The content of this article comes from the Internet, if it is inconsistent with the actual situation or there is infringement, please contact to delete. This article is only published in today's headlines, please do not move.
In 2018, a shocking news spread around the world: Japan announced the discovery of a giant rare earth mine in the waters off Minamitorishima with reserves of up to 16 million tons, enough to meet the world's demand for hundreds of years. The news has attracted widespread attention, and speculation around the world is that Japan will usher in an era of prosperity and get rid of the hat of a rare earth poor country. To this day, however, we rarely see any reports of rare earth mining in Japan, as if the discovery never existed. What is holding Japan back from mining this giant rare earth mine?
First, let's review the importance of rare earths. Rare earth elements are known as "industrial vitamins" and have a wide range of applications in industrial fields. They can be divided into two categories, namely "heavy rare earths" and "light rare earths", of which heavy rare earths have a wider range of applications and higher value. Especially in a relatively small range of applications, light rare earths still have valuable industrial value.
China is the world's largest producer of rare earths, with more than 44 million tons of rare earth reserves, most of which are heavy rare earths. However, due to over-exploitation, China's rare earth reserves have decreased a lot in the last century. Nevertheless, China remains one of the world's leading suppliers of rare earths, on which both the United States and Japan rely heavily. Especially a few decades ago, when China restricted rare earth exports, Japan tried to increase its rare earth imports in a variety of ways, and even bought Chinese waste glass to extract rare earth elements.
In order to reduce its dependence on imported rare earths, Japan has long been looking for domestic rare earth deposits, hoping to solve this problem. After decades of searching, Japan finally found a giant rare earth mine on the seabed off the coast of Minamitorishima in 2018, with purported reserves of up to 16 million tons, enough to meet the world's demand for hundreds of years. However, strangely, 4 years have passed since this discovery, and there is still no news of large-scale rare earth mining in Japan.
Southern Bird Island, also known as Marcus Island, is a volcanic island located in the central Pacific Ocean. The island is only 1.2 square kilometers in size and has a triangular shape, about 2 kilometers long on each side. The closest Japanese territory to Minamitori Island is the Ogasawara Islands, which are about 1200 kilometers away, while Wake Island is around it, under the jurisdiction of the United States. Despite its location in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and close to the equator, Minamitori Island receives relatively little rainfall and has a savannah climate with scarce precipitation and temperatures above 20 degrees Celsius. In addition, Minamitori Island is a volcanic island with no permanent residents, only a weather station and some weather crews to monitor the local weather.
However, before 1933, Minamitori Island was inhabited. In 1864, the United States first discovered the island of the southern bird, but for unknown reasons, the United States did not send troops to occupy it, but only recorded the southern bird island. Subsequently, in 1868, Japan also discovered Minamitori Island, but it was not until 1879 that people began to send people to investigate. In 1896, a team of native Japanese under the leadership of Shinroku Mizutani colonized Minamitori Island and established the first village in history, named "Mizutani". Minamitori Island is therefore known as "Mizutani Island". Soon after, Japan placed Mizutani Island under the jurisdiction of the Ogasawara Islands government and changed its name to "Minamitori Island". In 1902, after learning that Japan had occupied Minamitori Island, the United States sent warships to fight for territorial sovereignty. Because the American warships were far from the mainland, supplies were limited, and there were no supply points around, they quickly lost to Japan, and had to recognize Japan's sovereignty over Minamitori Island. Since then, Minamitorishima has become Japanese territory, but in 1933, Japan abruptly withdrew its inhabitants, making it an uninhabited island, with only staff regularly traveling to carry out meteorological observation missions.
In fact, as early as 2012, in order to cope with the rare earth dilemma, Japan has carried out rare earth mineral exploration in China, and Minamitorishima has also undergone detailed exploration. However, due to technical limitations, only Minamitori Island containing rare earth minerals has been discovered, but there is no exact quantitative data. It wasn't until 2018 that the technology was further developed
Only after conducting an in-depth investigation of the waters of Nanbird Island did he discover this giant rare earth vein with reserves of up to 16 million tons.
However, it is strange that despite the discovery of such huge rare earth veins, Japan has not taken any action to exploit these precious resources. This raises questions about why Japan has not used this opportunity to exploit this potential treasure trove of rare earths. The answer is actually very simple: insufficient technology.
As mentioned earlier, the rare earth veins located on the seabed of the Minamitori Island area are buried at least 5,400 meters underwater. This means that if these rare earths are to be mined, they must first dive to the bottom of the sea and then think about how to carry out the mining operation. At present, although the world's most advanced manned submersible can dive into the bottom of the sea at a depth of nearly 10,000 meters, this can only be done under the premise of not considering deep-sea operations at all and focusing on pressure resistance.
However, once the tools and equipment required for deep-sea operations are taken into account, the problem becomes complicated. Deep-sea operations worldwide are typically limited to depths of a few hundred meters to about a kilometer, in order to achieve profitability within cost control. In China, for example, it was not until 2021 that they successfully developed the first drilling platform that can extract oil at about 1,500 meters under the sea, Shenhai-1. This project is already considered to be at the leading level globally, however, even so, the cost of collecting seafloor rare earth ore is still quite high, possibly several times the cost of harvesting hundreds of tons of rare earth ore on land.
Therefore, for Japan, spending a lot of money to collect rare earth ores on the seabed of only a few grams or even a few tons far exceeds the cost of buying rare earths from abroad. This is why Japan has not been actively exploiting the rare earth resources in the waters off Minamitorishima Island. However, Japan has been touting its rare earth mine discoveries, a move aimed at disrupting the international market and making it easier to buy the rare earth resources it needs by disrupting the price of rare earths.
To sum up, although Japan discovered giant rare earth deposits in the waters off Minamitorishima Island,
The above content and materials are derived from the Internet, and the author of this article does not intend to target or allude to any real country, political system, organization, race, individual. The above does not mean that the author of this article endorses the laws, rules, opinions, behaviors in the article and is responsible for the authenticity of the relevant information. The author of this article is not responsible for any issues arising above or related to any of the above, nor does it assume any direct or indirect legal liability.