Comments by "Tony Wilson" (@tonywilson4713) on "Sweden's (Not So) Rare Earth Metals" video.

That's a great point. I'm an Australian engineer and work in our mining sector. I followed what Lynas Corp our biggest rare earth producer was doing. I was working out of Perth when they made their announcements for mining and the construction of a processing plant in Malaysia. The plant in Malaysia was built because the Malaysians subsidised it. It was built was going to cost a lot more in Australia because we have environmental laws. The local Malaysians are trying to close the plant because its so bad and there's a lot of arguments going on. When Lynas were pushing their promos for investors they described a lot of what had happened. One of the biggest and richest RE deposits in the world is the hills behind Los Angeles. But it ended up in temporary shutdown because of low market prices, which is very common in the mining industry. The Chinese bought the processing machinery from that mine and took it all too China. That's also not rare in mining. Quite often people buy mines so they can move all the hardware to another mine. There are people who specialise in dismantling mine sites and selling the stuff item by item. So the Americans let the Chinese take the hardware, because they knew full well how worn it was and that the actual reserve in California would still be there for a future time. So Peter's quite right about most f this, but he misses a few details, but then I 'm an engineer and he's not.
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I'm an Australian engineer and work in our mining sector. I followed what Lynas Corp our biggest rare earth producer was doing. I was working out of Perth when they made their announcements for mining and the construction of a processing plant in Malaysia. The plant in Malaysia was built because the Malaysians subsidised it. It was built was going to cost a lot more in Australia because we have environmental laws. The local Malaysians are trying to close the plant because its so bad. When Lynas were pushing their promos for investors they described a lot of what had happened. One of the biggest and richest RE deposits in the world is the hills behind Los Angeles. But it ended up in temporary shutdown because of low market prices, which is very common in the mining industry. The Chinese bought the processing machinery from that mine and took it all too China. That's also not rare in mining. Quite often people buy mines so they can move all the hardware to another mine. There are people who specialise in dismantling mine sites and selling the stuff item by item. So the Americans let the Chinese take the hardware, because they knew full well how worn it was and that the actual reserve in California would still be there for a future time. They could easily build a new plant at that mine and get back into production. Why should they when they can let the Chinese chew through their reserves? So Peter's quite right about most of this, but he misses a few details, but then I 'm an engineer and he's not.
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@Jon Little Yeah but Peter included it in part of his commentary. Peter's pretty good on many many things, but he's occasionally off the mark with some of the details. Like he's wrong about silver being well supplied. A lot of people might not realise it but there's less silver available to mine than gold. Its just been that historically speaking there has been enough silver. In fact ancient Athens rise as an economic power was based on a nearby silver mine and they could mint coins and trade.
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@Jon Little I'm an Australian engineer and work in our mining sector. I followed what Lynas Corp our biggest rare earth producer was doing. I was working out of Perth when they made their announcements for mining and the construction of a processing plant in Malaysia. The plant in Malaysia was built because the Malaysians subsidised it. It was built was going to cost a lot more in Australia because we have environmental laws. The local Malaysians are trying to close the plant because its so bad. When Lynas were pushing their promos for investors they described a lot of what had happened. One of the biggest and richest RE deposits in the world is the hills behind Los Angeles. But it ended up in temporary shutdown because of low market prices, which is very common in the mining industry. The Chinese bought the processing machinery from that mine and took it all too China. That's also not rare in mining. Quite often people buy mines so they can move all the hardware to another mine. There are people who specialise in dismantling mine sites and selling the stuff item by item. So the Americans let the Chinese take the hardware, because they knew full well how worn it was and that the actual reserve in California would still be there for a future time. So Peter's quite right about most f this, but he misses a few details, but then I 'm an engineer and he's not.
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@Jon Little DlCKHEAD Don't preach to me. I work in the mining industry.
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@Jon Little WELL THEN GET YOUR FACTS RIGHT Its not a crime to use your brain before you open your mouth.
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@AUniqueHandleName444 LOOK at the comment that started this thread. Just because you think there is a LOT of something doesn't mean its over or under supplied. I can tell you have never doe a day in mining or manufacturing just by how you speak. Don't panic most people have no idea what it takes to make the world work. Even some of the smartest and wealthiest people can make stupid mistakes when it comes to the world's supply chains. My favorite of not understanding was Jeff Bezos saying he wants to move heavy industry off world so they can take advantage of unlimited solar power and not worry about pollution. A noble and wonderful idea and also utterly ridiculous. One of the iron ore mines I've worked at is Tom Price in Western Australia. It produces 20 mta (million tons per annum). Its a great place to consider because that the math is easy to follow. Good iron ore on average is about 70% iron by weight. So 20Mta of decent iron ore produces about 14 million tons of steel. The space shuttle is (to date) the only vehicle capable of bringing more than a few 100kgs back down and it could bring 14tons back down. 14 million divided by 14 is 1 million. So if Jeff Bezos wants to process that 20mta from Tom Price at his orbital refinery it will take 1 million space shuttle flights to bring back down the 14 million tons of steel. HERE'S THE PROBLEM Australia does around 815mta these days and China (internally at its own mines) does over 1,200 mta and the rest of the world does almost another 1,000 mta. All up world production of iron ore is just over 3,000 mta which would take around 150 million space shuttle flights to bring the steel back down. Even if we made a shuttle 10 times better that would still be 15million flights EACH YEAR. In 30 years the shuttle flew 135 times. Yeah what Jeff Bezos said sounds really good until you do the basic math. And its exactly the same for the rest of what the human race burns through each year and most people have no idea what any of it means.
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