Handling the waste crisis in Florida: Disarming China’s ‘rare earth’ guise

Handling the waste crisis in Florida both helps the US to protect the environment and contributes to dealing with China’s rare earth ‘guise’.
Bloomberg said that cleaning up radioactive waste from old phosphorus mines could be an opportunity for the US to balance its war with China over holding strategic resources, including rare earths. And, this is also the fundamental solution to prevent the danger of environmental pollution.

An old phosphorus mine in Florida.

According to information from the BBC, China uses rare earths as a trump card in the trade war with the US. China has signaled that it could limit exports of rare earth minerals to the US as the trade conflict between the two countries escalates.

By far, China is the largest producer of raw materials vital to many US industries including high-growth industries such as electric vehicles and wind turbine manufacturing. The US Geological Survey has determined these minerals are very important to the economy and defense of this country.

Restricting exports to the US, if implemented, could have a major impact on major US industries worth trillions of dollars that rely on rare earth minerals.

Rare earths are a valuable resource that plays an important role in the industry.

Rare earth is a group of 17 elements used in many fields, including renewable energy technology, oil refining, electronics, … Called “rare” because they are difficult to exploit. This raw material is believed to be in the Earth’s crust. There are very few places in the world that exploit or produce rare earths because rare earth exploitation is both difficult and potentially harmful to the environment.

Rare earth exploitation is very difficult and poses a risk to the environment.

Currently, Chinese mines account for about 70% of global rare earth production. Myanmar, Australia, the US and some other countries only exploit a small amount, accounting for the remaining 30%.

According to US government data, about 80% of imported rare earths come from China. Estonia, France and Japan also supply treated rare earths to the US, but the original ore is from China.

The US mines rare earths and sends ore to China for processing, but China has imposed a 25% import tax. Consequently, the United States considered developing its own rare earth refining industry.

Information from the New York Times and Bloomberg said that the US is seeing the potential to exploit rare earth from old phosphorus mines in Florida. The process of handling leaked waste here helps to protect the environment and is an opportunity to reduce dependence on rare earths from China.

China is holding back most of the world’s rare earth supply.

A sewage leak at an old phosphorus mine in Florida prompted authorities to issue an evacuation order and declare a state of emergency near the Tampa area amid a potential collapse of the mine’s radioactive waste. Cleaning up the forgotten giant pile of phosphorus scattered in Florida and other parts of the southeastern United States could help resolve America’s dependence on important imported raw materials, while eliminating Threats of environmental disaster are lurking in the local people.

Phosphorus is a byproduct of the production of fertilizers from phosphate rock. For every ton of organic phosphoric acid produced, more than five tons of phosphorus are produced. This waste is worthless in its raw form due to the concentration of uranium, radium and other heavy metals making it radioactive toxic, unable to be used as soil amendment or building material.

According to the study, there is a large amount of rare earths and radioactive metals present in phosphorus piles in Florida. However, those are not the only scarce metals that can be found in phosphorus ores. Rare earths are a collection of elements that are important for high-tech applications such as magnets and lasers. A 2017 analysis by the US-China research group showed that rare earths are present at a rate of about 0.2% in a waste pile of about 1 billion tons in Florida, equivalent to two million tons of rare earths, enough to cover global demand for a decade.

Many laboratory studies have been done to look at phosphorus recycling processes. However, prices for phosphorus, rare earths and uranium have been mostly curbed in recent years to limit the commercial appeal of phosphorus recycling around the world.

Every year, the US government spends a substantial amount of money monitoring and managing risks at the old phosphorus mine in Florida. The US plans to spend about $ 111 billion to clean water pipes and water infrastructure.

Under the Donald Trump administration last year, the US environmental protection agency authorized the use of raw phosphorus as road construction materials. However, the cost of waste treatment here is so high that investors are still afraid.

The US government has to spend a lot of money on the treatment of the phosphorus mine in Florida.

Huge open-pit ponds the size of the entire city block, filled with toxic wastewater, and underneath there is a lot of radioactive waste.

Recently, local officials allowed residents to return home after an urgent effort to pump millions of gallons of water out of ponds and into inland waterways. The environmental impacts of releasing large amounts of polluted water have not been evaluated. But in the past week, the “ghost” of a great cataclysm caused the government to evacuate hundreds of households from the dangerous area.

Researchers fear that, when giant puddles collapsed, radioactive waste will leak, it will lead to unpredictable dangers. The environment will be affected by the emergency discharge of polluted water, which contains many substances that can cause harmful algae to bloom and kill fish.

Wastewater in the area near Wilmington in North Carolina.

Florida is considered the largest producer of phosphorus in the world, accounting for about 80% of phosphorus mining in the US – where the exploitation and consumption of about 23 million tons of phosphorus per year.

When coal-fired power plants generate electricity, they leave hundreds of thousands of tons of toxic sediment known as coal ash, mixed with water and dumped into ponds within the plant.

Across the United States there are more than 700 landfills and large bodies of water still store coal ash discharged from coal-fired power plants. Under the Obama administration, there were regulations to close coal ash ponds in 2018. Currently, the North Carolina region authorities also began requiring power companies to dig coal ash ponds under the new law. state, also requiring the closure of all coal ash ponds by 2029./.