But never dysprosium as it doesn’t exist in any of the samples taken all over the country going back to the 20’s. The other alternative sources are Chinese owned despite being in a foreign country,
produce exceedingly small amounts, one country is in a civil war, the other sources lack roads and infrastructure to the mine locations or a trade agreement with the us, the only one left is Australia and they aren’t happy with us and don’t produce much.
they already did, they have export bans enforced on foreign companies in the form of licensing your products that use rare earths based on who the end user will be. (End user= US no licensing)
Chinese also own most of the mines worldwide including the USs single rare earth mine that is perpetually bankrupt.
Prices of rare earths are skyrocketing and it is unknown how long various entities have stored to continue producing consumer products .
Examples of a few things that are affected by this development:
- electric motors
- solar panels
- ammunition
- cutters
- drill bits
- punches
- circuitry in semiconductor chips
- CNC machine tools
- alloys that go into everything from jet engines to deep-drilling rigs
- wind turbines
- night-vision goggles
- sonar systems
- magnetostrictive actuators
- display screens
- touchscreens
- fiber optics
- laser diodes
- 5G base stations
- jet engine coatings
- high-frequency radar systems
- precision lasers
- laser target designators
- LASIK
- engraving
- spectroscopy
- guided munitions
- infrared imaging
- stealth aircraft
Do you like cars with auto generators and an external pile style regulator? (Alternators use materials we don’t have domestically with a focus on the regulator section being impossible to produce sans specific materials )
Do you like mechanical timing? Modern OBDII2 and o2 sensors can’t be manufactured without specific elements
Do you like not having a 3 way cat?
Only 70’s era 2 way cats can be made domestically without certain elements.
Do you like crt TVs ? (Modern LCDs, processors/junction boards and silicon chips in general require elements we don’t make in significant quantities but we do have the rare earths to make CRTs phosphors )
Do you like cell phones? Many parts, especially 3/4/5g modems require rare earths to transmit.
Do you like asceptic packaging? Many polymers, hydrocarbons (including fuel and oil) and medical chemicals are manufactured with the help of rare earth catalyst.
The reason the above matters is because China is attempting to place an export ban on any product with rare earths going to a country without a license.
