A comment from a Chinese redditor on the topic of a proposed US-Australian joint gallium project, copied without permission: Stop dreaming. The US has a greater chance of returning to the moon than establishing a rare earth refining industry. Let's assume that the United States has instantly solved all the technical difficulties in refining rare earths and they only need to consider how to build factories： Produce 100 tons of gallium—this would make you a major supplier accounting for 10-20% of the global gallium production chain. What exactly does it take to reach this level? Gallium metal is a by-product of aluminum production. According to annual reports, Aluminum Corporation of China (Chinalco) extracted 146 tons of gallium from 20 million tons of alumina. For the United States, it would first need to invest approximately 2 billion US dollars to build a factory with an annual alumina smelting capacity of 15 million tons. The alumina produced cannot be discarded directly; based on the ratio of roughly 2 tons of alumina corresponding to 1 ton of electrolytic aluminum capacity, a super factory with an electrolytic aluminum capacity of 7.5 million tons must also be built simultaneously. This super factory is roughly equivalent to one Chinalco or slightly larger than China's Weiqiao Group in terms of electrolytic aluminum scale. The most crucial factor is electricity. Producing 1 ton of alumina requires 2 tons of bauxite, 0.25 tons of lime, and 0.5 tons of standard coal. Producing 1 ton of electrolytic aluminum further requires 13,000 kWh of electricity—meaning 7.5 million tons of electrolytic aluminum would require approximately 100 billion kWh of electricity annually, roughly equivalent to the annual power generation of the Three Gorges Dam. Taking the United States' leading nuclear power technology as an example, each pressurized water reactor nuclear power plant generates approximately 10 billion kWh of electricity per year. This would mean needing 10 such plants. Since the Three Mile Island incident, the U.S. has not built a new nuclear power plant in nearly 40 years, and only 3 new reactors have been put into operation since 1996. After the alumina factory, electrolytic aluminum factory, and power plants are all built, supporting infrastructure such as ports and highways is still needed to transport soda ash, lime, and other materials to the factory areas. Oh, and then there are the industrial workers. Weiqiao Aluminum has approximately 100,000 employees. Even if we assume the U.S. has high automation and production efficiency, with all management and logistics departments fully automated (in fact, China is purchasing more industrial automation robots), and calculating based on 20 electrolytic cells per worker, a project with an annual output of 500,000 tons would require 600 skilled workers. Thus, 7.5 million tons of electrolytic aluminum would roughly require 10,000 skilled workers. Adding in the aforementioned alumina factory, supporting power plants, etc., a total of approximately 30,000 to 50,000 new skilled industrial workers would be needed. However, U.S. manufacturing jobs have dropped from 20 million in 1979 to 12 million today—a loss of about 8 million jobs, or roughly 100,000 jobs lost each year over 45 years. Where will these workers come from? Now you understand: to produce 100 tons of gallium metal, you need power plants, highways, power grids, coal mines, soda ash plants, bauxite mines, alumina factories, electrolytic aluminum factories, a complete downstream electrolytic aluminum production and sales network, and tens of thousands of skilled industrial workers. Let’s assume the U.S. overcomes all these design, construction, and production challenges, and builds the entire 7.5 million-ton electrolytic aluminum industry just for 100 tons of gallium metal. It would then face an even bigger problem: electrolytic aluminum is an overcapacity industry. Even China struggles to find buyers for its 45 million tons of electrolytic aluminum output—how can the U.S. ensure it can definitely sell all its electrolytic aluminum? If it cannot sell the aluminum, or has to sell it at a loss, how will it cover the costs of the hundreds of billions of yuan invested for 100 tons of gallium, the supporting infrastructure, and the training and recruitment of tens of thousands of industrial workers? Another point: if the U.S. miraculously accomplishes all of the above, but China suddenly lowers prices and opens up rare earth sales—what will happen to all these investments? https://www.reddit.com/r/CriticalMetalRefining/comments/1oeh6oq/comment/nl2e216/
