China is booming rare for rare earth
24.04.2012/XNUMX/XNUMX - A green future, which will result from the use of rare earths, seems to be a long way off for Zhang Yang'e. The well in their village has become unusable due to the consequences of local mining.
An unpleasant smell wafts from the well in Zhang's backyard. Numerous spiders sit above the brownish-yellow water. “The water once had a sweet taste and all of our neighbors loved it. But now it has become inedible, ”complained the 73-year-old farmer from Dingnan County in the east Chinese province of Jiangxi. "Even my vegetables withered when I watered them with the well water," she said, pointing to the rows of green onions, chives, and peas she planted in her back yard. Zhang now has to water her vegetables with tap water. Although the local government installed faucets for her and seven other families in March last year, she now has to pay 20 yuan (US $ 2,4) every month for clean water.
Zhang can cite the cause of the evil: only ten meters behind her house is a mine where rare earths are mined. The green hill on which the mine was built, has now turned into a crater landscape, which does not look like the moon. The trees that once graced the hill have long since been felled. The humus layer is missing. Instead, holes were drilled in the ground with chemicals to extract the metal there.
Similar open-pit mines can also be found on other densely wooded slopes in Longnan County, which is about half an hour's drive from Dingnan. At the foot of the hill are plastic tubes and chemical containers. Some tanks are filled with a light blue liquid while others contain a dark brown solution. To promote rare earths, some mines resort to a chemical extraction process. It drills several holes, each only a few meters deep, into which a concentrated mixture of chemicals is pumped. These solve the rare earths from the clay. It is unbelievable that such obsolete methods are used to promote the minerals used in some of the world's most technologically advanced products, such as smartphones, wind turbines, electric car batteries and rockets.
Although China has only about one third of the world's reserves, it supplies over 90 percent of the rare earths used. As the country now faces ecological challenges, it has begun to clean up the market in recent years. However, these measures, including a cap on production and exports and stricter emissions standards, have raised concerns among foreign consumers. On the 13. In March, the United States, the European Union and Japan joined forces in a joint action against China before the World Trade Organization over the alleged export controls that are damaging the interests of its own domestic producers.
Although the Ganzhou government has ordered all mines to be closed from October, it is not difficult for smaller producers in particular to escape the arm of the law. "It is impossible to completely wipe out the illegal mining operations because rare earths in red clay are practically everywhere," said Yi Wenbin, deputy justice of the peace for Longnan County. The total cost of repairing the environmental damage in Ganzhou is 38 billion yuan, according to Su Bo, deputy director of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. However, the profit made from the extraction of rare earths was only 4,6 billion yuan last year.
Source: China Daily
