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The Chinese operations tend to take a more casual attitude towards those concerns. It sounds like some of these concerns were also expressed by the Malaysian greens. It is straight-forward to mitigate the risks but to do so at a cheaper price than what the Chinese are offering is a challenge. So the US choice is to subsidize a more environmentally (and worker) friendly operation or to buy from the lowest bidder, which currently seems to be the Chinese.
Just saw this. This needs to be expanded upon. :) Lynas passed all hurdles and could produce rare earths in Malaysia without causing any environmental problems, and they showed this early on. The greens to take advantage of the ignorance of the populace, so the invironmental campaign continued. Malaysia has stricter regulations than the rest of the world. Lynas developed ways of using the remainder which were acceptable by world standards, but not approved by Malaysia. Malaysia has their fair share of Chinese, who used the green movement to inhibit Lynas so they could continue to have a strategic hold on RE. Lynas got past that, but arduously.
Mountain Pass wasn't ever more environmentally friendly than Lynas, but that might have been used by some in the USA. Last I saw, MP was burying residue in the desert and wrapping it in plastic. Go figure. Lynas now claims it can remove the thorium from the ore, but I haven't followed that.
