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Rare Earths: The Next Resource Shortage?

29 points by purpled_haze 11y ago

kragen 11y ago
Abraham is basically completely wrong. The name is somewhat confusing. Rare earths aren't particularly rare. They're about a hundred thousand times more common than actually rare metals like platinum and gold, and about a hundred thousand times less common than common metals like iron, magnesium, and sodium: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth%27s_crust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth... Some of the metals mentioned in the article, like cobalt, ar neither rare nor rare-earth. Others, like indium and gallium, are about as rare and as expensive as silver, but are used in much smaller quantities. Yes, rare elements help a lot with efficient wind turbines and CIGS thin-film solar cells (although note that CIGS contains rare metals, but no rare earths). But they aren't used at all in the silicon photovoltaic cells that dominate the solar market now and for the foreseeable future, which don't use any rare minerals at all. And you can build efficient wind turbines without rare earths if you have to; you just use field coils instead of rare-earth permanent magnets. (In fact, Abraham reports that GE wind turbines have already made this switch.) In direct contradiction to what Abraham says, nearly all chips are 100% rare-earth free and rare-metal free, except for gold, which is in no danger of supply shortages. A small fraction of high-speed bipolar chips use gallium arsenide, which depends on rare gallium, but they're almost entirely limited to microwave-and-up RF analog circuitry these days. And, of course, rare metals are 100% recyclable. They aren't a resource we can use up, except by launching them on space probes or burning them in nuclear reactors. If we're allocating them inefficiently, we can melt down our existing air conditioners and wind turbines to redeploy our neodymium to higher-priority uses. It won't be long before people are digging LCD panels out of garbage dumps to recover the thin-film indium: maybe five to thirty years. This is a big issue if you're in the business of making motors, generators, or LCD panels. It affects your material costs significantly, and indeed indium cost volatility has been a major problem over the last decade or two. But it's not an issue at the level of human society as a whole. I think the overwrought rhetoric here is deeply harmful because we really are facing real resource shortages: oil (though not this year), ocean-water buffers, and our atmospheric capacity to handle carbon dioxide. Hyping up bogus "resource shortage" dangers like this will just lead to the public dismissing the real dangers.
- meric 11y ago
  To add to list of real resource shortages: Convenient access to fresh water, sustainable energy.
  - dredmorbius 11y ago
    Topsoil.
- TeMPOraL 11y ago
  Yup. Last time I checked, the only real, important issue with rare-earth metals was that some of the common methods of extracting them are ecologically devastating.
  - Animats 11y ago
    Only in China. Molycorp cracked that problem when they restarted the Mountain Pass, CA rare earths mine. They had to deal with EPA regulations, California regulations, and the Sierra Club, and they succeeded. Now the price has fallen and they're reorganizing in bankruptcy. Molycorp's new process gets rid of the huge settling ponds that used to be used, and recycles most of the working chemicals and water. (Recovering the water, instead of evaporating it, is a big win; they're on the edge of the Mojave Desert and water is expensive.) What comes out is a dry waste, which is basically what was dug out of the ground minus the good stuff. But about half their plant is resource recovery.
- jasonlmk 11y ago
  You hit the nail on the head here. The real issue with abundant rare earths is that over 95% of the global shipment of rare earths has historically been controlled by China. Because of this, there's significant exposure to their export policies and hence high price volatility for these materials. For instance, in 2011, Neodymium saw a significant surge in price just because the government decided to limit export quotas.
  - ryanobjc 11y ago
Animats 11y ago
This guy is several years out of date. A few years ago, in 2011, there was a rare earths shortage, made worse by export restrictions from China. Prices went way up. Then Molycorp got the old Mountain Pass, CA mine going again, with environmental controls even the Sierra Club says are OK. Now prices are back down, Molycorp is producing at a loss, and a big Australian mine is starting up.[1][2] There's also been progress in making motor magnets with smaller amounts of rare earths, which has cut demand.[3][4] So today we need less, there are more sources, and the technology to solve the waste problem from production is working. This is now a non-problem. [1] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-09-22/rare-earth-miners-face-tough-market/6786970 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-09-22/rare-earth-miners-face... [2] http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelkanellos/2015/06/26/three-lessons-from-the-woeful-tale-of-molycorp/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelkanellos/2015/06/26/three... [3] http://www.nissan-global.com/EN/NEWS/2012/_STORY/121120-02-e.html http://www.nissan-global.com/EN/NEWS/2012/_STORY/121120-02-e... [4] http://www.ims.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Session7a_01_Mikami_Hiroyuki_Technologies_to_replace_rare_earth_elements.pdf http://www.ims.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Session7a_01_M...
rdlecler1 11y ago
If this became a true national security threat the US would have production in a few weeks, it's just that right now it's much cheaper to outsource this to China.

29 points by purpled_haze 11y ago

Abraham is basically completely wrong. The name is somewhat confusing. Rare earths aren't particularly rare. They're about a hundred thousand times more common than actually rare metals like platinum and gold, and about a hundred thousand times less common than common metals like iron, magnesium, and sodium: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth%27s_crust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth... Some of the metals mentioned in the article, like cobalt, ar neither rare nor rare-earth. Others, like indium and gallium, are about as rare and as expensive as silver, but are used in much smaller quantities. Yes, rare elements help a lot with efficient wind turbines and CIGS thin-film solar cells (although note that CIGS contains rare metals, but no rare earths). But they aren't used at all in the silicon photovoltaic cells that dominate the solar market now and for the foreseeable future, which don't use any rare minerals at all. And you can build efficient wind turbines without rare earths if you have to; you just use field coils instead of rare-earth permanent magnets. (In fact, Abraham reports that GE wind turbines have already made this switch.) In direct contradiction to what Abraham says, nearly all chips are 100% rare-earth free and rare-metal free, except for gold, which is in no danger of supply shortages. A small fraction of high-speed bipolar chips use gallium arsenide, which depends on rare gallium, but they're almost entirely limited to microwave-and-up RF analog circuitry these days. And, of course, rare metals are 100% recyclable. They aren't a resource we can use up, except by launching them on space probes or burning them in nuclear reactors. If we're allocating them inefficiently, we can melt down our existing air conditioners and wind turbines to redeploy our neodymium to higher-priority uses. It won't be long before people are digging LCD panels out of garbage dumps to recover the thin-film indium: maybe five to thirty years. This is a big issue if you're in the business of making motors, generators, or LCD panels. It affects your material costs significantly, and indeed indium cost volatility has been a major problem over the last decade or two. But it's not an issue at the level of human society as a whole. I think the overwrought rhetoric here is deeply harmful because we really are facing real resource shortages: oil (though not this year), ocean-water buffers, and our atmospheric capacity to handle carbon dioxide. Hyping up bogus "resource shortage" dangers like this will just lead to the public dismissing the real dangers.

meric 11y ago
To add to list of real resource shortages: Convenient access to fresh water, sustainable energy.
- dredmorbius 11y ago
  Topsoil.
TeMPOraL 11y ago
Yup. Last time I checked, the only real, important issue with rare-earth metals was that some of the common methods of extracting them are ecologically devastating.
- Animats 11y ago
  Only in China. Molycorp cracked that problem when they restarted the Mountain Pass, CA rare earths mine. They had to deal with EPA regulations, California regulations, and the Sierra Club, and they succeeded. Now the price has fallen and they're reorganizing in bankruptcy. Molycorp's new process gets rid of the huge settling ponds that used to be used, and recycles most of the working chemicals and water. (Recovering the water, instead of evaporating it, is a big win; they're on the edge of the Mojave Desert and water is expensive.) What comes out is a dry waste, which is basically what was dug out of the ground minus the good stuff. But about half their plant is resource recovery.
jasonlmk 11y ago
You hit the nail on the head here. The real issue with abundant rare earths is that over 95% of the global shipment of rare earths has historically been controlled by China. Because of this, there's significant exposure to their export policies and hence high price volatility for these materials. For instance, in 2011, Neodymium saw a significant surge in price just because the government decided to limit export quotas.
- ryanobjc 11y ago

Animats 11y ago

This guy is several years out of date. A few years ago, in 2011, there was a rare earths shortage, made worse by export restrictions from China. Prices went way up. Then Molycorp got the old Mountain Pass, CA mine going again, with environmental controls even the Sierra Club says are OK. Now prices are back down, Molycorp is producing at a loss, and a big Australian mine is starting up.[1][2] There's also been progress in making motor magnets with smaller amounts of rare earths, which has cut demand.[3][4] So today we need less, there are more sources, and the technology to solve the waste problem from production is working. This is now a non-problem. [1] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-09-22/rare-earth-miners-face-tough-market/6786970 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-09-22/rare-earth-miners-face... [2] http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelkanellos/2015/06/26/three-lessons-from-the-woeful-tale-of-molycorp/ http://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelkanellos/2015/06/26/three... [3] http://www.nissan-global.com/EN/NEWS/2012/_STORY/121120-02-e.html http://www.nissan-global.com/EN/NEWS/2012/_STORY/121120-02-e... [4] http://www.ims.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Session7a_01_Mikami_Hiroyuki_Technologies_to_replace_rare_earth_elements.pdf http://www.ims.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Session7a_01_M...

rdlecler1 11y ago

If this became a true national security threat the US would have production in a few weeks, it's just that right now it's much cheaper to outsource this to China.