Japanese researchers claim to have found billions of tonnes of "readily recoverable" rare earth elements on the Pacific Ocean floor. The geologists, led by the University of Tokyo's Yasuhiro Kato, said up to 100bn tonnes were present in sea mud at depths of 3,500-6,000 metres. "We show that rare-earth elements and yttrium are readily recovered from the mud by simple acid leaching, and suggest that deep-sea mud constitutes a highly promising huge resource for these elements," the researchers said in an article in UK-based journal Nature Geoscience. Resource-poor Japan is the world's leading importer of rare earths and has backed several strategies to reduce its reliance on material from China.
It was estimated that an area of just one square kilometer near the team's sample sites could provide a fifth of the world's annual rare earth consumption, which is estimated at over 130,000 tonnes
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