Rare Earth Restrictions To Raise Hard Drive Cost 254
MojoKid writes "Multiple manufacturers in the IT industry have been keeping a wary eye on China's decision to cut back on rare earth exports and the impact it may have on component prices. There have been reports that suggest we'll see that decision hit the hard drive industry this year, with HDD prices trending upwards an estimated 5-10 percent depending on capacity. Although rare earth magnets are only a small part of a hard drive's total cost, China cut exports last year by 40 percent, which drove pricing for these particular components up an estimated 20-30x. China currently controls 97 percent of the rare earth elements market for popular metals like neodymium, cerium, yttrium and ytterbium."
Yet another obvious solution (Score:4, Informative)
The rest of the world (read: US) does not have rare earth mineral (which aren't rare at all, actually) mines because China has a long history of simply lowering prices until all competing mines have gone out of business. China considers that having a monopolistic source for rare earths gives them substantial manufacturing advantages for thousands of products, including florescent lights, medical supplies, and disk drives.
IMHO all of these products, including motors for hybrid vehicles, are too important to allow China to trivial blackmail the rest of the world at their pleasure. All that is needed is the US government to guarantee purchase at some set price and dozens of new mines would open overnight in the US.
Re:Yet another obvious solution (Score:5, Informative)
All that is needed is the US government to guarantee purchase at some set price and dozens of new mines would open overnight in the US.
No, the market price by itself would support opening or reopening [arstechnica.com] of rare earth mines. What you may need is a waiver from the EPA.
Rare earth mining is problematic because even 'high quality' ore is very dilute. Vast quantities of material have to be processed in order to obtain any product. The primary extractive processes aren't all that polluting. The mines use a combination of physical process (magnetic separation, water separation) to concentrate the material to about 50% purity. Getting it from 50% to pure metal, however, requires quite a bit of energy and the use of a number of toxic processes.
One way to solve this problem is to do the primary extraction at the mine site and then transport the more valuable (and now quite a bit more concentrated) ore to a central site which has the technology and supervision to further extract the material at minimal environmental risk. The US DOE (Dept. of Energy) is looking into these sorts of issues. Of course, China need not be bothered by any of this mamby pamby Greeny stuff, so they have a built in competitive advantage.
Re:The obvious first question... (Score:5, Informative)
And about time, too. Prior to that RAM had been expensive forever. 4MB of RAM had been $200 for at least three years before the prices started going down.
Re:The obvious first question... (Score:2, Informative)
"Score:4, Interesting", my arse.
As I said elsewhere [slashdot.org], if you can't even tell us the first thing about the technology the industry will supposedly be transitioning to in 3 or 4 years time, it suggests that you're talking out of your backside.