実際に動いているもの
This is the most-crossed border in the atlas. Rare-earth ore is mined in one country, chemically opened in a second, separated into individual elements, turned into metal and alloy in a third, made into a magnet, and only then fitted into a motor. Mining rare earths outside China solves the first step of five.
- 素材
- Neodymium
- 種類
- Weathered carbonatite concentrate, high in neodymium and praseodymium
- 起点
- Australia — Mount Weld, a 2-billion-year-old volcanic pipe whose top has been rotted by weathering into a natural concentrate
工程ごと、越境地点ごとに
Australia · Mount Weld, Western Australia 保管者 Lynas Rare Earths (採掘会社)
Mining a natural concentrate
Open-pit mining of deeply weathered carbonatite. Weathering has already done much of the concentrating work over geological time.
なぜここか: Carbonatite pipes are rare, and ones with a thick weathered cap are rarer still.
Australia · Mount Weld concentrator 保管者 Lynas Rare Earths (採掘会社)
Flotation to a concentrate
Milled and floated to a mineral concentrate at roughly 40% rare-earth oxide.
残りはどうなったか: 980 tonnes of tailings, on site, in Australia.
なぜここか: Concentrate at the mine, always.
Malaysia · Fremantle to Kuantan, Malaysia 保管者 Lynas Malaysia (精製業者)
First border crossing
Concentrate is shipped to Malaysia, where the plant that cracks it was built.
なぜここか: The cracking and separation plant was permitted and built here rather than in Australia — a decision about chemistry, cost and permitting that took years and remains contested.
Malaysia · Kuantan, Pahang 保管者 Lynas Malaysia (化学)
Cracking it open with acid
Roasted with concentrated sulfuric acid to break the mineral apart, then leached. Thorium and uranium that came with the ore have to be separated and managed here.
残りはどうなったか: The radioactive residue is the reason this step is hard to permit anywhere, and the reason so few countries have it.
なぜここか: Because someone was willing to build it and see it through.
Malaysia · Separation plant 保管者 Lynas Malaysia (精製業者)
Hundreds of stages to tell them apart
Solvent extraction through hundreds of mixer-settler stages, exploiting differences in ionic radius so small they are almost invisible. Out come separated oxides: neodymium-praseodymium, lanthanum, cerium.
残りはどうなったか: Cerium and lanthanum come out too, in larger quantities than anyone wants them. Surplus light rare earths are the industry's structural problem.
なぜここか: This is the hardest step in the chain and the one with the fewest operators worldwide.
China · Metal and alloy plants 保管者 Metal and magnet makers (製造業者)
Oxide to metal to alloy
The oxide is reduced to metal by molten-salt electrolysis, then strip-cast with iron and boron into a rapidly-quenched NdFeB alloy ribbon.
なぜここか: Metal-making capacity outside China is very small. This is the step a Western mine cannot yet route around.
China · Ningbo or Ganzhou 保管者 Magnet manufacturer (製造業者)
Making the magnet
Hydrogen decrepitation, jet milling to a few microns, pressing in a magnetic field to align the grains, sintering, machining, and a nickel-copper-nickel coating so it does not corrode. Dysprosium or terbium is diffused into the grain boundaries so it survives heat.
残りはどうなったか: Machining swarf is recycled internally — magnet scrap is one of the few genuinely closed loops in this industry.
なぜここか: Roughly 30% of a sintered magnet's mass is rare earth. This is where the ore finally becomes a component.
Germany · Motor and vehicle plants 保管者 Motor and vehicle manufacturers (製造業者)
Into a traction motor
1.6 tonnes of magnet is on the order of two thousand car traction motors, or the generator of a single large offshore wind turbine.
なぜここか: Four countries, three oceans, five processing steps — from one tonne of Australian rock to the thing that makes an electric car move.
これは計算例である。公表された標準的な歩留まりと回収率を用いて、明示された出発量を追うものであり、比率は検証可能だが、特定の荷物の記録ではない。経路に関する事実——どの国を経由するか、どのような工程を経るか、なぜその素材を他の場所では処理できないか——は公開情報から編集している。