ree found in mud (but at bottom of pacific)

I can't see this being cost effective compared with land based options, especially when Lyna's only has a 3 month delay. Posted just out of interest.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/health-science/eurscientists-find-rare-earths-in-ocean-floor-sci-rare-earths/story-e6frg8y6-1226086964011

extract from article:
a new study, published yesterday in the journal Nature Geoscience, points to an extraordinary concentration of rare-earth elements in thick mud at great depths on the Pacific floor.

Japanese geologists studied samples from 78 sites covering a major portion of the centre-eastern Pacific between 120 and 180 degrees longitude.

Drills extracted sedimentary cores to depths that in place were more than 50 metres below the sea bed.

More than 2000 of these cores were chemically tested for content in rare-earth elements.

The scientists found rich deposits in samples taken more than 2,000 kilometres from the Pacific's mid-ocean ridges.

The material had taken hundreds of millions of years to accumulate, depositing at the rate of less than half a centimetre per thousand years. They were probably snared by action with a hydrothermal mineral called phillipsite.

At one site in the central North Pacific, an area of just one square kilometre could meet a fifth of the world's annual consumption of rare metals and yttrium, says the paper.

Lab tests show the deposits can be simply removed by rinsing the mud with diluted acids, a process that takes only a couple of hours and, say the authors, would not have any environmental impact so long as the acids are not dumped in the ocean.

A bigger question is whether the technology exists for recovering the mud at such great depths -- 4,000 to 5,000 metres -- and, if so, whether this would be commercially viable.