Chasing China’s Monazite Monopoly

One of the singular features of Baotou, an industrial city of 2 million people in Inner Mongolia, is a 10-square-kilometer (4-square-mile) lake that is among the most polluted in the world. The artificial lake, referred to by the name of the dam associated with it, Weikuang Dam (or Baogang Tailings Dam), has for decades collected the effluent from minerals processing for China’s globally dominant iron, steel, and rare-earths industries. Built in the late 1950s, the lake contains a highly toxic stew of industrial chemicals with substantial amounts of radioactive thorium, the latter resulting primarily from the processing of monazite ores for rare-earths. China has since greatly tightened its environmental regulations and restrictions on mining and minerals processing.