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China bans export of rare earth processing kit (www.theregister.com)

submitted 10 months ago by L4s@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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China bans export of rare earth processing kit::Beijing also wants its human gene-editing kit – and LiDAR– to stay at home

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[–] BrownianMotion@lemmy.world 38 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Well I was in the mining industry, in a service capacity. The company sold equipment to China mining companies to actually do this stuff, and included analysing and improving mining and mining refinement processes. It didn't matter the mineral/element they were targeting, we had equipment to make it happen.

The tech was never theirs, in a mining (start to finish) capacity. It was already western, they bought it. And like all good chinese companies, they then copied it and made half arsed versions of it. They even had the audacity to buy our parts that were proprietary, that they simply could not make immediately (I assume they worked it out eventually).

Interestingly, Gallium and Germanium were used in our old technologies that we sold to them. Our new tech doesn't need either of those. So any Rare Earth processing they have was derived from what the west had already achieved.

Unfortunately its the access to the actual mined elements that we want to consume that is the problem, its not the tech they stole from us in the first place.

I don't know anything about their Covid-19 gene editing splice kits, but I wouldn't trust their LIDAR. Probably burn you (or the pedestrian in front of you) retinas out!

[–] cheese_greater@lemmy.world 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

What's the deal with magnesium? Do you know if we are we running out or if its due for shortages?

[–] BrownianMotion@lemmy.world 5 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

Well Mg is the 8th most abundant element on the planet (and probably in the universe). So the problem has nothing to do with shortages of it (13% of the Earth, and approx 2% of the Earths crust is Mg in one form or another). If you have ever heard of dolomite, that contains Mg, it is CaMg(CO3)2. Many people have it as a driveway, its used in terrazzo concrete and tons of other things.

So its not a shortage. What I can tell you that 85% of global Mg output is from China. Back in 2021, China was struggling with high coal and electricity prices (both which are needed to refine Mg to 99% after its mined out of the ground and floated). They shut down 50% of the Mg refineries, and then the started those ones back up 2 months later, but only at 40% capacity, until 2022. What we are probably seeing now is that "hiccup" in production rippling through. The other thing I can say is that plants are designed to work to capacity. They cannot usually "just drop the output" It just doesn't work like that, they dont have a "volume knob" to reduce the output to 40%, and when they are running out of design bandwidth, they are HORRIBLY inefficient and wasteful. They would have been starting, run at full capacity, and shut down again, and it makes me shudder thinking about how bad this is. (plants are designed to run with, oh maybe 2 planned, full shutdowns a year!)

China's supply to the world (the 85%) is about 0.84 million metric tons. So, in my opinion, dropping to (probably less than) half that for ~ 4 months is a big deal to supply, and we are still feeling the effects although I suspect we are getting past it now.

[–] cheese_greater@lemmy.world 1 points 10 months ago

Thanks for that, its such an important mineral to me and I had read a couple suggestions elsewhere that seemed topical here :)

[–] redcalcium@lemmy.institute 8 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Rare earths... Is this why China seems to be upping their territorial dispute with Philippine? Because the seafloor on that region is supposed to be rich with rare earths?

[–] Nomad@infosec.pub 7 points 10 months ago

Tetrataenite magnets will have soon solved that dependency and will be massively cheaper. I wouldnt worry about that too much.

[–] autotldr@lemmings.world 2 points 10 months ago

This is the best summary I could come up with:

Chinese state media reports the update includes items Beijing feels should not be freely exported in order to safeguard China's "economic and technological rights and interests."

Analysis from outside China suggests the expanded list bans tech for making rare-earth magnets, mining rare earths, and refining the substances.

China is currently the world's dominant source of the substances, and has long pursued a policy of local value-adding by refining the stuff and/or building it into useful components rather than shipping raw product offshore.

That policy has given Beijing leverage over important supply chains – power it displayed in July 2023 when it restricted the export of Gallium and Germanium, which are required for semiconductor manufacturing.

China's refreshed export ban list also added cell cloning and gene editing tech intended for human use for the first time.

So did LiDAR – a move that looks very much like a tit-for-tat action after US lawmakers recently called for bans on exports so that China can't use American-made tech to build autonomous systems.

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