Are Rare Earth Elements Actually Rare?

When Apple's new iPhone debuts later this month, it will be the latest addition to a long list of electronic devices -- ranging from wind turbines to flat-screen TVs -- that rely on rare earth elements, a family of minerals found near the bottom of the periodic table. Rare earth elements are needed to manufacture the consumer electronics for which the world has an exponentially expanding appetite, and are also necessary for green-energy technology like nickel-metal-hydride electric-car batteries. There's just one problem: Almost nobody produces them except the Chinese, and even they may not have enough of them for long. So, are rare earth minerals actually rare?

Not really. The term "rare earth" is an archaic one, dating back to the elements' discovery by a Swedish army lieutenant in 1787. In fact, most (though not all) of the 15 (or 16, or 17, depending on which scientist you're talking to) elements are fairly common; several of them are more abundant in the Earth's crust than lead or nitrogen. The flints in cigarette lighters are made out of rare earths, and they've been used in incandescent gas lamps for more than a century. The stuff has been mined everywhere from Sweden to Southeast Asia to the American West. Even Afghanistan apparently has some.

Today, however, rare-earth mining is almost nonexistent outside China, which came to dominate the market in the 1980s and '90s by cutting world prices and now controls as much as 97 percent of the supply of some of the elements. The United States' only major rare-earth mine, a complex in Mountain Pass, California, that was once the world's leading producer of the minerals, shut down in 2002.

But the limited supply of the minerals in the marketplace is the result of economics and environmental concerns, not scarcity. Even with iPads flying off the shelves and high-end electric cars on showroom floors, the world consumes only a tiny amount of rare earth -- about 130,000 metric tons of it a year, or just over a tenth of the amount of copper produced last February alone. Market forecasters expect the global trade in rare earths to reach $2 billion to $3 billion by 2014, but even that amounts to barely 1 percent of today's iron market. And rare earth elements aren't actually worth very much at the mine -- most of their market value is added in the refining process.

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edited to 50%

Last Edited by SPUD on 09/10/2011 02:48 AM