Dark Side of Electronics & Technology : Rare Earths : Mining Pollution : Carbon Emissions : Ecological Harm

Watch this documentary film on Youtube https://youtu.be/NacuQrRfbWk?si=wpZ-mr0LatwcMH4f

Mass media attention to E-waste putting pressure on companies & governments to stop polluting, acknowledging that many of these complex electronics & consumer technology products have a finite useful life of 3-20 years, after which at EOL or end of life, they become obsolete & are exported as E-waste, usually from rich countries where anti-pollution laws & high labor costs make e-waste recycling impractically expensive or not feasible, so the e-waste exported to poorer nations without strict environmental regulations & much lower labor costs, often where crude dangerous toxic methods are used to collect gold & copper from circuit boards, old computers, laptops, tablets, smartphones, battery foils, and wires where the insulator burned off in crude fires emitting toxic smoke since the wire insulator treated with bromine to inhibit flammability, which ends up in the smoke particles or PM which damages human lung tissue in addition to mixing with rain to form dilute nitric & sulfuric acid rain which is toxic to bodies of water & marine wildlife, which damages the fishing industry just like mine waste runoff also toxic to birds & fish. 

The most unethical government in the world known as the CCP of the PRC or China, where about 95% of the Rare Earth's are mined. These unusual elements have interesting properties that improve permanent magnets in IPM motors in EV's of all sizes, since IPM have instant torque like their axial motors that also use magnets. Induction motors offer a way to make EV propulsion without rare earth magnets, as Tesla proved early with the Model S drivetrain featuring powerful induction motors made without magnets. 

The mining of Rare Earth elements plays a pivotal role in global economic function now due to the critical role of these elements as raw ingredients in the manufacture of many electronic devices essential to the function of electrified economies, namely OECD rich countries with grid power that must be online for the hospital, fridge, microwave, oven, appliances, EV charging, and many more uses, including refining oil or making aluminum from bauxite ore, since both oil refining & aluminum are electrically intensive industrial processes. Rare earths are used in Chip making at Chip Fabs, along with ultra pure water, and lots of electricity. 

Electricity so important in advanced economies that the CIA estimates that if the electrical grid taken offline for 6 months up to 90% of the USA population will die of direct and indirect causes due to the lose of grid power electricity. Even people with backup generators rarely keep more than 5 days of fuel for such small gasoline generators, so if the power grid turns off form months, those generators will not do vey much after a few days to restore power. Some solar PV setups can make electrify as long as sunlight strikes them, storing it in batteries, but a Solar CME might render any solar PV into a worthless e-waste panel by shorting out all the silver wires in the PV module. 

Many advanced products like smartphones, laptops, touch screens, wind power turbines, hybrid electric vehicles, battery electric vehicles or EV, appliances, LED lights, & more, requires rare earth elements to function. The rare earths are used to manufacture these products. A long time ago strange black mud in northern China was identified as useful & mining with strong acids of such rare earth mud or rocks began earlier in history, even though the modern uses of such had not even started yet. When the CCP reduced exports of rare earths the prices increased by 1000% within just a few days. 

Inside China the environmental toll of rare earth mining results in a dystopian fallout landscape in a remote are of upper northern Mongolia in & around the Boating Steel & Rare Earth Complex. Baotou industrial city in Inner Mongolia one of the most polluted places on earth which nitric acid wind makes the air unbreathable at times when the local lake vapors evaporate due to atmospheric or water conditions as some of the thick black chemical waste from the refineries that dump the sulfur rich acid waste into the lake becomes airborne, corroding vehicles or anything made of iron so fast that a typical automobile only lasts about 3 years before it rusts out completely. This place literally like a black hell on Earth, but generates most of the worlds Rare Earths, hence the dark side of electronics. 

Moreover the rare earth mining waste contains radioactive isotope residue, from naturally occurring radioactive minerals present with the rare earths in the black stones & black mud with high concentrations of valuable rare earth elements. 

One interesting aspects of the price increase of rare earths from China is that companies around the world are paying scientists big money to develop rare Earth mining in Europe & to restart rare earth mining in the USA, when the price of such minerals makes such mining in rich countries feasible, even if complex mine safety & ecologically sound responsible ethical waste remediation are utilized. Thus eco-friendly mining of gold, copper, nickel, cobalt, iron, magnesium, or other elements & rare earths becomes feasibly if the market price of such elements justifies complex eco-friendly mining in rich countries like Norway. 

Groundbreaking new physics & chemistry breakthroughs are enabling new hyrometalergical e-waste liquid solvent polymer bead recovery to extract the gold, copper, aluminum, silver, platinum, palladium, rare earths & other elements from ground up E-waste, a processes which can be cost effectively scaled to industrial scale in America or European countries so that e-waste can be cleanly recycled locally back into high purity metals used to make new high tech products without buying anything from China. In these and related ways we can make our clean "green" technology less dark & more actually eco-friendly or truly green, renewable & sustainable with lower emissions, less pollution and more value added to create wealth and shared prosperity & even increased tax revenue to enrich governments which such progress developed. In this way more applied technology can made advanced economies stronger while reducing China's economic stranglehold over other national economies.