U.S. Scientists Tap Seawater to Break China's Rare Earth Monopoly
Competition for critical minerals used in the energy, manufacturing, and tech sectors is heating up to be a major geopolitical flashpoint around the world. The supply chains for essential ingredients for clean energy manufacturing like lithium, cobalt, magnesium, and nickel, are dominated by China,
Source: OilPrice.com
―
DW NOTE
China controls 90% of rare earth refining, not because it owns the deposits but because it was willing to take the environmental damage decades ago. Extracting rare earths from seawater at commercial scale has been the mining industry's cold fusion — theoretically possible, economically fictional. Unless the U.S. is prepared to subsidise extraction costs an order of magnitude above Chinese production, this is a press release, not a supply chain.