Japan Extracts Rare Earth Elements from Seabed Mud/technologies/power-management/b/blog/posts/japan-extracts-rare-earth-elements-from-seabed-mudJapan&rsquo;s Chikyu deep-sea drilling vessel recently extracted samples of rare earth elements from seabed sediment. (Photo By Gleam - Photo taken by Gleam., CC BY-SA 3.0 ) Japan is starting to take action on a decade-old plan to move away from Chi...en-USTelligent Community 12RE: Japan Extracts Rare Earth Elements from Seabed Mudhttps://community.element14.com/technologies/power-management/b/blog/posts/japan-extracts-rare-earth-elements-from-seabed-mudThu, 12 Feb 2026 20:40:30 GMT93d5dcb4-84c2-446f-b2cb-99731719e767:9e239890-945a-469f-85aa-f49947c996bdDAB0<p>Ishii may not be concerned with cost, but any investor will be. Yes the mud has a lot of material, but it will be very costly to extract the mud, then extract the MP materials from the mud. The US investment was based upon a usable quantity of rare earth materials within a reasonably extractable ore with fixed processing costs. The Japanese mud is not either of those.</p><img src="https://community.element14.com/aggbug?PostID=29516&AppID=4&AppType=Weblog&ContentType=0" width="1" height="1">