Nor will China’s rare earths necessarily be available in abundance forever. Enhanced environmental concerns in China are also impacting production. While selling REEs at low prices may have driven foreign competition out of business, there have been severe impacts in the areas where production and refining take place. The wastewater is highly toxic. Containing wastewater in surface tailing ponds can mitigate the pollution from areas where rare earth leaching takes place, but these can leak or break, leading to serious downstream contamination. Although contaminants from a rare earth mine caused by the once-in-a-century Yangtze River floods of 2020 have not been publicly mentioned, concerns about them surely exist. The floods had a disastrous effect on both Leshan Shenghe’s plant and its inventory, with the company estimating its losses at $35-$48 million, far exceeding the amount for which it is insured. Given that floods, presumably resulting from climate change, have become more frequent, the possibility of future flood damage and contamination become more likely as well.An official at Ganzhou, the area visited by Xi Jinping, lamented, “Ironically, because the prices of rare earths have been so low for a long period of time, the profits from selling these resources are nothing compared to the amount needed to repair the damage.” QUOTE.The road ahead for the US and the world Is becoming critical in regard to rare earth supply, the problem must be faced IMO
