In America and a lot of western countries , it would appear that...

In America and a lot of western countries , it would appear that "start up rare earth mines" are prohibitive because of the perceived radio activity associated with thorium.
As I understand it, ALK has overcome all Australian and State governmental requirements in that regard and we are ready to go.
But as they say "it's all about the money honey".
And IMO we do not want it from China!
jusfinkin

	Column 1	Column 2
1	Jeff Schechtman:	Where else in the world are these materials available?
2	Victoria Bruce:	Well, that’s an interesting question, Jeff, because the material, they’re called rare earth elements, but they’re actually everywhere. You find tons of them associated with other mining projects — phosphate mining, titanium mining, iron mining. The problem with getting them out of the ground in a lot of the western countries is that they’re associated with thorium. And thorium is considered mildly radioactive and therefore could be a weapon product. It’s not, and it has never been, but because it was classified as that there’s a lot of regulations against it. So it makes it very hard to make it profitable for a mine to mine rare earth.