A couple of points. Rare earths are currently flooding the market in megaton quantities. China is giving all the RE-oxides away for pennies on th' pound. I called and asked for a sample from a Canadian/Chinese rep firm which sources pure gadolinium for tests. They sent, gratis, a 2.6kg slug of the element saying they could supply up to 3 tons of the oxide on 5 days notice or up to 1300 kg of the metal in a week!! If they were just trying to impress me....they succeeded.
The rare earths aren't rare (never really were) and if China has anything to say about it they won't be expensive either. The only rare earths they don't tout as being on hand is the very rarest, Terbium and Lutetium and of course the radioactive promethium. All else is available by the dump truck load.
That free chunk I recieved, if bought from the loonies at Alfa-Aesar, would be about $4700.00!!!! Ridiculous, in a world awash with Chicom RE. Admittedly the stuff I got was two 9s, and Alphas is 3 9s, but hey.........
About the government going nuclear.... It would be the smartest move to make to stockpile U235 as it is the stuff of fission reactors and is costly to produce. It would be nice to have a huge inventory on hand. The Navy, I know is desparately trying to lose the fission plants as we are being refused entry to port after port as time goes on not only because of on-board nuclear weapons, but on board power as well. New captial ships are planned for diesel only operation.
We will most likely have another spat of fission building at some point, but a lot of hardships will first be endured as its value is seen in an ever darkenning world or......we will go full bore at coal fired plants since we have about 200 years of the stuff which is still in known reserves. Oil will be an interesting and rare 20th century curiousity probably in 50 years, but we may still be greenhousin' it with coal. The decision to return to fission we be an overnight thing and not a slow build up as it should be. That scares me.
Richard Hull
Created on Monday, April 30, 2001 2:47 PM EDT by Richard Hull