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Science 26 March 2010:
Vol. 327. no. 5973, pp. 1596 - 1597 Nations Move to Head Off Shortages of Rare Earths Robert F. Service Looming scarcities of a handful of essential elements could shake the electronics industry, unless manufacturers and mining companies develop more sources soon.
Picture the periodic table as a city. You've got your flashy downtown: gold, silver, and the like. You've got your industrial sector: iron and nickel. There are parks: carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen. And of course the "troubled" section: radionuclides. Then there are the forgotten, distant exurbs: the rare earth elements (REEs), lanthanum (element 57) through lutetium (element 71) along with scandium and yttrium. Sleepy no more, the exurbs have turned very desirable. In recent decades, REEs have become vital to a host of novel electronics and green-energy technologies. The trouble is that, while researchers are steadily inventing new applications for rare earths, the supply isn't keeping up—and users of REEs are feeling the pinch. Today, China supplies more than 97% of all REEs, and increasingly the products from which they are made. Those products span a wide swath, ranging from phosphors in electronic displays, to magnets in disk drives, cell phones, and MRI machines, and motors in missile guidance systems. In 2000, about 60,000 metric tons of rare earth oxide ores were mined worldwide. By 2014, that number is expected to grow to 200,000 metric tons.
| | Rare talent. The unique electronic structure of rare earths makes them vital for electronic displays, hybrid cars, and many other products. CREDIT: ISTOCK PHOTO [Larger version of this image] |
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China's production of REEs has been growing steadily over the past decade. But because its domestic demand for the elements has been growing even faster, the country's REE exports have dropped from 75% of the total produced to 25% (see figure). For a handful of elements—neodymium, dysprosium, terbium, and yttrium—China is expected to use all it can produce sometime between 2012 and 2014, leaving the rest of the world out in the cold (Science, 11 September 2009, p. 1336). "We are going to have to start acting quickly, or we will be in big trouble," says Ed Richardson, the sales and marketing manager for Thomas & Skinner in Indianapolis, one of the few makers of high-intensity magnets left in the United States, which relies on REEs to make its products. And with ever more applications on the horizon, Richardson says, "the problems we are seeing today are only going to get worse over time." REEs aren't the only concern. Supplies of other metals vital to electronics and green technologies—such as indium and lithium—are also tightening as industrial uses for these materials skyrockets. Rare earths are not rare. They are ubiquitous in soils around the globe. But unlike gold and silver, which are heavily concentrated in particular ore deposits, rare earths are sparse. The world's richest veins of REEs contain only 4% to 9% of the elements. Most deposits have 1% or less of the elements—too little to make their processing economical, says Mark Smith, chief executive officer of Molycorp Minerals in Greenwood Village, Colorado, the only remaining rare-earth mining company in the Western Hemisphere.
In some cases, mining companies are responding. For example, in the United States, Molycorp plans to reopen a mine in Mountain Pass, California, expected to produce up to 20,000 metric tons of rare earth oxides by 2012. In Canada, Great Western Minerals Group and Avalon Rare Metals hope to tap vast rare-earth deposits in Saskatchewan and the Northwest Territories. However, rare-earth mining consultant Jack Lifton notes that these companies have not been able to secure all the funds they'll need to start operations. New mining efforts are just the first step. Numerous rare earth oxides are invariably mixed together in ores. They must be separated and purified, reduced to metallic form, and then alloyed, cast, and shaped. All the Western businesses that used to do these extra jobs are gone and will need to be restarted. Setting up this full suite can cost hundreds of millions of dollars and take up to a decade to accomplish, Lifton says. That's enough to scare away most investors, who are interested in shorter term payoff. Investors also worry about a business that can be so easily manipulated by a single government, says Jeff Green, president of J.A. Green and Co., a government relations firm in Washington, D.C., specializing in rare earths. China seems unlikely to flood the market today, but it did just that in the 1980s and 1990s, driving most Western producers out of business. "It creates a really unstable investment situation," Green adds.
Green, Lifton, and others say plenty can be done to get over such hurdles. Last month, magnet industry leaders in the United States sent a letter to John Holdren, director of the U.S. Office of Science and Technology Policy in Washington, D.C., calling on the Obama Administration to take prompt action to restore rare-earth mining and processing in the United States and other Western countries. The recommendations included establishing short-term stockpiles of rare earths critical for defense needs and having the U.S. Department of Energy set up a $2 billion loan-guarantee program to help Western mining companies build new mining and processing facilities. Congress has already drawn up a bill to push such efforts, though it has yet to be introduced.
| | Losing ground. China produces nearly all the world's rare earths. But as uses for the elements increase, China's exports of them are declining. CREDIT: ADAPTED FROM M. SMITH, MOLYCORP MINERALS [Larger version of this image] |
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Such efforts could get a boost early next month when the Government Accountability Office (GAO) is scheduled to release an interim report on the vulnerability of defense applications to rare-earth shortages. If GAO determines that particular rare earths are vital to national security, it "could really get the ball rolling" in prompting government agencies to back REE mining and stockpiles, says Gareth Hatch, director of technology at Dexter Magnetic Technologies in suburban Chicago and editor of the RealMetalBlog. Some manufacturing companies aren't waiting for U.S. and Canadian mining companies to take action. Toyota recently made a deal with a rare-earth mine in Vietnam, securing supplies of neodymium and lanthanum. In a single Prius, Toyota uses a kilogram of neodymium for its electric engine and 10 kilograms of lanthanum for its nickel metal hydride battery. In January, a Toyota supplier also formed a partnership with a mine in Argentina to supply lithium for batteries for its next generation of plug-in hybrid vehicles. Lifton says other Western companies and governments need to act decisively, or they will find themselves frozen out of the market. "We have 3 to 5 years to get it done," he says. "And we haven't even started yet."
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