Japanese experts found rare earth resources on the seabed

Beijing, July 4 (Xinhua) according to foreign media reports, the online edition of the British journal Nature Geoscience published the research results of the research team led by Taihao Kato, an associate professor at the University of Tokyo, Japan, on the 3rd, saying that there are a large number of rare earth resources in the seabed silt 3500 ~ 6000 meters deep in the central and Southeast Pacific, and the exploitable amount is about 1000 times that of land.

  the content of rare earth in seabed sludge is high, and there are almost no radioactive elements uranium and thorium that hinder mining, so it is easy to recover. The research results do not mention the cost of mining, and believe that "this is an extremely important resource not only for Japan, but also for the world".

   rare earth is the general name of 17 elements such as neodymium, which belongs to the "rare metal" with small circulation.

Kato's research team has analyzed seabed stratigraphic samples collected so far at about 80 locations in the Pacific Ocean by institutions such as the Tohoku Institute of Oceanography. The results show that the silt of about 8.8 million square kilometers in the central Pacific, including Hawaii, and about 2.4 million square kilometers near Tahiti Island in the southeast contain high concentrations of rare earths.

  it is said that this may be due to the deposition of a large number of minerals adsorbed with rare earths in the sea water, and the silt two kilometers square contains rare earths equivalent to Japan's consumption in one or two years.

   the mixing of rare earth and iron can improve the magnetism and heat resistance, which is indispensable for the production of high-tech products such as hybrid electric vehicles, and the demand will further increase in the future.