Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

CTOnews.com, December 26 (Xinhua) in order to reduce its dependence on Chinese rare earths, Japan will begin extracting the necessary materials for electric and hybrid vehicles from deep-sea mud near Noboryo Island in 2024, about 1900 kilometers from Tokyo, according to Nikkei, and plans to start developing extraction technology next year.

According to reports, Japan has found mud rich in rare earth metals at a depth of 6000 meters in the target area. In order to achieve this goal, Japan first needs to develop technology to extract resources from a depth of 5000-6000 meters.

The Kuroshio or Japanese current, known as one of the fastest ocean currents in the world, passes through the target area, which is also on the typhoon track. Experts say any effort to extract resources from deep-sea areas under such harsh conditions will face very high technical challenges.

CTOnews.com learned that rare earths are a general term for 17 rare metals. Japan currently imports almost all its demand for rare metals, 60% of which comes from China. China's imports are mainly neodymium, the basic material for wind power generation, and dysprosium, which is used in electric vehicle motors.

It is reported that South Bird Island is a coral reef in the Pacific Ocean, about 1900 kilometers southeast of Tokyo. A decade ago, Japan discovered mud rich in rare earths at a depth of 6000 meters in the above-mentioned target area, with a storage capacity of more than 16 million tons, a figure claimed to be available for global use for centuries.

It is worth mentioning that the Japanese Diet recently approved the second supplementary budget for fiscal year 2022, which plans to allocate 6 billion yen (about 316 million yuan) for the development of related pumps and the manufacture of 6000-meter-long pipelines for trial production projects.

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