Tsuen Wan International: Japanese scientists announce huge rare earths find in Pacific.

July 4, 2011 - PRLog -- "The deposits have a heavy concentration of rare earths. Just one square kilometer of deposits will be able to provide one-fifth of the current global annual consumption," Yasuhiro Kato, an associate professor of earth science at the University of Tokyo informed Tsuen Wan International.

The find was made by a team led by Kato and including researchers from the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology.

They discovered the minerals in sea mud extracted from depths of 3,500 to 6,000 meters below the ocean surface at 78 locations. Of these one third yielded rich contents of rare earths and the metal yttrium Kato told Tsuen Wan International.

The deposits are in international waters in an area stretching east and west of Hawaii, as well as east of Tahiti in French Polynesia, the scientist said.

Kato estimated rare earths contained in the deposits amounted to 80 to 100 billion metric tons, compared to global reserves currently confirmed by the U.S. Geological Survey of just 110 million tonnes located found primarily in China, Russia and other former Soviet countries, and the United States.

Details of the discovery were published on July 4th in the online version of British journal Nature Geoscience.

The level of uranium and thorium -- radioactive ingredients that are usually contained in such deposits that can pose environmental hazards -- was found to be one-fifth of those in deposits on land, Tsuen Wan International learned from Kato.

China, which accounts for 97 percent of global rare earth supplies, has been limiting trade in the strategic metals, sending prices rocketing and prompting mining firms globally to intensify efforts to find new deposits. Malaysia may yet equal China in the production of rare earths if a new facility there gets the go-ahead from government and overcomes environmental concerns raised by activists.

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