A Concept for Seabed Rare Earth Mining in the Eastern South Pacific
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Seabed Exploitation The LRET Collegium 2012 Series, Volume 1 A Concept for Seabed Rare Earth Mining in the Eastern South Pacific Authors: M Bashir, SH Kim, E Kiosidou, H Wolgamot, W Zhang Series Editors: R A Shenoi, P A Wilson, S S Bennett “The Lloyd’s Register Educational Trust (The LRET) funds education, training and research programmes in transportation, science, engineering, technology and the safety of life, worldwide for the benefit of all. Funding is split between four categories to provide a continuum of support. We do not fund individuals direct, in any category. x Pre-university education – promoting careers in science, engineering and technology to young people, their parents and teachers; x University education – supporting exceptional students at undergraduate and masters level through scholarship programmes at selected universities; x Vocational training and professional development – funding organisations that provide training, knowledge sharing and skills development opportunities for people in work; x Research – adding value to society by funding research programmes which address fundamental challenges that affect us all.” A Concept for Seabed Rare Earth Mining in the Eastern South Pacific Musa Bashir · Sung-hee Kim · Evangelia Kiosidou · Hugh Wolgamot · Wei Zhang Titles in the LRET Collegium 2012 Series: Volume 1: A Concept for Seabed Rare Earth Mining in the Eastern South Pacific M B Bashir, S H Kim, E Kiosidou, H Wolgamot, W Zhang ISBN 978-0-854-32949-6 Volume 2: Feasibility Study on Manganese Nodules Recovery in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone B Agarwal, P Hu, M Placidi, H Santo, J J Zhou ISBN 978-0-854-32950-2 Volume 3: The deep sea energy park: Harvesting hydrothermal energy for seabed exploration J Parada, X Feng, E Hauerhof, R Suzuki, U Abubakar ISBN 978-0-854-32951-9 Volume 4: Sustainable Seabed Mining: Guidelines and a new concept for Atlantis II Deep L Egorov, H Elosta, N L Kudla, S Shan, K K Yang ISBN 978-0-854-32952-6 Volume 5: Polymetallic nodule mining: Innovative concepts for commercialisation W Flentje, S E Lee, A Virnovskaia, S Wang, S Zabeen ISBN 978-0-854-32953-3 University of Southampton Highfield, Southampton SO17 1BJ, England © University of Southampton, 2012 All rights reserved; no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without either the prior written permission of the Publishers or a license permitting restricted copying in the United Kingdom issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1P 9HE. First published 2012 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue entry for this title is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-0-854-32949-6 Printed in Great Britain by The Print Centre, University of Southampton Foreword The Lloyds Register Educational Trust (The LRET) in collaboration with the University of Southampton instituted a research collegium in Advanced Ship and Maritime Systems Design in Southampton between 16 July and 7 September 2012. This years collegium has focused on The LRETs research-led education agenda. Successful ship and maritime systems design depends on the collaborative application of a broad range of engineering competences as the drive for improved efficiency and environmental performance places greater demand on the design community. This aspect needs to be reflected in the education of naval architects, marine engineers and others who are the active contributors to the ship design processes. The aim of the research collegium has been to provide an environment where young people in their formative post-graduate years can learn and work in a small, mixed discipline group drawn from the maritime community to develop their skills whilst completing a project in advanced maritime systems design. The project brief that initiates each project set challenging user requirements to encourage each team to develop an imaginative solution, using individual knowledge and experience, together with learning derived from teaching to form a common element of the early part of the programme. The collegium format provided adequate time for the participants to enhance their knowledge through a structured programme of taught modules which focussed on the design process, advanced technologies, emerging technologies and novel marine solutions, regulatory and commercial issues, design challenges (such as environmental performance and climate change mitigation and adaptation) and engineering systems integration. Lecturers were drawn from academic research and industry communities to provide a mind- broadening opportunity for participants, whatever their original specialisation. The subject of the 2012 collegium has been systems underpinning seabed exploitation. The 25 scholars attending the 2012 collegium were teamed into five groups. The project brief included: (a) quantification of the environmental challenge; (b) understanding of the geo- political legal-social context; (c) possible techniques for harvesting or recovering resources from the seabed; (d) one engineering system to achieve seabed exploitation; (e) economics and logistics challenges. While all the groups addressed the items (a) to (c), each team focused on just one engineering system in dealing with items (d) and (e). This volume presents the findings of one of the five groups. R A Shenoi, P A Wilson, S S Bennett Southampton 2 September 2012 i Acknowledgements It is a pleasure to thank the many people who made this report possible. We wish to acknowledge, first and foremost, Mr. Michael Franklin, Director of the Lloyds Register Educational Trust (LRET) and the Board of Trustees for realising the Research Collegium for a 2nd year, and we all hope this Collegium will become a tradition. We would like to express the deepest appreciation to Professor Shenoi and Professor Wilson because their contributions, detailed comments and insight have been of great value to us. It gives us great pleasure to acknowledge the support and help of Professor Pomeroy and Prof. Rachel Mills, through lectures and further advice in their fields of specialization. We wish to thank Dr. Sally Bennett because she has been providing us with encouragement, sound advice, and valuable feedback for improvement, during the whole of the collegium. We are also grateful to Dr. Alex Phillips for his technical guidance and his apt inquiries during our weekly presentations, which introduced new issues for consideration each time. We particularly thank Dr Kelsey Jordahl for making bathymetric grids available, Professor Ian Croudace for his extensive help and Dr Maaten Furlong for expert submarine advice. Special thanks go to Mr Craig Porter for his assistance on the risk matrix. We are indebted to Mrs. Aparna Subaiah-Varna for her willingness to organize our accommodation, arrange our fare, organize our trips and make sure everyone has a good time. We would like, also, to thank Ms. Mirjam Fürth for getting her last year experience across, accompanying and guiding us in our trips and for her advice to study hard and play hard. Very special thanks to Mr. Bhawanin Mahesa, as well, for listening and discussing our concerns, assisting and mentoring. Last but certainly not least, our special thanks to the whole academic and technical stuff of the Fluid Structure Interactions building, where we had the support and equipment we needed to produce and complete our report. Finally, we wish to thank deeply all of our colleagues on the LRET Collegium, for the great time we had during these two months and for the quality friendships arisen through this unique experience. For any errors or inadequacies that may remain in this work, of course, the responsibility is entirely our own. ii Table of Contents Acknowledgements ................................................................................................................ iiȱ Table of Contents ................................................................................................................. iiiȱ List of Figures ..................................................................................................................... viiiȱ List of Tables ......................................................................................................................... xiȱ List of Abbreviations ........................................................................................................... xiiȱ Summary ............................................................................................................................. xiiiȱ 1ȱ Introduction ....................................................................................................................1ȱ 1.1ȱ Contents of this report .................................................................................................. 1ȱ 1.2ȱ What is the seabed? ...................................................................................................... 1ȱ 1.3ȱ Motivation for investigating marine minerals .............................................................. 2ȱ 1.4ȱ Seabed law .................................................................................................................... 3 ȱ 1.4.1ȱ Definition of ocean territory and jurisdiction .......................................................... 3ȱ 1.4.2ȱ Legal issues surrounding seabed resource exploitation .......................................... 5ȱ 1.4.3ȱ Tensions