时间:2019-01-12 作者:英语课 分类:2010年VOA慢速英语(十)月


英语课

This is the VOA Special English Economics Report.


Today we continue our report on the group of chemical elements known as rare earth metals. These are mined from the earth and used to make technology from mobile phones to missiles.


The United States once led the world in rare earths. Today China controls almost all production. Premier 1 Wen Jiabao says China will not use these metals as a diplomatic weapon. But Japan says exports meant for that country have remained at Chinese ports as a result of a recent dispute.


The United States stopped mining rare earths in two thousand two. Companies blamed environmental rules and low-priced imports from China. But now exploration is moving forward again.


Edward Cowle is president and chief executive of a company called U.S. Rare Earths. He and his partners gained rights to some land in the American West about fifteen years ago. They had been interested in thorium -- a radioactive element that can fuel nuclear reactors 2 but not be processed into weapons.


Mr. Cowle later found that the land also held a lot of rare earth metals -- lately a subject of intense interest.



The area near Molycorp's rare earths mine in Mountain Pass, California


EDWARD COWLE: "In these two years since we changed our name to Rare Earths, the media attention has been unbelievable."


The company has not started mining yet. It still has to get permits and work with other businesses to put operations in place. Ed Cowle says a lot of work remains 3.


EDWARD COWLE: "I would say conservatively the earliest that we could open the mine has to be six to seven years."


Another American company is Molycorp. Jim Sims, the public affairs director, says Molycorp has already begun producing three thousand tons of rare earths a year. That makes the United States the world's second largest producer, a distant second.


JIM SIMS: "Molycorp is the western hemisphere's only producer of rare earth products.”



The mineral bastnasite can contain 15 or even 17 rare earth metals. But chemically separating the elements is costly 4 and difficult


Molycorp says the largest reserves of rare earths outside of China are in its mine in Mountain Pass, California, and in the Mount Weld area of Australia.


Jim Sims says Molycorp spends only about ten percent on mining. The big cost is in chemically separating the rare earths from the minerals that carry them.


JIM SIMS: "Every rare earth deposit on the planet has all fifteen and sometimes all seventeen rare earths."


He says Molycorp raised about three hundred eighty million dollars when it sold stock to the public for the first time in July. The company aims to increase production to twenty thousand tons by two thousand twelve. It says that would more than meet current levels of demand in the United States.


And that's the VOA Special English Economics Report, written by Mario Ritter. I'm Jim Tedder

 



adj.首要的;n.总理,首相
  • The Irish Premier is paying an official visit to Britain.爱尔兰总理正在对英国进行正式访问。
  • He requested that the premier grant him an internview.他要求那位总理接见他一次。
起反应的人( reactor的名词复数 ); 反应装置; 原子炉; 核反应堆
  • The TMI nuclear facility has two reactors. 三哩岛核设施有两个反应堆。 来自英汉非文学 - 环境法 - 环境法
  • The earliest production reactors necessarily used normal uranium as fuel. 最早为生产用的反应堆,必须使用普通铀作为燃料。
n.剩余物,残留物;遗体,遗迹
  • He ate the remains of food hungrily.他狼吞虎咽地吃剩余的食物。
  • The remains of the meal were fed to the dog.残羹剩饭喂狗了。
adj.昂贵的,价值高的,豪华的
  • It must be very costly to keep up a house like this.维修这么一幢房子一定很昂贵。
  • This dictionary is very useful,only it is a bit costly.这本词典很有用,左不过贵了些。
学英语单词
1-nitroanthraquinone
abandonment of right
Alba de Tormes
anchorage fixing
aorta ventralis
apparent advance coefficient
arenose, arenous
Ban Mae Chang
bdelloidea
be able to do
betsies
big capsicums
blackcod
breaking and enterings
breast reconstruction
butterfly twin
butylating
chromaffin cells
Cimicifugoside
coal drier
credit personnel
current dollar value
dihydroxyvitamin
divergement
duodenoplasty
electric curl field
End entity.
entropy of superheating
exterior stair
fardingdales
flotation costs
FORTRAN(FORmula TRANslator)
furfurylmercaptan
get ... to do
graphics programming methodology
grinding fine
Gruber-Landzert fossae
Hanyu
homogalacturonan
homooligomers
ice formation
imperfect polarization
indefinite innerproduct
intrigants
joiner partition
Khutora
Korissia
Kutru
lead matte
lubag
Mexican pocket mouse
Microsoft Security Essentials
morganatically
multiple tool holder
Nautsi
NBPI
new lights
nonadecane dicarboxylic acid
only sons
Orobanche amurensis
passive detector
Peziza coccinea
piroxicum photosensitivity
pongee print
price dumping
profuser
rack and gear steering
recognizably
rent-boy
retarded bomb
sawdust collecting system
serve the people
shade-pull
shipping-information
showed
shuttle chute
soaking in water
social-exchange
soil subunit
steam purge
strionigral
Suaeda asparagoides
Sundborn
suprasegmental center
tear bomb
tert.-butyl chloried
thermal neutron reaction
thimbleflower
tone-loc
transfusing
triconsonantic
trimethoprims
troposphere reflection
unsulliedness
urban ecoeconomics
uttrageouss
valley scenic spot
Vening-Meinesz formula
visual signal reception
Wellman
zucchini flower