Science —

Use of rare earth metals outstripping supply

The US no longer produces or processes any of the rare earth metals used in …

Those of you who have spent time staring at a periodic table are undoubtedly aware of the large insertions that are typically stuck below the chart, since they'd make the table unreasonably wide otherwise. The top of these two rows is typically called the Lanthanide series, and it contains the rare earth metals, like dysprosium, holmium, and praseodymium. Although these exotic-sounding metals find their way into displays and lasers, they're primarily notable for their use in powerful magnets that appear in everything from electric motors to disk drives. And, according to a new Congressional analysis posted by the Federation of American Scientists' Secrecy News blog, the world is using them up faster than it can produce them. 

The report itself doesn't really have much information that couldn't be obtained elsewhere, but it puts it all together in a very readable package. Right now, we're using about 134,000 tons of rare earth metals a year, but mining only 124,000 tons; the difference is made up using ore stocks that have been mined but not yet processed. 

Demand is expected to continue to boom, but new mines and processing facilities take on the order of a decade to come online, so supplies are likely to get very tight in the interim. Right now, most of the rare earths are produced in China, but the country has been limiting exports of late, and its domestic demand is expected to outstrip its production sometime in 2012. 

Congress is investigating because absolutely none of the production comes from the US. (Some ore is supplied by the US, but it was previously mined, and is shipped overseas for processing.) This is a concern because many military technologies also rely on the use of rare earths. The US has some high-quality deposits that are estimated to hold 13 percent of the global reserves, but much of it is mixed with thorium, which creates a radioactive waste problem that has discouraged their use. Even if we did start mining it, however, we don't have any domestic processing capacity, or any companies that are converting the results into finished products, like magnets. 

As a result, several pieces of legislation are pending in Congress, most of which would require the Department of Defense to evaluate whether our supplies are sufficiently diverse to prevent disruptions; some of the bills would take steps to promote domestic production. The report also lays out some additional policy options, such as challenging China's rare earth export restrictions at the WTO. Overall, the report suggests it's not time to panic, but it might be time to get a bit concerned, and plan accordingly. 

Channel Ars Technica