[ExI] not that rare earth (part 2 of at least 2)

[spike at rainier66.com]

-----Original Message-----
From: Keith Henson <hkeithhenson at gmail.com> 
Cc: John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com>; spike at rainier66.com
Subject: Re: [ExI] not that rare earth (part 2 of at least 2)

>...Spike, you make a bunch of statements on this thread, some of which, like the military having a big REE stockpile, seem unlikely to me.
How would they know which ones to stockpile for equipment not yet developed,?  

The military stockpiles everything known.  Even contractors stockpile unlikely items, such as Intel 486 processors of all things.  Reason: right after those became obsolete from the hot new Pentium processors in the 1990s, they were dirt cheap, twenty bucks for the functional motherboards, never used.  They made great machine controllers.  So... the company where I worked bought thousands of those locally and kept them in a storage room where most of them still reside to this day.

There is a reason why I know about stockpiling.  I might have posted here about a third cousin and genealogy collaborator who was drafted during the Vietnam war, but it ended just as he was finishing officer training.  He stayed in the reserves, where he ended up being a logistics officer, the guy who oversees audits of ammo storage bunkers.  Here's one that I know about, because this cousin was out here auditing its contents:

https://www.google.com/maps/search/bay+bridge/@38.0529741,-122.0332398,1776m/data=!3m1!1e3?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MTAyOS4yIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D

The soldiers go thru there with an inventory database, make sure nothing has been disturbed or is missing, or if anything is leaking or is no good after decades of storage.  Note the buildings and estimate their size.  Those are built from heavy galvanized steel pipe cut in half, concrete floor, half pipe over, buried, that structure on top there is a blast shield, so that if a nuke goes off, the bunkers on the other side are partially shielded and their contents safe.  Note that every bunker has a rail, from which they can ship out the ammo or whatever else is stored there, long term.  

Here's another one.  The army once used Hidden Cave as a storage area, then later built ammo bunkers out here somewhere, but unlike those up at Port Chicago, these are literally hidden.  If the Japanese had invaded the homeland and tried to bomb the storage, they couldn't find these:

https://www.google.com/maps/place/Pasture+Rd,+Nevada+89406/@39.4158822,-118.6823385,5552m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m6!3m5!1s0x80987e8bcfbcc7d5:0xb9a36bc20da0239c!8m2!3d39.3995819!4d-118.7255011!16s%2Fg%2F1tfwdrbl?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MTAyOS4yIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D

My neighbor used to be sent out to Fallon quarterly to oversee that facility, but he hated that distasteful task: nothing to do there.

How do I know the military stockpiles everything imaginable?  I am wearing an example of it right now.  In the early days of the Korean conflict, no one knew if that would escalate to a full ground war with China.  The government ordered about a square light second of olive green wool cloth.  With that much wool cloth, they didn't really know what to do with it all, so they made a few million pairs of olive green trousers, 100% wool.  Here's an example:

https://www.armyandoutdoors.com/products/us-army-wool-green-service-dress-trousers?variant=41967478177847&tw_source=google&tw_adid=649468606683&tw_campaign=19743421886&tw_kwdid=pla-316153693159&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=19743421886&gbraid=0AAAAACaUJajiaRa2j2p--6JcQioRVuKU-&gclid=CjwKCAiAwqHIBhAEEiwAx9cTeT2rLbrfUNQRgPhC90pk40JP7w8h1Zbu5ueKEY4AZkzQFW86rffsQBoCQ2UQAvD_BwE

They have the manufacture date stamped in them.  The 1950 vintage are button fly, the 1951 have zipper fly.  I am wearing 75 year old army surplus wool trousers, for I am lucky to be exactly the size of a XL/small soldier from 1950: if I cinch down the waist adjusters (trousers don't have those anymore) then I don't need to go to any great heroics to hold them up.  They have loops for suspenders, but even eccentric retro guys (me) don't wear suspenders, even as a Halloween costume.  So... when I found I could buy 100% wool trousers that fit perfectly for 17 bucks a pair, I bought all that supplier had, twenty.  They were 70 years old at the time but never used and stored in ideal conditions, in an ammo bunker somewhere, not one trace of moth damage or indication they were made a decade before we were born.  Now, three quarters of a century later, those wool trousers are still available, and still only about 20 bucks.  So... I wear em.

Where is the gold stored in the USA?  FORT KNOX they chorused in unison.

OK sure, there is gold in Fort Knox, plenty of it.  But... what if... Fort Knox is Fort Nuked?  Is America out of gold?  Hint: no.  The federal government has gold stashed away in a hundred locations, not nearly as much as in Fort Knox, but in places where Bond villain Goldfinger would never think to look for it, ideal locations where it is on a military station, and if anyone gets anywhere near those "ammo" bunkers, a mere child with one stripe on the sleeve and a machine guns just kills them.  No trial necessary, it was some yahoo trying to steal high explosives and ammo, case closed.

If you look at that first link, you can estimate the size of those bunkers.

Knowing that commanders sometimes don't spend their entire budget for the year, they spend the remainder in usually September on whatever they think they might ever need.  They squirrel it away in those dry secure ammo bunkers, where they are generally forgotten after that commander moves on, but they stay on the inventory lists, make work for logistics officers, who sometimes releases some of the stuff they know they will never need, such as 1950 vintage wool trousers, because the army doesn't use those anymore.  They send them to military surplus merchants, who sell them for twenty bucks, to the very few eccentrics who happen to fit one of their standard sizes for Korean war era soldiers, four waist sizes and three lengths, twelve combinations, good luck.  I fit the XL small perfectly, which is even better because there are more of those left than any other size.

An example of the kind of thing the military might stockpile would be rare earth ingots or mixtures of rare earth oxides.  It costs a lot to separate those elements down on the left side of the chart, those two extra rows, but it might not be necessary to separate them.  As I have pointed out, those elements have little or no magnetic properties.  They go into the iron to catalyze the crystal growth during annealing, and help pin the magnetic domains in place.  They act as large atomic radius capacitors, which makes for lower magnetic hysteresis.

One of the things we should have noticed is that in the big hysteria over China having a big monopoly on REEs, we were told we couldn't make competitive EVs, the F18, electronics, wind turbines, etc.  But we already knew that was bullshit: the electronics industry would scarcely notice the increased spot price of their little bit of material, EVs don't use much, one or two kg, F18s manufacturers are not going to rely on the guy who is a possible target of the F18 to supply materials.  Wind turbines, that one we will grant: those use a lot and the cost is critical, since they might not produce a lot of profit, depending on where they are going.  So... reduce the list of impacted industries to one: wind turbines.  Those guys might be suffering.  

My conclusion on REEs: the military has all they need for they anticipate this sort of thing, the electronics people have what they need because they don't need much.  Elon has apparently found a way to design around any shortage, or has access to enormous stockpiles, for his factory up the street is spewing Teslas as fast as they can throw them out the door, and I see no change in their performance specifications since this (apparently phony) REE shortage was reported.  I get the feeling it was hyped by people who already owned Mountain Pass stock and were shorting domestic wind turbine manufacturers.

So... wind turbines need a lot of that stuff.  Knowing about the huge military storage facilities and how many of those exist (many) and why they exist (because the military anticipated nuclear war in the 1940s and still do) and knowing the military squirrels away everything imaginable just because it can, I know they have plenty of REEs which will likely still have plenty up until the Mountain Pass refinery is producing as much refined earth elements as the market wants (they tell us it will take two full years (even with the environmental waiver granted last week (there were no objections from the federal government (the EPA is out on an extended vacation at the moment (bets continue on when or if the EPA will return.))))

https://www.predictit.org/markets/detail/8316/When-will-Trump-sign-a-bill-to-end-the-shutdown-(Part-two)

Regarding my lack of citations: the government is not going to tell us what the military has or where it is, for understandable reasons.  If we knew exactly where that documentation is, we could do a FOIA request on it, but they probably wouldn't tell anyway.  But do let me assure you, the miliary does stockpile every known type of unobtanium, plus a bunch of unknown unobtanium, just in case anyone ever figures out what their unknown unobtanium is and what it can be used for.  They have the secure storage, they have the budget, they use it.

Fun aside on that: you can STILL get thirty aught six ammo military surplus (Vietnam war vintage (that round was phased out for military use fifty years ago (but the ammo is still perfectly OK after all this time from what I hear (I don't use it (got rid of my 30.06 twenty years ago (ammo is too expensive (even military surplus.))))))

https://emacstactical.com/30-06-hxp-m2-ball-full-spam-can-240-rounds-military-surplus-ammo/

spike



 






Ten years from now there may be different requirements., Others, like cheap labor, I know are not true.  China has a significant multiple of robots over what the US has.  Cheap labor was true 10-15 years ago, but not now.  Current annual labor cost in China is listed as $14,800.

Most of the cost of REE is in sorting them out.  If they could be used without sorting them, I think I would know about it.

Likewise, if Mo were to substitute, I think that would be well known.
I have a friend who has an alloy named after him.  I will bcc this thread to him and see if he will respond.

I did find one article mentioning Mo, but it is a minor addition to an alloy that contains Cs.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0966979521003411

Keith

On Sun, Nov 2, 2025 at 12:50 PM spike jones via extropy-chat <extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
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> From: John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> …
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> > On the contrary John.  The same properties that make those elements so difficult to separate makes them mostly interchangeable for magnetic purposes.
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> >…Spike, that is simply untrue. The magnetic (and the optical) properties of rare earth elements are unrelated to their chemical properties….
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> Agreed.  None of those elements’ magnetic properties are significant enough to matter.  It’s the iron which does the magnetic magic.  The trace of heavies are just there to control the crystal growth in the iron.  They are catalysts.  They really are mostly interchangeable.  We can make good magnets without the rare earths.
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> >…(because you have been around chemistry your adult life but never heard of this one (because it isn’t used for anything)))
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> ?????
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> Dubnium?  Who ordered THAT?  Berkelium?  I wonder where that was synthesized?  How about lutetium?  That one isn’t even radioactive, but if you saw the chemical symbol Lu, you would guess someone is putting you on.  But there it is, right there between ytterbium and Hafnium.  Chemistry hipsters, how many of you have ever worked with lutetium?  Neither have I.
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> > There are magnets that use substitute materials for what any rare earth does.
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> >…Yes there are substitutes, if you don't mind that the substitute magnet produces a far weaker magnetic field…
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> It doesn’t.  That’s the point.  Maybe very slightly weaker or very slightly greater hysteresis.  But the comparison one often sees is a rare earth magnet vs an iron magnet, which is misleading.
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> >…and is far heavier…
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> It doesn’t differ much in density if one uses a different catalyst material.
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> But for the application where a lot of the material is used (generators and turbines) the density doesn’t matter anyway.
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> >… and thus makes a far crappier electric motor than the ones China makes by the millions…..
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> China’s motors are not better enough to cover the cost of shipping them here.
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> > But for Tesla it wouldn’t matter anyway, since EVs don’t use very much of it anyway.  They can get all that they need.
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> >…No they cannot….
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> They really can John.  China doesn’t make better EVs.  They will tell you theirs are better however.  I am not buying it.  I see a few Chinese EVs whirring around here, but I am not impressed with them.
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> >…If Tesla started making millions of cars that contain no rare earth elements EVERYBODY would know. You think something like that could be kept secret?
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> The factory is right up the street.  Production doesn’t seem to be impacted by lack of materials from China.  Do you have indications to the contrary?
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>  >  The military has all the REEs they need. They have enough of it to supply their own needs indefinitely.
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> >…No they have not.
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> John you seem to be claiming knowledge of what the US military has.  Do you have this knowledge?  Or are you guessing?
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> Imagine you are a general with a budget, arbitrarily large indefinite secure storage space, and your job is to anticipate your needs in case international trade is interrupted by war.  You must have everything you need in case war breaks out.  Imagine you need about a ton of lutetium a decade.  You have some budget which you must spend, or risk having your budget reduced for next eyar.  What might you buy?  How about 20 tons of lutetium?  Nah.  Fifty tons.
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> Don’t worry, the military has plenty of everything squirreled away here and there.  Telsa has enough material and enough engineering talent to design around anything they can’t get.  Businesses do that kind of thing.  The electronics industry doesn’t use much and the material cost compared to the product is negligible.  The wind turbine industry, well I can’t really say there.  They need a lot, but we don’t really need wind turbines.  So they will need to work that out.  I don’t see it as a real problem.
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> > Of course they thought of that: they aren’t going to depend for materials on the country we might be at war with soon.
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> >…Yes they have…
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> Again, your confidence appears to be unjustifiable arrogance.  The military isn’t going to tell you what they have, but you can be sure they won’t be caught short of anything.  Their job is to anticipate needs under a variety of scenarios, and they are extremely good at what they do.
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>  > John are you seeing a pattern here?
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> >…No spike I am NOT. I can honestly say I don't know what you're talking about.
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> John K Clark
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> What I am talking about: the Chinese monopoly on rare earth elements has been grossly exaggerated.  The only industry I can see which is seriously impacted is one we don’t really need: wind turbine manufacturers.  Everyone else will be OK without Chinese material imports.
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> I don’t see huge potential growth in wind power, since the best sites are already built out (Tehachapi Pass, Altamont Pass, Columbia Gorge and a few others.)  There is increasing pushback by the environmentalists who are known to resort to vandalism.  Not all environmentalists, but the bird people hate those turbines.  Sooner or later, some bird lover is going to get a small plane, fly up over a wind farm with a thirty aught six, punch holes in those turbines so that the oil leaks out on a windy night, wrecks a bunch of them before anyone knows there is a problem.  Wind farms are too vulnerable to that kind of attack.
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> I can see additional growth in solar power however, for it is more predictable.
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> Conclusion: the notion that China has a critical monopoly on any material is exaggerated.
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> spike
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