Sorry Phil but I am sick & tired of wandering thru myriad levels of misinformation and dross re the RE industry and 99% of it originates in the USA either by self interest or self delusion.
No better example than **fest at the recent Senate committee, that simply resulted the regurgitation of the 111th Congress Critical Materials Bill from 2010.
And everybody knows THIS sad saga:
"
Three years later Cox shut down the Anderson plant and shipped its assembly line to China. Now Cox is presiding over the closure of Magnequench's last factory in the US, the Valparaiso, Indiana plant that manufactures the magnets for the JDAM bomb. Most of the workers have already been fired.
It's clear that Cox and Sextant were acting as a front for some unsavory interests. For example, only months prior to the takeover of Magnequench San Huan New Materials was cited by US International Trade Commission for patent infringement and business espionage. The company was fined $1.5 million. Foreign investment in American high-tech and defense companies is regulated by the Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States (CFIUS). It is unlikely that CFIUS would have approved San Huan's purchase of Magnequench had it not been for the cover provided by Cox and his Sextant Group.
One of Magnequench's subsidiaries is a company called GA Powders, which manufactures the fine granules used in making the mini-magnets. GA Powders was originally a Department of Energy project created by scientists at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Lab. It was spun off to Magnequench in 1998, after Lockheed Martin took over the operations at INEEL.
In June 2000, Magnequench uprooted the production facilities for GA Powders from Idaho Falls to a newly constructed plant in Tianjin, China. This move followed the transfer to China of high-tech computer equipment from Magnequench's shuttered Anderson plant. According to a report in Insight magazine, these computers could be used to facilitate the enrichment of uranium for nuclear warheads.
GA Powders isn't the only business venture between a Department of Energy operation and Magnequench. According to a news letter produced by the Sandia Labs in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Sandia is working on a joint project with Magnequench involving "the development of advanced electronic controls and new magnet technology".
Dr. Peter Leitner is an advisor to the Pentagon on matters involving trade in strategic materials. He says that the Chinese targeted Magnequench in order to advance their development of long-range Cruise missiles. China now holds a monopoly on the rare-earth minerals used in the manufacturing of the missile magnets. The only operating rare-earth mine is located in Batou, China.
"By controlling access to the magnets and the raw materials they are composed of, US industry can be held hostage to Chinese blackmail and extortion," Leitner told Insight magazine last year. "This highly concentrated control-one country, one government-will be the sole source of something critical to the US military and industrial base." Jeffrey St. Clair, The Saga of Magnequench"
http://aheadoftheherd.com/Newsletter/2012/Magnequench-Has-Left-the-Building.html
"By controlling access to the magnets and the raw materials they are composed of, US industry can be held hostage to Chinese blackmail and extortion"
And it is not for lack of SMART people that have worked it out:
"Although rare earth magnet (REM) technology was developed in the
United States, 60 percent of SmCo magnets and 75 percent of NdFeB
magnets are currently fabricated in China. Because SmCo magnets
contain cobalt, they fall under the Specialty Metals Clause (SMC),
which requires the Department of Defense (DoD) to procure them from
domestic sources. This law has preserved the existence of a sole U.S.
producer of SmCo magnets. NdFeB magnets do not currently fall
under the SMC, and they may be acquired for defense applications
from any country. No domestic NdFeB manufacturer remains.
An initial assessment indicates that access to REEs is the principal
bottleneck threatening the supply of high-tech magnets. However,
given that Molycorp reopened the Mountain Pass Mine—the largest
rare earth mine outside China—in California in 2012, the United States
seems simply to lack the engineering skill to turn crude REE oxides
into metal and fabricated products. U.S. companies do not have the
capacity to process the RE (rare earth) oxides into a metal and then
make the metal into magnets. Thus, mining REE oxides is only the first
step in recovering self-sufficiency, and must be paired with the reintro-
duction of metal-making engineering knowledge and fabrication skills."
http://aamweb.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/research-pdf/RemakingAmericanSecurityMay2013_2.pdf
"No domestic NdFeB manufacturer remains."
"United States seems simply to lack the engineering skill to turn crude REE oxides into metal and fabricated products."
Did you read Ucore's myopic submission to the Senate? Of course echoing Jack's stupid "heavies" mantra:
http://ucore.com/ucore-testifies-before-u-s-senate-committee-on-energy-natural-resources
Or SMART people that can lay out a template in a few pages:
https://www.energy.senate.gov/publi...?File_id=6AAC2829-6AF9-461B-80E0-B2771C76A666
"There are special roles for government to play in two specific aspects of research: - Facilitating early-stage research and development (R&D) that is especially prone to underinvestment by the private sector acting alone, for reasons described above, and - Facilitating the commercialization of promising ideas and new knowledge created in early-stage R&D through mechanisms such as public-private partnerships. In a perfect world, any promising new idea developed at a national laboratory or university would be picked up by the private sector. In practice, however, promising ideas often languish because of insufficient communication between basic researchers and commercial developers of new technologies."
Or SMART people doing just that:
https://www.nature.com/articles/srep36212
https://www.ornl.gov/news/3d-printe...conventional-versions-conserve-rare-materials
http://www.economist.com/news/scien...er-and-more-powerful-magnets-magnetic-moments
"And Dr Paranthaman certainly does not lack ambition. He hopes that, one day, his team will be able to
print a steel stator (the stationary part of an electric motor) complete with its rare-earth permanent magnets all in one go."
US currently totally dependent on imports of Chinese NdFeB, 1000/1200t each & every month, despite YEARS of waffle, and not for lack of NdPr precursor, Lynas has got heaps available to the highest bidder.
China has literally thrown tens of thousands of scientists at RE & associated R&D, Japan has no domestic RE supply yet has committed huge investment to NIMS, etc, the US has a few brave souls, many nearing retirement age, battling away in a mix of small business/academic efforts, all the while continually whinging about dependence on China.
BAAM is perhaps one area were the US could leverage remaining capital & IP advantage to negate 20yrs of Chinese investment in NdFeB, can you just imagine the cost efficiency of every US OEM having an onsite BAAM producing proprietary net shape NdFeB from magnetic powders produced from ROW NdPr?
US has it all within reach, but seem no closer to understanding than they were in 1995, is that not stupid?
Lol, InvestorIntel asked me last year to suggest a RE topic that I thought significant, I said go talk to Dr John Ormerod, who crosses the private/public divide and brings a healthy dose of economics to his research, re BAAM NdFeB, they came back with "thanks, but no thanks", guess it wouldn't have suited Tracy's "heavies" sponsors.
http://www.magneticsmagazine.com/conferences/2016/Presentations/MagnetApp_Ormerod.pdf
BAAM from page 29: "MAI (Bunting Magnetics) and ORNL were recently awarded a Cooperative Research and Development award to study the application of additive manufacturing to bonded magnets and systems."
Can only hope they, and others, get the funding/support required.
(20min delay)