one mine responsible for the entire country's output

[gremlin]

the full story is at the link below. want to make electric cars, your going to need to pay china.

Each new 3,000-foot hole bored into the rolling hills of southeastern Nebraska potentially drills away at a troubling Chinese monopoly.

The drills pull up cylinders of rock in search of exotic minerals like neodymium, praseodymium and ytterbium.

Those "rare earths" are critical ingredients of your car's catalytic converter and your computer's flat-screen display, of smartphones and smart bombs. They make your Prius purr and your lasers shine.

In an age of the digital and the virtual, they are the "hard" in hardware.

In 2010, the world mined 133,000 metric tons of rare earths. Of that, all but 3,000 tons came from China. In the United States there is but one mine — in Mountain Pass, Calif. — responsible for the entire country's output.

"There is oil in the Middle East; there is rare earth in China," said Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping in 1992.

The search for rare-earth-rich veins below the corn and soybean fields near Elk Creek could be the beginning of a long U.S. creep back into the mining of ores that form the innards of high technology.

"We could go without this stuff," said Matt Joeckel, a University of Nebraska geologist who also works for the state's Conservation and Survey Division, "if we cared to go back to maybe a 1940s level of technology."

Global demand for rare earths is projected to climb 8 percent a year, while the Chinese have effectively clamped down the growth of supply at zero.

A U.S. Energy Department report last year warned that supplies are "at risk" of disruption. Limits on Chinese exports could increasingly mean that high-tech equipment made with rare earths will only be made in China.

General Electric led a small parade of U.S. manufacturers testifying to Congress this month urging the country to spur its own production.

At stake isn't just the ability to make a better cellphone (tiny magnets make for tiny speakers) or a sharper television picture (the phosphor red in screens comes from europium). The elements are critical to oil refineries and cutting-edge medical care. And rare earths play a growing role in making our modern military more modern.

Without rare earths, satellite-guided bombs would weigh three times as much. A hybrid motor contemplated for a new class of naval destroyer would be in jeopardy. Night-vision goggles would go dark.

Some in Congress have suggested the country's national security is threatened if supplies run too short.

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/b ... cation=rss

[Hoser John]

For the complete story on rare earth see last months national geo or popular science as extensive info,facts and figures and our governments glaring eco stupidity has once again put our country at peril in yet another way---dam'm all to LL-John

[russau]

yep, its the, NOT IN MY BACKYARD policy that will send our Nation further down the tube!

[h20prospector]

yep, its the, NOT IN MY BACKYARD policy that will send our Nation further down the tube!

Unfortunate, but true!

[gremlin]

i would mine my back yard if i could get rich. heck i know i have gas and oil. the big problem is getting the permits for the drilling rig. i could get the coal if i was willing to dig that deep. parts of our town has been under mined. i am shocked it has not all caved in. there is three mine entrances near my house.