Monday, March 25, 2013

Ocean Engineers Needed

You may not be aware of the role rare earth metals play in modern technology but we would not have the gadgets we find so important if it were not for these obscure elements of the periodic table. The problem is that most of them are in China and the Chinese have leveraged them to drive their own economy. They refuse to export them and forced manufacturers to build plants within China if they wanted to use their rare earth metals.

Now the Japanese have found and alternative source. It 's deep ocean nodules and sea bed mud. This could drive an expansion of sea bed mining and, as these elements are in the deep ocean, it will require a new class of offshore vessel and development of technology to recover these minerals from depths of 15,000 feet or greater. Ocean Engineers will be needed.

Those of you who know submarine history will recall that the CIA used deep ocean mining as the cover story for the Glomar Explorer and their salvage of a Russian submarine.

2 comments:

Old NFO said...

Yep, update the Glomar and go for it! :-)

Peripatetic Engineer said...

She's currently called the GSF Explorer, is owned by Transocean and is stacked in Singapore.