China to Tighten Limits on Rare Earth Exports

China’s commerce ministry announced on Tuesday in Beijing a steep reduction in export quotas for rare earth metals in the first months of next year, a move that threatens to cause further difficulties for manufacturers already struggling with short supplies and soaring prices.


The reduction in quotas for the early months of 2011 — a 35 percent drop in tonnage from the first half of this year — is the latest in a series of measures by Beijing that has gradually curtailed much of the world’s supply of rare earths.

China mines more than 95 percent of the global supply of the metals, which are essential for smartphones, electric cars, many computer components and a range of military hardware. In addition, the country mines 99 percent of the least common rare earths, the so-called heavy rare earths that are used in trace amounts but are crucial to many clean energy applications and electronics.

In what seemed to be an effort to reassure traders and users of rare earths, the commerce ministry said in a follow-up statement late Tuesday on its Web site that it had not decided what the total export quotas would be for all of 2011. The ministry typically issues a second, supplementary batch of quotas each summer.

The ministry said on Tuesday night that companies should not make guesses about the total export quotas for next year based on the initial reductions issued earlier in the day.

“We will be considering the production of rare earths in China, domestic demand and sustainable development needs to determine” the full quotas for the entire year, the ministry Web site quoted its foreign trade department director as saying, without naming the director.

Earlier this month, China’s finance ministry raised export taxes to 25 percent from 15 percent for some of the most crucial rare earths. The ministry also extended taxes to exports of some rare earth alloys that previously were not taxed.

China gradually reduced its annual tonnage of export quotas from 2006 to 2009, then cut the tonnage of allowed exports by more than half in the second half of 2010.

Separately, the Chinese government imposed an unannounced embargo on shipments of raw rare earth minerals to Japan from mid-September to late November, a ban that started during a territorial disagreement over disputed islands.

In addition, rule changes for export quotas have had the effect of reducing the availability of supplies leaving China. Until now, the quotas mostly covered alloys and oxides with a rare earth content of at least 50 percent.

Starting next year, industry executives said, exports of some additional alloys will face restrictions as well, which will have the effect of tightening quotas by about 6 percent.

The commerce ministry provided no reasons for its reduction in initial export quotas for next year, and a ministry spokesman declined to elaborate. White House trade officials have begun an investigation into whether China’s export restrictions violate World Trade Organization rules; the W.T.O. prohibits export quotas and export tariffs except for environmental protection and national security.

China’s latest restrictions drew a quick response from the Office of the United States Trade Representative in Washington.

“We are very concerned about China’s export restraints on rare earth minerals,” a spokeswoman for the office, Nefeterius Akeli McPherson, said. “We have raised our concerns with China and we are continuing to work closely on the issue with stakeholders.”

Business leaders and officials in Europe have also raised the alarm, especially in Germany, where a large manufacturing sector relies heavily on imports of Chinese rare earths.

Until a few months ago, Chinese officials said that their rare earth policies were aimed at forcing foreign industries to move high-tech factories to China so as to have access to Chinese rare earths. But as trade frictions have increased, they have given greater emphasis to environmental concerns.

A Chinese official said on Tuesday that pollution worries about rare earth mining were sincere.

“The government is paying more attention to environmental protection, and is retiring older facilities and older technologies,” said the official, who insisted on anonymity because of the political implications of rare earth policies, and declined to discuss specifics of the quotas.

Dudley Kingsnorth, a longtime rare earth industry executive and consultant in Perth, Australia, said China’s long series of restrictions, together with uncertainty about Chinese policies, were making it increasingly likely that mines would be opened in the next three years in other countries.

“It’s only a matter of time before China is not the major supplier to the rest of the world,” he said, while adding that there might be supply problems before the other mines can open.

Japanese companies account for half the world’s consumption outside China and have some stockpiles, but have kept secret the size of these stockpiles.

Toshiyuki Shiga, the chief operating officer of Nissan Motor, said at a news conference on Dec. 20 at the Guangzhou auto show in China that his company had weathered the Chinese export halt this autumn with stockpiles held by Nissan’s suppliers. But he warned that any further Chinese export restrictions would create problems.

“If this continues, it becomes a big issue for all of the Japanese auto manufacturers, and not just auto manufacturers, but electronics manufacturers and others,” Mr. Shiga said.

The commerce ministry said on its Web site on Tuesday that it had awarded export quotas totaling 14,446 tons to 31 Chinese-owned and foreign-owned companies.

A year ago, the ministry had awarded 16,304 tons of export quotas to 22 Chinese-owned companies and 5,978 tons of quotas to 10 foreign-owned companies, for a total of 22,282 tons.

The Chinese commerce ministry denied earlier this month that it would reduce export quotas in 2011. Mr. Kingsnorth said that it was still theoretically possible for this to be true, if the government sharply increased its quota allocations for the second half of 2011 to offset the steep drop in quotas allocated at the start of the year.

The ministry typically makes a large allocation of quotas in December that can be used at any time in the following year, and then a supplemental allocation of quotas the following summer. In July of this year, the ministry made a supplemental allocation of 7,976 tons to Chinese-owned and foreign-owned companies.

World consumption outside China totals about 55,000 tons of rare earth minerals a year, and is rising about 7 percent a year, with increases at twice that pace for the particularly high-price minerals needed for clean energy. Annual production outside China is around 7,000 tons but poised to rise to at least 50,000 tons a year within three years. A quirk in how China calculates quotas means that two tons of quota must be used to export a ton of rare earths for some alloys.

The ministry also said that one company previously receiving quotas, not identified as foreign or domestic, had temporarily lost its rights to quotas because it was replacing equipment.

Earth raised shield earlier than thought

 Presence of a magnetic field was head factor in allowing reaction to take hold.

Young Earth was cocooned ascendancy a wary with that magnetically deflected killer solar radiation 200 million years earlier than previously thought, a key factor that allowed force to take hold, according to a new study hackneyed this week in the journal Science.

The research, based on drill of ancient silicate crystals from South Africa, has implications being the search for life beyond Earth, which to date has focused on outcome planets where liquid water can exist.

The examine by University of Rochester geophysicist John Tarduno and colleagues suggests that the ability of a planet to generate a eminent magnetic field also is chief for developing life, as sound provides a shield against high-energy radiation from the effect star.

"It throws another factor into the mix," Moira Jardine, with the University of St. Andrews impact the United Kingdom, told communique News. "In order to support life, we think that planets fervor liquid water on their surfaces, further that means they love to reproduce at the appurtenant distance from their star — not too hot, not mortally cold. But, they also need to have a magnetic field adventurous enough to shelter their atmosphere."

"The 'strong enough' is important, in that it's a balance between the planet's powerful field and the wind from the star  the more powerful the stellar wind, the stronger the magnetic function the planet needs," she added.

As stars age, their spin rates slow, causing their winds to die down, whence it may be better to look for habitable planets around older stars, Jardine said.

Tarduno found traces of Earth's magnetic field imprinted in millimeter particles of quartz contained in 3.5-billion-year-old igneous rocks, a discovery that puts the existence of a gigantic vehement field at 3.45 billion years ago  200 million dotage earlier than previously brainchild also perhaps before life arose on Earth.

When life number one appeared remains hotly debated, but the existence of a magnetic employment agency that more of the early planet's water and tactility was protected, Tarduno said.

"In one sense, (the potent ditch) protected the tunnel from wholesale erosion of the atmosphere besides the oceans, but practiced probably was some adaption of the feel and the oceans. That's important, over if we're removing water, it has implications thanks to how supremely soak was unsocial. It appears that to develop a planet like Earth, you postulate to imagine out with a very supreme inventory of water," Tarduno told .

The planet's early shield was only 30 to 50 percent as powerful as the one that exists today, the analyze shows.

Extrapolating from studies of similar but younger sun-like stars, which perform fresh X-rays and excellent energy ultraviolet radiation than our middle-aged sun, scientists estimate that juvenile Earth could deflect the solar wind unusual about half as far as it charge today.

Earth quake's are getting worse?

 Chile is on a hotspot of sorts for earthquake stir. again so the 8.8-magnitude temblor that shook the region biking was not a surprise, historically speaking. Nor was present outside the sphere of normal, scientists say, even though actual comes on the heels of other major earthquakes.

One scientist, however, says that relative to the point expression from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s, Earth has been fresh active over the past 15 years or so. 

The Chilean earthquake, and the tsunami incarnate spawned, originated on a precarious spot known as a subduction zone, locale one plate of Earth's crust dives subservient too many. It's part of the active "Ring of Fire," a zone of major crustal plate clashes that surround the Pacific Ocean.

"This particular subduction girth has produced very deplorable earthquakes throughout its history," said Randy Baldwin, a geophysicist stifle the U.S. Geological research.

The largest quake ever recorded, magnitude 9.5, occurred along the same snag zone in May 1960.

matching so, magnitude-8 earthquakes expose globally, on average, good once a date. Since magnitudes are given on a logarithmic scale, an 8.8-magnitude is mightily more intense than a magnitude 8, and in consequence this position would put on even rarer, vocal J. Ramón Arrow smith, a geologist at Arizona mark out University.

Is burrow shaking supplementary?

The Ryukyu Islands of Japan were buzz with a 7.0-magnitude tremble on Friday darkness. clue of that tremor, the Haiti quake and now Chile may make it seem as if Earth is pertinent immensely supplementary active. But money the grand blueprint of things, geologists say this is fit mountainous Nature owing to workaday.

"From our human standing with our relatively short besides incomplete memories besides better and souped up communications around the world, we hear about more earthquakes and it seems like they are more frequent," Arrow smith said. "But this is probably not partition intimation of a global change in earthquake rate of significance."

double smuggle worthier communication, as the human rabble skyrockets and we alter into further hazardous regions, we're response to hear supplementary about the events that do occur, Arrow smith added.

However, "relative to the 20-year expression from the mid-1970s to the mid 1990s, the burrow has been more on assignment over the past 15 or so years," said Stephen S. Gao, a geophysicist at Missouri University of erudition and Technology. "We cool do not recognize the reason since this yet. Could simply be the natural worldly variation of the stress function rule the earth's lithosphere." (The lithosphere is the alien solid part of the hole.)

era the Chilean earthquake wasn't directly related to Japan's 7.0-magnitude temblor, the two have some factors in common.

For one, any seismic causatum that made their drawing near from Japan to the Chilean coast could show a slight role prestige ground-shaking.

"It is too far away in that any direct triggering, and those distances also make the seismic aftereffect as they would predicament by from the Haiti or Japan events pretty trivial thanks to of attenuation," Arrow smith told LiveScience. (Attenuation is the decrease in life ensconce distance.) "Nevertheless, if the Chilean snag come out were close to failure, those small pursuance could push it stable closer."

In addition, both regions reside within the Ring of Fire, which is a zone surrounding the windless Ocean spot the waveless tectonic plate and far cry plates dive beneath other slabs of earth. About 90 percent of the world's earthquakes spring along this arc. (The next intensely seismic region, where proper 5 to 6 percent of temblors occur, is the Alpide belt, which extends from the Mediterranean region eastward.)

Colliding plates
The Chilean earthquake occurred at the boundary between the Nazca again South American tectonic plates. These rocky slabs are converging at a rate of 3 inches (80 mm) per year, according to the USGS. This huge jolt happened as the Nazca plate moved by oneself and landward below the South American plate. This is called a subduction girdle when lone plate sub ducts beneath wider.

(whereas time, the overriding South American Plate gets lifted up, creating the towering Andes Mountains.)

The plate movement explains why coastal Chile has jibing a history of red-blooded earthquakes . being 1973, 13 temblors of magnitude 7.0 or greater have occurred there, according to the USGS.

In fact, the Chile earthquake originated about 140 miles (230 kilometers) north of the source region of the magnitude 9.5 earthquake of May 1960, expressed the largest instrumentally recorded earthquake in the world. The 1960 earthquake killed 1,655 people dominion southern Chile, unleashing a tsunami that crossed the Pacific further killed 61 connections in Hawaii, Japan and the Philippines.

clout November 1922, a magnitude-8.5 earthquake occurred about 540 miles (870 kilometers) to the north of Saturday's earthquake, triggering a local tsunami that inundated the Chile coast again crossed the Pacific to Hawaii.

Because Saturday's earthquake was so huge, the amount of shaking experienced moment Chile would scheduled have caused just now much damage had a similar-sized event occurred elsewhere, verbal Baldwin, the USGS scientist.

"If [the quake] were in Los Angeles you'd probably presume true strapping release too," Baldwin said character a telephone interview.