Japan Boosts Deep-Sea Mining Plan to Cut Rare-Earth Reliance

Japan is accelerating a decade-old plan to extract rare earths from the deep seabed, an ambitious initiative given extra impetus by the country’s drive to cut reliance on Chinese supply.

A state-owned vessel is scheduled to return to port this month after fitting equipment below the surface of Japanese waters, near a coral atoll 2,000 kilometers (1,243 miles) from Tokyo. The aim is to pull metal-bearing mud from the seabed for tests as early as February 2027, according to the government body running the project.