Is it still difficult to mine rare earths on the seabed?

The world is bustling, coming for rare earths and going for them. Rare earths, which are indispensable for all kinds of black technology products, have always been "fragrant", and countries are racking their brains to find more rare earth resources. According to the data released by the US Geological Survey, the global rare earth industrial reserve totals 65,438+400 million tons. Among them, China's rare earth reserves are 55 million tons, accounting for nearly 40% of the world's total reserves.

On April 10, Japan, which is poor in mineral resources, announced that it had discovered a rare earth resource mine with a reserve of160,000 tons in the deep water area of its economic zone, which could be used by the world for hundreds of years. Just as Japanese "fantasy" turned into a world-class "rare earth supplier", recently, China scientific research team first discovered a rare earth enrichment and deposition area with an area of about 1.5 million square kilometers in the southeast Pacific Ocean. Compared with the Japanese who were overjoyed, China experts said calmly: The rare earth sleeping on the seabed looks beautiful, and it is not easy to realize large-scale mining in a short time.

In addition, human knowledge of the distribution and occurrence of rare earths in the deep seabed also limits this large-scale mining. It is understood that compared with land mining, marine mining, especially the exploitation of seabed resources in international waters, is still restricted by more complicated international rules, and it takes a long period from the beginning of exploration to the implementation of specific mining actions. Content source Science and Technology Daily