Lead
"The discovery of huge rare earth deposits on the continent is enough for mankind to spend hundreds of years."
Nowadays, with the expansion of the strength of the world and the growth of national strength, the plundering and exploitation of the world's limited resources are becoming more and more obvious, and rare earths, as one of the world's most precious non-renewable resources, have received widespread attention from various countries.
Not long ago, Japan announced the discovery of a giant rare earth mine, which contains enough reserves for the entire human race for 730 years, and this news immediately attracted global attention.
But what is puzzling is that rare earths have been a rare resource in the world for so many years, but why has Japan discovered such a rich rare earth mineral, but no one has mined it under everyone's noses?
So why aren't these rare earths mined immediately?
1. Seabed rare earth mines.
The discovery of this giant rare earth mine by the Japanese is not new, in fact, this rare earth has long been a major strategic resource for Japan, and it is known as the rare earth resource on the seabed.
This rare earth is a mineral with abundant reserves, and it is called "seafloor rare earth" because it is a mineral that occurs in the earth's crust on the seafloor.
According to the Japanese government's investigation and research on this mineral resource in 2006, it was found that the reserves of this seabed rare earth resource are very huge, about 130 million tons, most of which are light rare earths, and Japan alone has about 45 million tons, equivalent to half of the world's total rare earths.
This also means that Japan will be able to meet its needs for a long time to come without importing rare earths from abroad.
However, despite the fact that Japan has such a large amount of rare earth mines, their location makes them more difficult to mine.
Seabed rare earths are minerals that appear on the seabed, and the environment and geological conditions of the seabed have become more complex, which determines that the difficulty of mining them will become greater.
As a rare mineral, people tend to come into contact with rare earth minerals both surface and underground, and they can be relatively small in scale.
Unlike seafloor rare earths, which can be mined by traditional methods, they are not available in traditional ways because they are located on the seabed.
Therefore, the Japanese have focused their attention and means on how to mine the rare earths on the seabed, and with the scientific and technological strength of the Japanese, they now have the rare earth resources on the seabed, but they have not mined them.
The reason why this is the case in Japan is first of all because the technology used by people to mine rare earths is not very mature.
Second, the seabed rare earth mining technology is not mature.
Most of the surface and underground rare earth ores are found in ore bodies, and many of them are open, which allows people to use simple equipment and tools, such as excavators and explosives, to mine ore bodies from the surface.
Sometimes, if the depth of the ore body is large, people will also use underground mining to unload and transfer the ore body from it.
These mining methods are all relatively traditional mining methods, and the key lies in the ore body, which can be mined in relatively simple ways as long as the ore body remains unchanged.
However, seabed rare earth minerals are different, they do occur in the ore body, but due to the special environment of the seabed, the environment and geographical location of the seabed have changed.
Most of the ore bodies where the rare earth ores are located are flooded by seawater and sediment, and these ore bodies have no openings, making it impossible for people to mine them directly.
In addition, in the depths of the seabed, the environmental and geographical conditions are also relatively complex, with large water pressure, large temperature differences, and geological activities on the seabed, which will affect the rare earth ore body, and sometimes the rare earth ore body will be eroded.
Therefore, it is difficult to remove rare earth ore bodies from the seabed, and the location and distribution of these ore bodies are difficult to detect.
Although people can use some means and tools, such as sonar, deep submersibles, etc., to detect rare earth ore bodies, after all, the environment and geological conditions of the seabed are complex, which determines that the difficulty of mining rare earths on the seabed is much higher than that of rare earths on the surface and underground.
Therefore, the current seabed rare earth mining technology is not mature and perfect, can only meet some basic needs, for how to better mine the seabed rare earth, there is no particularly clear answer.
On the other hand, for the mining of the seabed, it also involves the protection of the ocean and the maintenance of the environment, with the attention of people to the marine environment, how to mine rare earth minerals at the same time, but also to keep the marine environment from being too damaged, is also a concern of people at present.
Therefore, in order to avoid irreversible damage to the marine environment, the Japanese government has decided not to mine seabed rare earths for the time being.
On the other hand, people's attitudes towards rare earth mining are also changing, and with the development of society, people are paying more and more attention to environmental protection and sustainable development.
3. The importance of rare earth resources.
Rare earth is a very important strategic resource, they play a very important role in industrial production, today, rare earth has been widely used in various fields, such as oil, coal and other energy, new energy, materials, fertilizers, medicine, pharmaceuticals, etc., all need to use rare earths.
In the fields of electronics, information, machinery, aviation, aerospace, military and other fields, rare earth is also an indispensable important material, especially in the high-tech field, the role of rare earth is more significant.
For example, rare earth minerals can be used as battery materials, electronic materials, magnetic materials, etc., and their magnetic and electrical conductivity are incomparable to ordinary materials, as well as the optical, thermal and other properties of rare earth elements, which are not possessed by ordinary materials.
Moreover, rare earths can also be used in metallurgy, nuclear industry and environmental protection, and also have important application value in many other fields.
It can be said that rare earths have been deeply integrated into all aspects of our lives, and they play a very important role in the country's economic development and the upgrading of the industrial structure.
It is precisely because rare earth minerals are so important that all countries are actively looking for rare earth resources, especially those countries that are poor in rare earths.
In the world, the reserves of rare earth ores are also relatively small, although their locations are relatively scattered, but the total reserves are not very large.
At present, the world's most important source of rare earths is China, whose rare earth reserves account for 70% of the world's total rare earth reserves, which also makes China the world's largest producer and exporter of rare earths.
In the 60s of the 20th century, the United States was also the world's largest producer of rare earths, but later due to the drastic environmental protection policy, the mining and production costs of rare earths increased greatly, so it turned to import rare earths to China.
In recent years, with the restriction of China's rare earth exports and the policy of rare earth protection, the United States has also begun to re-emphasize the mining of rare earth minerals, and is also exploring rare earth resources in China, but due to the short time, so far little has been achieved.
In addition, Australia, Russia, Canada, Uzbekistan and other countries are also rich in rare earth resources, but because of their remote geographical location, people are more cautious about mining them, so as not to cause a waste of resources.
Nowadays, the reserves of rare earth ores are also very limited, if they are blindly mined, it will inevitably cause excessive consumption of resources, therefore, people should be aware of this, not only to protect rare earth resources, but also to develop alternative resources and improve the efficiency of resource utilization.
epilogue
In the development of society, people need to find this balance, not only to develop the economy, but also to protect the environment and achieve sustainable development.
In addition, the reason why Japan did not immediately mine the seabed rare earth ore may not only be due to technical and economic reasons, but also due to international political factors.
Rare earth resources play an important role in geopolitics, and countries are competing over them, which may be another reason why Japan has been slow to exploit them.
In the future, with the development of science and technology, there may be more advanced seabed mining techniques, which can make the mining of seabed rare earth resources more feasible.
The possibilities are endless.