Japanese Prime Minister Takahashi Sanae stated today (February 2nd): "On February 1st, Japan successfully retrieved rare earth mud from the seabed within the exclusive economic zone surrounding the most eastern island, Okinotorishima."

This trial mining marks the first attempt at domestic rare earth industrialization in Japan. Mining rare earth mud from a depth of about 6,000 meters is also a global first.

I would like to express my respect to the staff of the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC) and others for their hard work.

In the Cabinet Office's "Strategic Innovation Creation Program (SIP)," under the perspective of Japan's economic security, efforts are underway to build a rare earth supply chain (rare earths, as an essential mineral resource for cutting-edge technologies, are a crucial link for stable supply). This includes demonstration research on exploration, mining, separation, purification, and smelting of rare earth mud from Okinotorishima.

Regarding important materials such as rare earths, the government and private sector will work together to strengthen supply chain resilience to avoid over-reliance on specific countries."

Comments: Mining rare earths from 6,000 meters deep is indeed a milestone in engineering technology. Japan has verified the feasibility of mining under extreme high-pressure environments. However, the trial extraction volume is minimal, with costs reaching 1,200 times the market price. Additionally, the grade of heavy rare earths is low. Scaling up this process will take at least 10 years. In the short term, it's not even close to being "technologically mature," let alone replacing imports.

Prime Minister Takahashi specifically mentioned the need to "avoid reliance on specific countries," which essentially reflects the response to China's export controls on rare earths targeting Japan (especially the 2025 military-civilian dual-use items control). She aims to compensate for the "economic security gap" by relying on deep-sea resources. However, the awkward reality is that Japan's refining technology only reaches 4N level, while 92% of high-purity refining capacity globally is in China. Even if they extract the rare earth mud, it's highly likely they will still have to send it to China for processing, falling into the paradox of "not being able to mine independently and being bottlenecked in refining."

Original source: toutiao.com/article/1856020988551176/

Statement: The article represents the views of the author."