Thanks for reading,

Aurélien

Looking at Lynas latest presentation: http://www.lynascorp.com/content/upload/files/Presentations/Investor_Presentation_March_2011_950850.pdf page 14 it seems clear that the problem until 2015 is mainly about heavy REE and especially Dysprosium and Terbium.

Lynas is a 98% light REE company and Molycorp 99% and between them they seem to pretty much add about 50% to the light REE market.

I personally have only one investment in the REE sector and that is Dacha (V.DSM) that is an investment company for Dysprosium and Terbium. It trades at a 35% discount to NAV and holds its metals in South Korea.

Thank you, gentlemen, for your replies. I follow the writings on this site with great interest because I am gobsmacked by the US admin’s complete lack of understanding of basic facts, and understanding of the consequences of producing clean energy. In addition, it’s only clean if its clean for us; the sanctimony staggers me sometimes.
http://is.gd/EGMVx1

Also, Mr. Lifton’s understanding of Chinese thinking is exemplary. The Five-Year Plans starting in 1996 reflect the changes that began then with the new Yin Period 8 (Yang Period 8 started in 2004), something else this administration has zero understanding of, but Mr. Lifton has grasped their significance, whether he knows about these Periods or not.

I so look forward to the TMR emails in my Inbox.

whoever has an access to scientific journals can have quite similar views.

To answer your question properly Janie. The design of wind-generators has also changed and they can use smaller amount of rare earth magnets and this reduces overall amount of rare earths.

The information I had in 2009 was that it took one ton of neodymium-iron-magnet alloy to produce a one megawatt generator. This would be eqiuvalent to 280 kg/megawatt of neodymium. The Chinese speaker in Beijing in August, 2010, stated that it would require 59,000 tonnes of neodymium to produce the 330 gigawatts of total generation. I think my 2009 figure, which was then current, was thus too high based on what I have since learned.

I’ll tell you of an even bigger change. Several years ago when the chemistry of a nickel metal hydride battery was a closely guarded secret I was told that the 1.5 kWh battery in a Toyota Prius used 10 kg or more of lanthanum. Last year I found out from two independent sources, neither of which was Toyota, that the Prius battery uses 2.3 kg of lanthanum. I have written of this repeatedly yet it has passed into folklore that the Prius uses “more than 20 pounds” of rare earth metals; this is too high by at least a factor of 3x.

I have lately also been surprised to learn that OEM automotive “under the hood applications” of rare earth permanent magnets require up to 12% of dysprosium per ton of neodymium-iron-boron alloy , so that dysprosium can be as much as 30% of the total rare earth load of such a magnet.

I am an analyst today, not a researcher. I depend on the data I receive, and I amend my reports as newer credible data is acquired.

Thanks for reading.

Jack

You wrote above that “in order to reduce the usage of coal to generate electricity and to improve energy-use efficiency per productive unit of capacity, [China] would add 330 gigawatts of wind-generated electrical power, and that this would require a total of 59,000 metric tons of neodymium.”

However. In a January 7th, 2009 report, you stated, “And the fact is it’s recently been projected that a single wind turbine electric generator producing 1 megawatt of electricity requires one ton of neodymium.”

Since the recent China Five-Year-Plan you reference plans for 330 gigawatts of wind-generated power, why isn’t the neodymium required 330,000 tons? Have advances in turbine technology advanced so much in two years to reduce the requirement?

You’re correct about the data being available. Gareth and I have spent a lot of our own money and time compiling it, but we’re not asking small investors to make an investment in the data; we’re asking serious investors to do that, so we can continue to upgrade the dat as it becomes both available and credible.

As for the dysprosium content and value resulting I ask you to consider that this is just one factor in the analysis of the probability of success of a mining venture. It is however today a very important factor, I admit.

I will have more to say about that here later this week.

Thanks for reading.

By crunching TMR’s public data sets in this way, your view of what is in the deposits of these projects will be close to (or better than) what the fund analysts have to look at. If you want to see the deeper data which includes the dollar values of each of the REOs, you will have to either subscribe to the TMR Insider Network, or spend a lot of time digging up the info on your own.