauts on earlier missions. Schmitt can still deliver graduate-level geology lectures if given the opportunity. But he also embraces the dubious scientific and engineering idea of mining helium-3 on the Moon for use in fusion reactors.

The last big flurry of articles and publications, and even a congressional hearing, about helium-3 fusion occurred in 2007, when NASA was still planning to send humans to the Moon. NASA did not drive that discussion then, but rather Schmitt and a few others. But even eight years later helium-3 still pollutes the environment of discussions about human spaceflight, despite its very nebulous assumptions.

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America's Sedimentary Phosphate Deposits may be key to Global Rare Earth Element Crisis

Rare Earth Elements in Sedimentary Phosphate Deposits: Solution to the Global REE Crisis?

Authors:

Emsbo et al

Abstract:

The critical role of rare earth elements (REE), particularly heavy REE (HREE), in high-tech industries has created a surge in demand that is quickly outstripping known global supply and has triggered a worldwide scramble to discover new sources. The chemical analysis of 23 sedimentary phosphate deposits (phosphorites) in the United States demonstrates that they are significantly enriched in REE. Leaching experiments using dilute H2SO4 and HCl, extracted nearly 100% of their total REE content and show that the extraction of REE from phosphorites is not subject to the many technological and environmental challenges that vex the exploitation of many identified REE deposits. Our data suggest that phosphate rock currently mined in the United States has the potential to produce a significant proportion of world’s REE demand as a byproduct. Importantly, the size and concentration of HREE in some unmined phosphorites dwarf the world’s richest REE deposits. Secular variation in phosphate REE contents identifies geologic time periods favorable for the formation of currently unrecognized high-REE phosphates. The extraordinary endowment, combined with the ease of REE extraction, indicates such phosphorites might be considered as a primary source of REE with the potential to resolve the global REE (particularly for HREE) supply shortage.

India to Increase Rare Earth Element/Metal Supply by 5%

India is commissioning a plant to produce up to 5,000 tonnes of rare earths a year, a state company official told Reuters, which could help it contribute about 5 percent to the global supply of the metals used in cameras, cars, iPhones and wind turbines.

India's emergence as a supplier, albeit a small one, would be good news for countries like Japan, which up to now have had to rely mostly on China for rare earths production.

The plant in the state of Odisha would produce rare earth oxides by processing monazite from beach sand, said S. Surya Kumar, head of the Rare Earths Division for state-owned Indian Rare Earths, part of the Department of Atomic Energy.

Up to half of the output would be processed into products like lanthanum and cerium, which are used in camera lenses and glass polishing agents, Kumar said.

Kumar did not give a timeline for when rare earth oxides will start flowing from the Odisha plant.

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Is North Korea Exporting Rare Earth Elements to China?

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American Space Technology for Exploring Resource Opportunities in Deep Space (ASTEROIDS) Act of 2014: a Bill to Protect Space Property Rights

Rep. Bill Posey, R-Florida announced on Thursday that he was introducing a bill along with Rep, Derek Kilmer, D-WA called the American Space Technology for Exploring Resource Opportunities in Deep Space (ASTEROIDS) Act of 2014. The act is designed to protect the private property rights for entities mining asteroids and to otherwise encourage asteroid mining. The bill is in apparent reaction to efforts by companies like Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries to locate and mine Earth approaching asteroids for their resources.

The crucial part of the short piece of legislation states that the resources mined from an asteroid would be the property of the entity undertaking the operation. This language gets around the provision of the Outer Space Treaty that states that states are forbidden to establish national sovereignty over celestial bodies, which would be a perquisite to the United States allowing a private entity to own an asteroid. It rather grants mineral rights to the asteroid, something that the treaty does not mention. This is no enforcement mechanism in the event of a dispute with another country, however.

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Greenland Welcomes or at Least Embraces Global Warming

Sofus Frederiksen lives in a small river valley above a sheltered stretch of Greenlandic fjord, where in the winter slabs of floating ice fuse into a pale blue sheet. Frederiksen, a 49-year-old farmer of Danish and Inuit descent, built his house himself, and his 10 horses, 95 cows, and about 500 sheep make his farm one of the most productive businesses in the small town of Narsaq. From his kitchen, where pictures of his grandchildren cover the refrigerator, a window frames a 2,300-foot mountain, a steep slope of black rock and white snow. There, an Australian company called Greenland Minerals & Energy (GDLNF) hopes to build an open-pit mine, extracting uranium and what it says is one of the largest deposits of rare earth metals in the world. Like many in Greenland, the Frederiksen family thinks it’s a great idea. “We know that we have to move, and we have accepted it,” says Frederiksen’s wife, Suka. “We are only two people here against hundreds of jobs working in the mine. We tell ourselves that we have to give something for the Greenlandic people.”

The mountain is a reminder of the choices Greenland faces as its government scrambles to energize an economy heavily dependent on Denmark, the country that colonized it in the early 1700s. Narsaq also happens to be the birthplace of the country’s prime minister, and she is a strident supporter of mining. A native Greenlander with a broad face, bright eyes, and a smile that breaks like sunlight, Aleqa Hammond, 48, is the first woman to occupy the island’s highest office. Elected just over a year ago, she came to power on promises to mine the country and put it on the path to independence. “We have mountains with uranium content,” she says. “We have mountains with gold. We have mountains with iron. We have mountains with zinc and lead. We have mountains with diamonds. We have mountains that are there for us to use and bring prosperity to our people.”

Greenland is one of the few countries cheering global warming, or at least openly making the most of it. The melting of its ice cap, which covers 80 percent of the island, is a major contributor to a rise in global sea levels. By the end of the century, these levels may climb as much as 2 meters—enough to drown island nations such as Kiribati and the Maldives and flood coastal cities around the world. The Arctic, where a few degrees of temperature can mean the difference between frozen and flowing, is one of the areas where the impacts of global greenhouse gas emissions are most evident. Traditional Inuit hunters are finding it increasingly difficult to carry out their trade. The whale migration has shifted. The ice on which they ride their dog sleds is often thin or absent. Storms and waves once held back by slabs of ice are eroding the coastline, pulling houses into the sea.

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Rare Earth Element Deposits in New Mexico

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American Traction in Overturning Chinese Dominance in Rare Earth Metal Mining & Refining

An hour southwest of St. Louis, tucked away behind a tree line off Route EE, is the Pea Ridge Mine, once a place where workers pulled iron out of the ground. You could almost miss it driving by, but this seemingly unremarkable place has remarkable potential for the region and the country.

This dormant mine holds a deposit of something that lies at the heart of our increasingly high-tech world: rare-earth elements, used in everything from cellphones to missile systems to hybrid cars. The Missouri mine is one of the few places in the world where such an abundant deposit of rare earths has been found. But nothing about rare earths is simple.

Rare-earth metals are 15 elements with the atomic numbers 57 to 71 on the periodic table, as well as scandium and yttrium. The metals themselves amount to a meager $3 billion global industry, but they are essential in the production of $5 trillion worth of products.

Due to their scarcity and huge value, rare earths — and thus by extension the Pea Ridge Mine — lie at the heart of a complex geopolitical fight. It is a contest pitting China and the United States, and just about every other powerful nation on earth, into a new Great Game of diplomacy, business brinksmanship and a fight to dominate the market for these scarce elements. At the moment, China is winning. Over the past few decades, it has bought up nearly the entire supply chain of rare-earth metals and the products they’re used for, leaving other powers struggling to catch up.

In the U.S., however, some progress has been made in the development of domestic rare-earth supplies to regain some competitive edge against China. That’s the opportunity Jim Kennedy saw when he discovered the rare-earth deposit in what he thought was just an investment in an old mine.

“I bought an iron mine, and that ended up having an unbelievable rare-earth deposit,” he said.

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Are Greenland's Natural Resources Insufficient to Cover the Cost of Independence?

Greenland's mineral wealth will not be enough to pay for independence and the country will remain dependent on Danish subsidies for the forseeable future, a study argued on Friday.

"Even though natural resource exploitation will become important for Greenland, it is not enough," Minik Rosing, a geology professor at the University of Copenhagen and the chairman of the University of Greenland, said in a statement.

"Because of its economy and its demographics, Greenland will need to employ a range of different measures, and that includes a block grant for the foreseeable future," he added.

Denmark's yearly block grant accounts for nearly half the Arctic territory's economy, with the remainder coming mostly from fisheries.

The huge island territory has pinned its hopes on its reserves of mineral resources including uranium, rare earths and oil.

But for Greenland to be able to rely on mining, 12 large-scale mines would have to be operational by 2040, and five of them would have to be in operation at any one time, the report said.

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Rare Earth Metal Find in North Korea Could be Six Times Larger Than China's Combined Deposits

A recent geological study indicates North Korea could hold some 216 million tons of rare earths, minerals used in electronics such as smartphones and high definition televisions.

If verified, the discovery would more than double global known sources and be six times the reserves in China, the market leader.

British Islands-based private equity firm SRE Minerals Limited announced the study results in December, along with a 25-year deal to develop the deposits in Jongju, northwest of the capital, Pyongyang.

The joint venture, called Pacific Century Rare Earth Mineral Limited, is with state-owned Korea Natural Resources Trading Corporation.

The potential bonanza could offer the isolated and impoverished North a game-changing stake in the rare earths industry.

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How Many Near Earth Asteroids are Worth Mining? Not Many...

How Many Ore-Bearing Asteroids?

Author:

Martin Elvis:

Abstract:

A simple formalism is presented to assess how many asteroids contain ore, i.e. commercially profitable material, and not merely a high concentration of a resource. I apply this formalism to two resource cases: platinum group metals (PGMs) and water. Assuming for now that only Ni-Fe asteroids are of interest for PGMs, then 1% of NEOs are rich in PGMs. The dearth of ultra-low delta-v (less than 4.5 km s−1) NEOs larger than 100 m diameter reduces the ore-bearing fraction to only ∼1 in 2000 NEOs. As 100 m diameter NEOs are needed to have a value ≥US$1 B and the population of near-Earth objects (NEOs) larger than 100 m diameter is ∼20,000 (Mainzer et al., 2011) the total population of PGM ore-bearing NEOs is roughly 10. I stress that this is a conservative and highly uncertain value. For example, an order of magnitude increase in PGM ore-bearing NEOs occurs if delta-v can as large as 5.7 km s−1. Water ore for utilization in space is likely to be found in ∼1/1100 NEOs. NEOs as small as 18 m diameter can be water-ore-bodies because of the high richness of water (∼20%) expected in ∼25% of carbonaceous asteroids, bringing the number of water-ore-bearing NEOs to ∼9000 out of the 10 million NEOs of this size. These small NEOs are, however, hard to find with present surveys. There will be ~18 water-ore-bearing NEOs greater than 100 m diameter. These estimates are at present highly imprecise and sensitive to small changes, especially in the maximum delta-v allowed. Nonetheless the low values found here mean that much improved determinations of each of the terms of the formalism are urgently needed. If better estimates still find small numbers of ore-bearing NEOs then thorough surveys for NEA discovery and, especially, characterization are needed. Strategies for the two classes are likely to be different.

Greenland Repeals Ban on Mining Radioative Minerals

Greenland has voted to axe a long-enduring ban on mining for radioactive materials, reopening the market to uranium and rare earths mining.

Yesterday’s parliamentary vote passed the decision by a staggeringly close 15-14 votes.

According to local newspaper Sermitsiaq, Prime Minister Aleqa Hammond said in the debate: “We cannot live with unemployment and cost of living increases while our economy is at a standstill. It is therefore necessary that we eliminate zero tolerance towards uranium now.”

The ban has previously prevented the extraction of some major rare earth deposits, because they are connected to radioactive materials.

Greenland is believed to have enough rare earths to fulfil one quarter of global demand – currently fulfilled 95% by China – over the next half-century.

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Rio Tinto Has Embraced the Robopocalypse

Is China Concerned About Greenland's Potential for Mining Rare Earth Elements?

China has long enjoyed its supremacy in the rare earths field but lately this position has been challenged by an often over-looked, massive island nation: Greenland.

The Asian giant produces 95% of the world's Rare Earth Elements (REE) supply - a fact that has caused much unease among US law makers - and has never had to face any real contenders, until now. Late last year the industry was buzzing with rumours that Greenland could hold enough of these metals to satisfy one-quarter of global demand over the next 50 years.

A recent visit by Chinese President Hu Jintao to Denmark – Greenland's official hegemon – caused some analysts to speculate that the People's Republic may be getting a little antsy over the country's valuable deposits, Ice News reports.

According to European Commission data, Greenland has "especially strong potential in six of the fourteen elements on the EU critical raw materials list."

So Much for the Living With Nature Myth: Earliest Lead Pollution is From North America 8,000 Years Ago

Humans began contributing to environmental lead pollution as early as 8,000 years ago, according to a University of Pittsburgh research report.

The Pitt research team detected the oldest-discovered remains of human-derived lead pollution in the world in the northernmost region of Michigan, suggesting metal pollution from mining and other human activities appeared far earlier in North America than in Europe, Asia, and South America. Their findings are highlighted on the cover of the latest issue of Environmental Science & Technology.

"Humanity's environmental legacy spans thousands of years, back to times traditionally associated with hunter-gatherers. Our records indicate that the influence of early Native Americans on the environment can be detected using lake sediments," said David Pompeani, lead author of the research paper and a PhD candidate in Pitt's Department of Geology and Planetary Science. "These findings have important implications for interpreting both the archeological record and environmental history of the upper Great Lakes."

The University of Pittsburgh research team—which included, from Pitt's Department of Geology and Planetary Science, Mark Abbott, associate professor of paleoclimatology, and Daniel Bain, assistant professor of catchment science, along with Pitt alumnus Byron A. Steinman (A&S '11G)—examined Michigan's Keweenaw Peninsula because it is the largest source of pure native copper in North America. Early surveys of the region in the 1800s identified prehistoric human mining activity in the form of such tools as hammerstones, ladders, and pit mines.

The team from the Department of Geology and Planetary Science investigated the timing, location, and magnitude of ancient copper mining pollution. Sediments were collected in June 2010 from three lakes located near ancient mine pits. They analyzed the concentration of lead, titanium, magnesium, iron, and organic matter in the collected sediment cores—finding distinct decade- to century-scale increases in lead pollution preserved from thousands of years ago.

"These data suggest that measurable levels of lead were emitted by preagricultural societies mining copper on Keweenaw Peninsula starting as early as 8,000 years ago," said Pompeani. "Collectively, these records have confirmed, for the first time, that prehistoric pollution from the Michigan Copper Districts can be detected in the sediments found in nearby lakes."

By contrast, reconstructions of metal pollution from other parts of the world, such as Asia, Europe, and South America, only provide evidence for lead pollution during the last 3,000 years, said Pompeani.

Another American Rare Earth Element Mine?

An Alaska company has set its sights on developing a rare-earth element mine by 2016 on southeast Prince of Wales Island.

Ucore Rare Metals' proposed Bokan Mountain Project could begin construction in 2014 with the proper permits, The Ketchikan Daily News reports.

CEO Jim McKenzie said China has dominated the rare-earth elements market, and the Alaska project gives the U.S. a chance to keep up. Rare-earth elements are the types of elements used in technology such as radar systems, satellites, renewable energy systems and consumer products like cell phones and TVs.

"We view the rare-earth space as sort of a race," McKenzie said. "Obviously, China is withdrawing product from international markets fairly aggressively, and the U.S. needs this product."

The company estimates that building a mine and processing facility would cost about $221 million and take about 21 months to complete. Based on curr ent resource estimates, the mine could operate for 11 years with a processing rate of 1,500 tons per day.

The other mine being Mountain Pass, California.  The company website is a bit, hmm.

The Most Expensive Part Is Not the First Two Steps

I'm working on a lunar resources chimera post like what James did for us about He-3.