Mnementh on 14 February 2013
| Kynes said: There is another problem with wind turbines, the neodymium used in the permanent magnets of the generator. China produces >95% of this material, and they are restricting the exportation of this rare earth. |
Germany already produces Neodym-free wind-turbines.
Also China only got to 95% of world production, because the US closed the mine, that was earlier delivering more than the half of worlds production. Australia never bothered to really dig into their resources of rare earth. There are enough rare earth minerals outside of China, if anyone would really go into mining them, the chinese monopoly would be broken in no time.
