日韩精品久久一区二区三区_亚洲色图p_亚洲综合在线最大成人_国产中出在线观看_日韩免费_亚洲综合在线一区

US EUROPE AFRICA ASIA 中文
Business / Industries

China's rare earth boom comes at grim cost

(Xinhua) Updated: 2012-04-23 17:51

NANCHANG - A green future made possible through the use of rare earth metals seems a world away from Zhang Yang'e, whose neighborhood well has become unusable as a result of local mining operations.

An unpleasant odor wafts from a well in Zhang's backyard, with the well's brownish-yellow water sitting beneath a tangle of spiderwebs.

"The water used to taste sweet and our neighbors all loved it. But now it has been become undrinkable," said the 73-year-old farmer, a resident of Dingnan county in east China's Jiangxi province.

"Even my vegetables withered after I watered them with well water," she said, referring to the rows of green onions, chives and peas she planted in her backyard.

Zhang has been forced to water her vegetables with tap water. The local government installed taps for her and seven other families in March last year, forcing them to pay an additional 20 yuan ($3.17) each month for clean water.

Zhang has blamed a rare earth mine located just 10 meters from her home for the poor quality of her well water. A green hill where the mine was built has been scraped and turned into a cratered landscape not unlike that of the moon, with piles of rock tailings nearly as high as Zhang's two-story house.

Trees on the hill have been toppled and topsoil has been removed. Chemicals have been pumped into holes drilled in the ground to help recover the rare earth metals located there, Zhang said.

Similar open-pit mines can be found dotting the densely wooded hillsides of Longnan county, which is about a half-hour drive from Dingnan. Plastic pipes and chemical holding tanks can be seen at the foot of the hills. Some of the tanks are filled with a bright blue liquid, while others contain a dark brown solution.

To exploit rare earth metals, some miners use a chemical extraction process that involves digging several holes of just a few feet in depth and feeding pipes into the holes. A concentrated mixture of chemicals is then pumped through the pipes, sinking into the clay below and leaching out rare earth metals as it passes.

It seems incredible that such a low-tech method is used to harvest minerals that are used in some of the world's most technologically advanced products. Rare earth metals are used to build components used in smart phones, wind turbines, electric car batteries and missiles.

China supplies more than 90 percent of the world's rare earth metals, but its reserves only account for about one-third of the world's total. Faced with widespread environmental challenges, the country has launched nationwide campaigns in recent years to clean up its mines.

However, these policies, including production caps, export quota cuts and stricter emission standards, have sparked concerns among foreign consumers.

On March 13, the United States, European Union and Japan teamed up to bring a joint case against China to the World Trade Organization over alleged export controls on rare earth metals, which they claim are hurting their own domestic manufacturers.

Zhang has heard nothing of the trade disputes. These days, she's more worried about the upcoming rainy season.

"When the rains come, the tailings are sometimes swept into the water, flooding our doorways and finally entering our streams," she said. "We don't know if this could cause any health problems."

In Dingnan, Longnan and other counties in the city of Ganzhou, red clay on the hillsides contains a high concentration of heavy rare earth metals that can be easily absorbed through the clay. Local farmers have mastered the art of using high-potency fertilizer to dissolve the clay and obtain the valuable minerals inside.

Although the Ganzhou government has ordered a shutdown of all rare earth mines since October as an effort to regulate the sector, it is not hard for smaller producers to elude the government's reach.

"It seems impossible to completely eradicate illegal mining, as rare earth elements are scattered almost everywhere in the red clay," said Yi Wenbin, deputy magistrate ?of Longnan county.

Statistics from Ganzhou's mine management bureau indicate that the bureau uncovered 52 instances of illegal rare earth mining in the first three months of this year.

"Although mining methods have been improved over the decades, environmental damage is still inevitable, especially for water supplies," said Zhang Xusheng, chief of Ganzhou's environmental inspection team.

Waste water from mining operations cannot be used for irrigation, even after being processed according to national emission standards, Zhang Xusheng said. He dodged a question about what might happen to people who live downstream from the mines, as many of them rely on rivers and streams for irrigation.

While eliminating new sources of pollution is challenging, cleaning up pollution from older sources is even more difficult. Rare earth mining began in Ganzhou in the 1970s, leaving much of the land scarred by barren tailing ponds and eroded hilltops.

At the Zudong rare earth mine in Longnan, an eight-million-yuan experimental project is being undertaken to reclaim some of the land, with the project's administrators mixing bags of soil with grass seeds and spreading the mixture on the ground to rehabilitate the barren land.

However, the cost of the seeds has proved to be rather high, according to figures provided by Liao Zhennan, director of Longnan's mine management bureau. One type of grass seed imported from the United States costs 80,000 to 100,000 yuan per mu (0.07 hectares) of coverage.

"The spending will multiply if you take the treatment of water pollution into consideration," Liao said.

According to Su Bo, deputy director of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, repairing the environmental damage in Ganzhou will cost a total of 38 billion yuan. By contrast, the province's rare earth industry only reaped 6.4 billion yuan in profits in 2011.

Hot Topics

Editor's Picks
...
...
主站蜘蛛池模板: 91精品天美精东蜜桃传媒入口 | av小说在线 | 亚洲第一页在线视频 | 精品国产一区二区三区成人影院 | 三级在线网站 | 人人九九 | 亚洲在线一区二区三区 | 午夜伦4480yy私人影院 | 4438激情网 | 小明免费视频一区二区 | 青娱乐久草 | 色吧首页dvd | 久久久高清免费视频 | 亚洲欧洲日本无在线码天堂 | 日本无卡码免费一区二区三区 | 国产精品国产午夜免费福利看 | 亚洲精品一区二区三区福利 | 欧美日韩三级在线观看 | 中文一区| 男女猛烈激情xx00免费视频 | 国产乱精品一区二区三区 | 久久综合九色综合91 | 亚洲综合区 | 精品自拍视频 | 富二代精品视频 | 八武将免费完整版在线观看 | 成人免费视频 | 午夜剧场官网 | 王的女人印度剧电视剧免费观看32集 | 午夜视频国语 | 黄色激情网站 | 国产日韩第一页 | 日韩视频二区 | 一区二区日韩 | 欧美视频国产 | 极色影院| 天天爽天天色 | 中日欧洲精品视频在线 | 日韩视频中文字幕 | 毛片国产| 美女超碰 |