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Molycorp's rare earth minerals mine, Mountain Pass, California. (graphic: Google Maps)
Rare earth minerals are critically important to current technologies, including many different electronic components. Unfortunately, these minerals don’t exist in large quantities in many places; they are concentrated in small pockets around the world, and in China in particular.
China currently has a lock on the market for rare earth materials: in 2009 it provided 95 percent of the world’s supply, or 120,000 tons. This concentration of supply has become a major issue in recent months, particularly after China temporarily blocked exports of these materials to Japan in September. A Critical Materials Strategy document issued by the U.S. Department of Energy last week points to the “risk of supply disruption” in the short term. Worldwide demand for rare earth elements was 125,000 tons in 2010 and is expected to rise to 225,000 tons by 2015.
The problem with dependence on rare earth minerals is two-fold; not only does the limited supply create easily manipulated pinch-points prone to political pressure, but the demand for these minerals puts supplies anywhere else at a premium. This means fragile ecosystems may be sacrificed for rare earth mineral mining in the name of national security since military technology also relies on these minerals.
We’re very much in need of a national policy to develop alternatives to rare earth minerals or we are going to make ugly, risky choices — sacrificing irreparable ecosystems here in the U.S. or increase exposure to political vagaries of limited supplies in other countries. It’s the problem of petroleum all over again, with new players — or it’s an opportunity to invest in our own ingenuity and find new solutions through public policy focused on development of alternatives here at home.
What do you think about the rare minerals situation? And what’s on your mind tonight?
15 Comments
So they announced this breakthrough from Caltech on one of the projects affiliated with ARPA-E. The significant thing to your piece is that it uses Cerium, which is plentiful and acts chemically like a rare earth element, which holds promise for breaking the back of this rare earth problem.
http://www.npr.org/2010/12/23/132283263/on-the-horizon-liquid-fuels-made-by-sunlight
Nice!
What would be really nice is if they pair it with the bidirectional fuel cell from JPL by using it to make methanol. Then they would get a hybrid car battery that could be filled up at the pump with fuel that came from solar energy by capturing CO2. The ultimate. And still no rare earths or conflict capacitors.
The monopoly supplier status was achieved in large part by undercutting existing suppliers; which caused competing sources to close down. There is not a lack of resources either in the U.S. or other places, just a lack of current production caused by pricing policies. Resumption of supply typically takes a number of years and significant investment. This is what happened to the Mountain Pass Mine, and others.
The U.S. Geological Survey published
Rare Earth Elements—Critical Resources for High Technology
Fact Sheet 087-02 in 2002.
Figure 1 is a graph of global Rare Earth production between 1950 and 2000. Many of the issues raised in the Technology Review article were raised years earlier, such as in the USGS Fact sheet linked above.
There are so many complitcated issues involved with your thesis it’s hard for me to reply with any degree of focus.
First, all yer premises are certainly us. Solid.
Second, there’s so many more foreign relations issues involved, I can’t do justice to THEIR merit.
But they need to be considered in great detail, regarding our presence in foreign lands and our reasons for doing so, be it empire or pursuit of control of foreign resources.
That would introduce the issue of WHY we are anywhere, which is complicated country by country, but not complicated by empire standards.
The control of rare earth minerals is a microcosm, IMHO, in regards to the struggle of all manners of existence, by all humans . .
N that’s, Rayne, IMHO, (bless you for all ya do) the bigger issue as I see it.
I hope to see you and many more dealing with the inequalities of of our economic disorders and inequaties of wealth as they impact we the people.
Class war.
;-)
Brother Jim, I have a solution to the rare earth element shortage. Last year for my birth day my son treated me to an outing at Fermi Lab, just outside Lee Roy Brownville. Being able to con a con man I conned my way into the smart folks`s lecture. They could have been speaking Akkadian from the days of Sargon for all I knew. We were being told about the latest break throughs for the Higgs particle. The Nobel laureate finished his mumbo jumbo and asked for questions and comments. As always happens every blow hard in the place except me tried to show off his Dean`s list education from Community College. At the end of what semed like eternity in a clothes closet, a ten year old girl stood up and asked if some particle that was causing them fits was not just an enlarged and decaying type of some other particle. The refugee from the Discovery channel grabbed his chest and fell backwards and said, ” Nobody on Earth every thought that but you know it makes sense.” The crowd was stunned and silent for over a minute an eons for academia, and broke into applause that was appropriate for WWE on the USA Net Work. Let`s find that little girl and put her on it.
Zenostoa
As noted, the U.S. has rare earth minerals, and alternates can be developed/utilized so the dependence on China or any other country can be avoided. It’s up to this country to develop the technology we need, not accept shortages – artificial or not – as an impediment. The problems are the same for fossil fuel usage.
That’s a perfect example of the kind of investment we need to make; NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab is well prepared to do the research, and what comes out of the lab is public, not beholden to any other country or to corporations.
I’m a little sketchy on the technology JPL is using for this particular fuel cell and on the possible combination of cerium with this development. Early this past decade there were fuel cells in development which relied on catalysis for generation of methanol; I think this is where cerium fits in the mix, but it seems like nano-particulates of other more common minerals were being analyzed as catalytic components, in part because of temperatures of operation.
We’re probably ten years behind because of the lack of public investment — JPL announced its bidirectional fuel cell in 2002, for example, eight years ago — and should be commercializing fuel cells right now at scale.
It’s still a supply issue; the amount of resources required combined with environmental impact makes rare earth minerals untenable here in the U.S. Just look at that aerial graphic of the Molycorp site. How much of our country do we want to scar like that to obtain small amounts of minerals?
We could and should do more to recover resources we’ve already used but are sitting in landfills; it’d be less demanding environmentally and reduce the amount of resources required to mine new sources.
This wasn’t a post by “Brother Jim.”
I’ll agree that we do need to encourage some of our youngsters; the last decade has seen numbers of girls and women going into science and technology falling off, rather than increasing. We aren’t going to be able to develop the technology we need if the pipeline does not get replenished with the most important resource we have — intellect and ingenuity.
Your post was so insightful I thought it had to be from Jim Moss. I can now see your moniker proudly displayed. As Breaker Morant said, ” We poets do seek immortality.”Your prose did have an iambic pentameter feel to it.Your second to the last paragraph reads like ” Beowulf ” well almost. Happy New Year.
Zenostoa
But the solution, and in some sense the opportunity, because it is an opportunity to restart the industrial base around sustainable technologies, is always in asking the questions: what do you want this rare earth for, what could use instead? It’s one thing if you need this battery for an AED, there’s not much you can do about needing to deliver a whopping shock. But a cell phone could be re-engineered to run off distributed energy reducing the demand for concentrated power, manufacturing could be re-engineered to be less exothermic. Materials, like cerium, that are more plentiful, could be researched. Could you substitute exotic organic molecules or nanostructures and get the right properties? What is the minimum resources and energy from assembly to recycle and throughout product life that you can use? What is the maximum resource efficiency in quality of life – persons per scratch on the planet?
Just read an article about China buying up the mineral rights in Afghanistan for copper. The amount of money leaving this country to support others is simply jaw dropping. Something must be done.
Common Dreams has a piece up about it and the site in the Mojave Desert.
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2010/12/27