November 17, 2010 • 26 mins
Rare earth metals are a crucial component in many electronic devices, but what exactly are they? In this episode, Jonathan and Chris break down the fact and fiction about rare earth metals -- and why they're so important.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology with
tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello again, everyone,
Welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Poulette and
I am one of the editors here at how stuff
(00:22):
works dot Com. Sitting across from me, as usual, is
senior writer Jonathan Strickland. They say that the best weapon
is the one you never have to fire. I respectfully disagree.
I prefer the weapon you only have to fire once.
That's how Dad did it, and so America does it,
and it's worked out pretty well so far. Nice. Thank you.
(00:45):
Today we're going to talk about rare earth metals and
why they're important in electronics. Yes, this is actually sort
of a weird topic for us. It's sort of a
science e thing, but it's kind of a stuff. Yeah up, Um,
but it's certainly uh, certainly something that's uh sort of
a misnomer about rare earth metals. Yeah, yeah, it's. Um,
(01:09):
that's one of the things you need to understand first.
Do you want to go into that. Why it's a misnomer? Well,
it sounds like a joke. They're neither rare nor are
they an Earth all the And you know, some people
call them elements, but I think it's fair fairly safe
to call them metals. Yeah. A Swedish Army lieutenant discovered
(01:31):
the these medals back in seventeen seven and gave them
the the the categorical name of rare earth metals because
at that point they were very rarely seen. And it
turns out it's not because there's very little of it
on Earth. It's just that they tend to be um
(01:53):
mixed in with lots of other stuff, and you don't
tend to find a whole bunch of it in a
big quantity all in one spot. You find tend to
and little bits of it spread out over a huge area.
And if you wonder where the earth part comes from,
I did too, Actually I looked it up in in
Britannica and apparently this comes from the Greeks. And they
(02:13):
would define an earth as something that, uh, you could
heat up as much as they could heat something up
with the technology they had available to them, and it
wouldn't change significantly. Um, And it's not, I mean technically,
once you've with the with the technology we have available
to us, when you run into these oxides. Uh, with
(02:34):
these rare earth elements in them, you can in fact
break them down into individual elements. UM. So they're technically
not an Earth as described by that, but you know,
maybe maybe to the Greeks they would have been. I'm
sure of that time. And let me give you a
short list of some of the rare earth metals. They're
technically seventeen of them, yes they are. There's a gallium, indium, selenium,
(02:59):
to lurium, silicon, zinc, vanadium, lithium, platinum, neo, neodymium. Actually
some of these technically don't fall into the rare earth
metals either, like platinum, but they they're rare and they're
using electronics, so they often get lumped together with them. Cobalt, manganese, syrium, europium, dysphorium, terbium, scandium, scandium.
(03:24):
I didn't have that one, Scandium and atrium. I wonder
if you pronounce the I or if it's like pronounced
like an eye. I've never heard anyone say it. And
the lanthanoids, which is the which are the elements with
atomic numbers fifty seven through seventy one. Those are those
are technically the rare earth metals. They tend to be
heavy elements. Um, they and they're used for different things.
(03:45):
I mean a lot of these are used in order
to make magnets. Yes, I'm sorry you were about that.
Let's well, we're just gonna add another tiny historical tid bits.
And I think I think it's kind of interesting. People
pretty much ignored them up until about mid last century.
I mean, they really weren't there. They weren't particularly useful
for anything, and it was really hard to get enough
(04:06):
of them to do anything with them in the first place.
But they do make Jonathan pointing out very good permanent magnets. Yeah,
that's an important element in lots of electronics. Yeah, I didn't.
It's gonna happen that way. It's gonna happen all the time. Yeah.
So anyway, like, um, like, let's say your earbuds for
an MP three player, Uh, part of the speaker is
(04:26):
a tiny little magnet actually for not necessarily tiny, but
with earbuds, they're definitely tiny. So you have to have
a permanent magnet as part of the speaker system in
these earbuds. Well, obviously you want a permanent magnet that's
going to be powerful yet light. You don't want to have,
you know, this incredibly heavy device. I mean it is
(04:48):
stuck inside your ear. It's not um, it's not really comfortable,
let's say, right, So you want to have some sort
of material that's light and yet is able to have
a permanent magnetic chart and a lot of these medals
fall into that category. And in fact, that's what a
lot of them are used for. And uh, but not
just speakers. I mean, that's just one example that that's correct.
(05:11):
I was going to add that. Um. Uh. I guess
what started this whole thing for me was an article
on c neet by Martin Lamonica. Um. And of course
we you know, I think each of us delved into
it quite substantially more to find out more. But he
wrote an really interesting piece about it. Well, we can
get into why more in in a few minutes and
when we get into more of the application. But one
(05:33):
of the benefits of using these medals is that their
their strength to weight ratio is so is so uh useful. Um,
They're very strong for their weight, and that's why, as
as Jonathan pointed out, uh, they do make excellent applications
for things like that. In portable electronics. There and lots
and lots of different kinds of portable electronics UM four
(05:54):
different things, which we'll get into in a minute here.
But UM uh yeah, that's that's just one of those
as reasons why they're so useful, right. Yeah. The weight
issue is a is non trivial. Uh. For instance, you know,
you hear about people talking about like the iPad, the
iPad weighs a little over a pound, and people will
talk about how after a little while it feels like
(06:16):
it's it's getting heavy in your hands. UM. I mean
without the these particular metals to help design well, to
help in the design of electronics, UM, they would be
even heavier. It would not In fact, it probably would
not be compact. We would have much larger electronics uh,
and they would be less efficient, they'd be heavier. UM.
(06:39):
It just would not be It wouldn't be the same
world that we live in today if we didn't if
we had not discovered the applications of these rare earth
metals UM and some of the other applications of all
things like displays and UM various other electronic components. The
EUROPEUM in particular was used to produce color displays, And
(07:00):
that's actually one that's fairly rare. Uh. Some of these
rare earth metals are legitimately rare in the sense that
we just we haven't found big deposits of them. Now. Granted,
most electronics only use a couple of grams of this
stuff at at most for a particular device. Yeah, there's
there's a notable exception, but we'll get to that a second. Well, yeah,
(07:22):
that's that's one of the things too about the using
these devices. You they wouldn't necessarily need to be plentiful, um,
except for the obviously the cost um in order to
spread them around into the electronics because they are are
so light and useful at their size. Um. But yeah,
that that talking about the using them in displays. That's
(07:46):
the first application I had seen about the mid twentieth
century when they started making color television sets. Um, and
they use some of these materials to make I believe
I read the color red helped help make the red
phosphour and uh in the TV screens. So that's that
was one of the earliest, I think widespread uses of
(08:06):
the rare earth metals. Yeah, today you you're gonna find
it also in a lot of green technology stuff like
solar panels, wind generators, fuel cells. UM, these all have
some rare earth metals in them. And actually that's where
it's funny, because these are supposed to be answers to
(08:27):
things like the oil crisis, and UM, it's funny because
they had were starting to hit a rare earth metal crisis.
That's true. UM. One of the reasons for that is
the the direct drive turbines UH and green technology for
wind power. They use an awful lot of some of
(08:47):
these devices. And I note now that some of my
notes got cut off when I came in here, so
the the number I had written down to use for
this particular argument is now lost to me. What was
that you happened to happen? Neodymium? Was the was the
actual particular metal that because what's happening is let's let's
(09:09):
let's talk about where these metals are currently coming from. Okay,
They're almost all coming from China, Yes, Lamonica said about
of the world's rare earth metals are coming from China
right now. The figure I saw was between and so
the vast majority of these metals are all coming out
of China. And China doesn't just export these. China uses
(09:32):
these metals in various electronics and applications as well. Right, what,
it's one of the world's fastest growing economies, if not
the fastest growing economy, and of course, uh, you know
the popularity of electronics, um, you know in that country.
Plus they've the government has been really pushing green technology.
(09:54):
So with the applications and electronics and green technology, Uh,
they've wanted to keep a lot of their rare earth
metals to themselves to use in that and those applications.
The problem being that they've they're plentiful in China and
they've driven down the cost of mining them, so it's
been sort of economically counterproductive for other countries to do that.
(10:18):
They just import it from China. Yeah, that's a good point. Um,
you might say, well, why why is it all coming
from China? Does that just mean that all the metals
are in China? No, I mean China is an enormous country.
So that's that's part. Yeah, But the other element of
that is, as us see, it just happens. It's like
a drinking game. Every time you hear me say, element
(10:39):
have a sip of fruit juice. Yes, So China's big country,
there are a lot of rare earth metals there, but
there are a lot of rare earth metals across the
entire globe. Because China has driven the cost of mining
down so much, it made more sense to just go
ahead and purchase the metals from China than it did
to invest in mining operations in other parts of the world.
(11:00):
In fact, the United States had a rare earth metal mine.
Yes it did, and it was shut down in two
thousand two. Yes, I believe it's in Colorado. Uh that
I can't tell you because I don't know for certain
it is too. It definitely did shut down. No, wait,
but one the one to shut down in two thousand
two that I was reading was a complex in Mountain Pass, California, California.
And that's right, the Colorado connection was the executive director
(11:24):
of the Rare Earth Industry and Technology Association, Keith Delaney,
who Lamonica quoted, and he is based in Colorado. But yeah,
that that mine had shut down in in two thousand two.
But they're bringing it back. Yes, because here's the deal is.
As Chris was saying earlier about the wind generation um turbines,
(11:47):
China's building a big green windmill type of network within
the borders of China, and because it requires a lot
of this or maybe not even a lot, but it
re wires more neodymium than China actually produces. So that's
why China is saying, you know what, We're not gonna
export this anymore because we need it. In fact, we
(12:10):
need more than what we produce in order to fulfill
this project that we have planned. So um, you're not
gonna get any And so that's when the rest of
the world said, oh, you know what, depending upon one
supplier for this one really particular material is maybe not
(12:30):
the best idea because that one supplier can get cut off.
The same thing actually happened, Actually, a similar thing happened
with Japan. Uh. And this may or may not be
politically um motivated, right Japan. China actually shut down expert
exportation of rare earth metals to Japan and uh that
(12:53):
might have been because of a diplomatic dispute. China says, no,
that's not the reason, but the rest of the world
kind says, yeah, that's kind of the reason. Um. And
so that raised a lot of fears and the rest
of the world saying, well, if China can do that
if they're just gonna shut down exporting out these materials
that we depend on in order to make the various
(13:14):
electronic devices that are coming out today, where does that
leave us, because we're not getting it from anywhere else. Um,
right now, what that means is that it would leave us,
uh in panic mode. We wouldn't we wouldn't necessarily run
out of the metals immediately, because, as I said, in
most applications, we're only using a tiny amount of these medals,
(13:36):
you know, maybe a gram for a particular electronic device,
with a big exception being hybrid and electric vehicles. Because
supposedly a prius uses around thirty pounds of the stuff,
So that's a lot compared to you know, an iPod
or something. Yeah, and uh, from from what I can tell,
(13:58):
apparently according to to Delaney, that is one of the problems.
Even when the mine out in California comes back online
and they said sometime in the next couple of years,
there's also one in Australia, even with those new efforts, um,
it is unlikely that the producers of rare earth metals
(14:22):
can keep up with the world's demand for them. So
I would imagine that the cost will remain high until
there there is a way to produce them efficiently. Thankfully,
China has said, you know, no, no, we're not going
to shut down all exports of rare earth metals completely
to the world. You know, I would imagine not that
they can still make quite a bit of money on
(14:43):
the world market with that. But uh, you know, they're
the the brewjaja that erupted for about I'd say maybe
a couple of days. Uh, sort of has subsided now
that they the government has said, you know no, no, no no, no,
don't read you know, that's not we're doing. You know,
we will continue to export these things. But it has
caused people to go, hey, you know, we really need
to step this up. Maybe we need to actually invest
(15:05):
in this technology. So this could mean one of many things.
For one thing, China now that I mean essentially has
the world over a pit right now, China could say,
you know what we're gonna We're gonna increase the cost
of these because there is a real value to this
material and the and the value is greater than what
we're charging and um and until that until that price
(15:30):
exceeds what it would be to do the mining here
in the United States or other parts of the world.
It would still make more sense to buy to to
pay up right, So the price would keep going up
and we would keep paying because we'd say, well, the
alternative is to mind it ourselves, and it's still not
cheaper to mind it ourselves. That would be to pay
(15:51):
pay extra money to China. UM. I'm sorry you were
about to say, well, no, I was. I was going
to get into something else that we had planned on
talking about, which was the reason that this is sort
of a sensitive issue too, is that it's not easy
to get pure uh forms of the rare earth elements um,
(16:11):
simply because they are most often found as oxides, so
and they're mixed in with other things that can be
mixed in with thorium and I believe uranium. So it's uh,
you know, it's something that's difficult to do, and it's
not a cheap process where you just go out and
get a shovel and a wheelbarrow and start digging it up.
So that's one of the things. Also that China has
(16:31):
an advantage over the rest of the world. It appears
that most of the rare earth metal deposits in China
are not accompanied by radioactive uranium or or thorium. Yes,
so they don't have to worry about radiation very much.
That's not the way it is with through most of
the world, which means that if we start mining these
rare earth metals, we have to take into consideration the
fact that there is radioactive material there as well. Yes,
(16:54):
so that raises safety concerns. You have to figure out
how you're going to store and or dispose of that
radioact to material. How do you separate the rare earth
metals in a reasonably safe way that's not going to
drive the cost up so much that uh. You know, ultimately,
what this can mean to you as a consumer is
that the electronics that you purchased today could end up
(17:15):
being way more expensive down the road once we start
hitting these these limits with the these metals. Uh. And
in China, the way that they mine these rare earth
metals can be really destructive for the environment as well.
What typically what they'll do is they'll cut down the
vegetation in an area and they'll raise up the top
(17:37):
soil and they use acids to leach out the rare
earth metals UM and those acids can run off into
the nearby water table. And that can kill off um plants,
and it can affect animals um it's it can it
containt water supplies. There's also some allegations that some of
(17:59):
these rare earth metal minds in China, for some of
the particularly rare metals, that they're actually um somewhat overseen
by a criminal element. Chinese gangs essentially are are running
these um some of these rare earth metal minds. So
that's another issue, is that when we start purchasing these
(18:21):
these electronic devices over here, technically we're kind of funding
a criminal organization overseas well. I would imagine too that
it's not it's probably like most industries where there is
a group and then you know some of the others
are not. And the problem is that the problem is
that manufacturers over here can't necessarily tell where they're rare
(18:45):
earth metals. Like it's it's not like you can go
to the rare earth metal market and get the hey, look,
this is free range thorium over your not thorium obviously,
but yes, I don't need to worry about the fact
that this metal came from this my because this mine's
a legitimate mind. There's no criminal element here there's no
way to tell, right, So it's I'm not I'm not
(19:06):
placing blame on the manufacturers necessarily because they have to
get the stuff from somewhere. Um, I'm just saying that
it's a bad system overall because there's no way to
know for sure whether or not. Uh, you're enabling this
criminal element of like speak. Oh man, how many times
am I gonna use that word? The sad thing is,
(19:26):
I think you're actually catching it by no doing an
accidentally and then catching it. I did find, as it
turns out, I didn't accidentally delete my notes. Um. Yeah.
The volume, the volume I was stunned to see was
Keith Delaney again speaking of the the direct drive wind
turbines used in wind power. Um. Because each megawatt of
(19:46):
electricity generated requires half a ton of permanent magnets. Wow,
I see that's all. That's a whole lot of um.
There's a whole lot of uh these rare earth manimls.
And the thing is UM to that, you know, talking
about the electronics, The cost of your electronics going up,
the cost of the electricity depending on where you live
and what's being used to generate it. Uh, cost of
(20:07):
electricity to power those electronics could also go up. Yeah,
So I mean it's it's something that matters to us,
but we don't normally think about it. And going back
to the green element for just a second, it also
means that going green could end up becoming much more expensive,
depending on whether or not China, uh, you know, allows
(20:29):
exports of these rare earth metals or the green technology. Um,
if we do start opening up more minds across the world,
it'll all depend upon how efficient those mining processes are. Uh. Otherwise, again,
we could see that this green technology, the price of
green technology may rise exponentially. So then you're getting to
a point where you're saying, all right, does is it
(20:50):
economically feasible to switch from a petroleum based economy or
petroleum based fuel source to renewable in g doesn't make
sense financially. And the scary thing is is if this
these prices go up high enough, the answer to that
is going to be no, it doesn't make sense financially
until it gets so bad with the the you know,
(21:13):
the oil situation that it almost becomes like a panic
to try and fund green technology so that you can
you know, close that gap. And one of the the
objections some people have to using oil as an energy
source is that it means that we're dependent upon foreign
(21:36):
countries for two in order to get our fuel right,
and that we're essentially funding some of these countries that
have anti American sentiments. So we're giving money to people
who don't like us very much, is what that kind
of boils down to, the same sort of problem happens here.
If China is the only supplier and we are have
(21:56):
to play by China's game, then we are giving money
to a foreign power and we're dependent upon that foreign
power for energy needs. It's no better than the oil
as far as that part of the equation is concerned. Now, granted,
there's the whole other part of it. You know, you're
not generating pollution by using this kind of power, and
that that's a totally different argument that that. You know,
(22:20):
you can still say, well, green technology is superior, but
from a from a dependence on foreign nation perspective, it's
the same. Yeah. And of course, uh, we're speaking from
a point of view from the United States, and many
of our listeners come from other countries, but in many
cases there a lot of them aren't importing a lot
(22:43):
of their rare earth metals from China and other countries too.
It's not something like in the case of Japan, apparently
there are not many. It's hot. They really are very
rare in Japan itself, and they do rely on imports
there more than they would in other countries like we do.
Apparently India is heavy a reasonably good supply and they
(23:03):
are are minding them themselves as well. But UM, I
don't know about a lot of the other countries around
the world. So yeah, I mean it's there's a security
situation there too, for whatever countries that may need this
for you know, I'm sure a lot of defense electronics
rely on on these medals. There was actually a report recently,
uh in the United States government from the Department of
(23:23):
Defense saying that, um, they were not worried about this
current situation and that they did not see it impacting
the national security. Uh. I don't know how they could
have said anything else without generating a panic. So I'm
not saying that they are being optimistic or they're painting
(23:45):
it a certain way. I'm just saying that, UM, I
really hope for a resolution of this problem. Well, I uh,
you know, I think it's interesting that these medals which
really have been you know, they've known about out for
a very long time. Uh, you know, I have just
sort of come into providence prominence in the last hundred
(24:07):
years or so, and now they are part of, you know,
one of you know, some of the more important substances
we've really Yeah, and to think that, you know, three
years ago, we had no idea what they are, and
now we depend very heavily upon them. Uh. Actually, I
guess the only hope I have otherwise is that the
(24:28):
whole carbon nanotube thing works out to the point where
we find out carbon nanotubes are superior for all of
these different applications. I know that, I know carbon nanotube
strength to weight ratio is insane depending on how you
align the the the graphite sheets. Oh yeah, yeah, Well
that that's another fascinating topic that maybe we can talk
(24:48):
about all of that. Maybe another that's again another science, Yeah,
carbonano tubes. Yes, Also it makes me want to quote more.
Yeah nano nano. Oh. Oh, I almost saw that one coming.
It was just about the hand me before it really did. Okay,
I think that that wraps up this discussion because I
don't I don't think I can talk anymore. I was
(25:09):
relying on the element of surprise drink. So, guys, I
hope you enjoyed this episode on Rare Earth Metals. We
will talk to you again soon. If you have any
suggestions for topics or comments or questions, you can contact
us on Twitter and Facebook are handled. There is tech
Stuff h s W or you can shoot us an email.
(25:30):
That email address is tech stuff at how stuff works
dot com and Chris and I will talk to you
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(25:52):
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the reinvented two thousand twelve camera. It's ready, are you
Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.
It's ready. Are you get in touch with technology with
tech Stuff from how stuff works dot com. Hello again, everyone,
Welcome to tech stuff. My name is Chris Poulette and
I am one of the editors here at how stuff
(00:22):
works dot Com. Sitting across from me, as usual, is
senior writer Jonathan Strickland. They say that the best weapon
is the one you never have to fire. I respectfully disagree.
I prefer the weapon you only have to fire once.
That's how Dad did it, and so America does it,
and it's worked out pretty well so far. Nice. Thank you.
(00:45):
Today we're going to talk about rare earth metals and
why they're important in electronics. Yes, this is actually sort
of a weird topic for us. It's sort of a
science e thing, but it's kind of a stuff. Yeah up, Um,
but it's certainly uh, certainly something that's uh sort of
a misnomer about rare earth metals. Yeah, yeah, it's. Um,
(01:09):
that's one of the things you need to understand first.
Do you want to go into that. Why it's a misnomer? Well,
it sounds like a joke. They're neither rare nor are
they an Earth all the And you know, some people
call them elements, but I think it's fair fairly safe
to call them metals. Yeah. A Swedish Army lieutenant discovered
(01:31):
the these medals back in seventeen seven and gave them
the the the categorical name of rare earth metals because
at that point they were very rarely seen. And it
turns out it's not because there's very little of it
on Earth. It's just that they tend to be um
(01:53):
mixed in with lots of other stuff, and you don't
tend to find a whole bunch of it in a
big quantity all in one spot. You find tend to
and little bits of it spread out over a huge area.
And if you wonder where the earth part comes from,
I did too, Actually I looked it up in in
Britannica and apparently this comes from the Greeks. And they
(02:13):
would define an earth as something that, uh, you could
heat up as much as they could heat something up
with the technology they had available to them, and it
wouldn't change significantly. Um, And it's not, I mean technically,
once you've with the with the technology we have available
to us, when you run into these oxides. Uh, with
(02:34):
these rare earth elements in them, you can in fact
break them down into individual elements. UM. So they're technically
not an Earth as described by that, but you know,
maybe maybe to the Greeks they would have been. I'm
sure of that time. And let me give you a
short list of some of the rare earth metals. They're
technically seventeen of them, yes they are. There's a gallium, indium, selenium,
(02:59):
to lurium, silicon, zinc, vanadium, lithium, platinum, neo, neodymium. Actually
some of these technically don't fall into the rare earth
metals either, like platinum, but they they're rare and they're
using electronics, so they often get lumped together with them. Cobalt, manganese, syrium, europium, dysphorium, terbium, scandium, scandium.
(03:24):
I didn't have that one, Scandium and atrium. I wonder
if you pronounce the I or if it's like pronounced
like an eye. I've never heard anyone say it. And
the lanthanoids, which is the which are the elements with
atomic numbers fifty seven through seventy one. Those are those
are technically the rare earth metals. They tend to be
heavy elements. Um, they and they're used for different things.
(03:45):
I mean a lot of these are used in order
to make magnets. Yes, I'm sorry you were about that.
Let's well, we're just gonna add another tiny historical tid bits.
And I think I think it's kind of interesting. People
pretty much ignored them up until about mid last century.
I mean, they really weren't there. They weren't particularly useful
for anything, and it was really hard to get enough
(04:06):
of them to do anything with them in the first place.
But they do make Jonathan pointing out very good permanent magnets. Yeah,
that's an important element in lots of electronics. Yeah, I didn't.
It's gonna happen that way. It's gonna happen all the time. Yeah.
So anyway, like, um, like, let's say your earbuds for
an MP three player, Uh, part of the speaker is
(04:26):
a tiny little magnet actually for not necessarily tiny, but
with earbuds, they're definitely tiny. So you have to have
a permanent magnet as part of the speaker system in
these earbuds. Well, obviously you want a permanent magnet that's
going to be powerful yet light. You don't want to have,
you know, this incredibly heavy device. I mean it is
(04:48):
stuck inside your ear. It's not um, it's not really comfortable,
let's say, right, So you want to have some sort
of material that's light and yet is able to have
a permanent magnetic chart and a lot of these medals
fall into that category. And in fact, that's what a
lot of them are used for. And uh, but not
just speakers. I mean, that's just one example that that's correct.
(05:11):
I was going to add that. Um. Uh. I guess
what started this whole thing for me was an article
on c neet by Martin Lamonica. Um. And of course
we you know, I think each of us delved into
it quite substantially more to find out more. But he
wrote an really interesting piece about it. Well, we can
get into why more in in a few minutes and
when we get into more of the application. But one
(05:33):
of the benefits of using these medals is that their
their strength to weight ratio is so is so uh useful. Um,
They're very strong for their weight, and that's why, as
as Jonathan pointed out, uh, they do make excellent applications
for things like that. In portable electronics. There and lots
and lots of different kinds of portable electronics UM four
(05:54):
different things, which we'll get into in a minute here.
But UM uh yeah, that's that's just one of those
as reasons why they're so useful, right. Yeah. The weight
issue is a is non trivial. Uh. For instance, you know,
you hear about people talking about like the iPad, the
iPad weighs a little over a pound, and people will
talk about how after a little while it feels like
(06:16):
it's it's getting heavy in your hands. UM. I mean
without the these particular metals to help design well, to
help in the design of electronics, UM, they would be
even heavier. It would not In fact, it probably would
not be compact. We would have much larger electronics uh,
and they would be less efficient, they'd be heavier. UM.
(06:39):
It just would not be It wouldn't be the same
world that we live in today if we didn't if
we had not discovered the applications of these rare earth
metals UM and some of the other applications of all
things like displays and UM various other electronic components. The
EUROPEUM in particular was used to produce color displays, And
(07:00):
that's actually one that's fairly rare. Uh. Some of these
rare earth metals are legitimately rare in the sense that
we just we haven't found big deposits of them. Now. Granted,
most electronics only use a couple of grams of this
stuff at at most for a particular device. Yeah, there's
there's a notable exception, but we'll get to that a second. Well, yeah,
(07:22):
that's that's one of the things too about the using
these devices. You they wouldn't necessarily need to be plentiful, um,
except for the obviously the cost um in order to
spread them around into the electronics because they are are
so light and useful at their size. Um. But yeah,
that that talking about the using them in displays. That's
(07:46):
the first application I had seen about the mid twentieth
century when they started making color television sets. Um, and
they use some of these materials to make I believe
I read the color red helped help make the red
phosphour and uh in the TV screens. So that's that
was one of the earliest, I think widespread uses of
(08:06):
the rare earth metals. Yeah, today you you're gonna find
it also in a lot of green technology stuff like
solar panels, wind generators, fuel cells. UM, these all have
some rare earth metals in them. And actually that's where
it's funny, because these are supposed to be answers to
(08:27):
things like the oil crisis, and UM, it's funny because
they had were starting to hit a rare earth metal crisis.
That's true. UM. One of the reasons for that is
the the direct drive turbines UH and green technology for
wind power. They use an awful lot of some of
(08:47):
these devices. And I note now that some of my
notes got cut off when I came in here, so
the the number I had written down to use for
this particular argument is now lost to me. What was
that you happened to happen? Neodymium? Was the was the
actual particular metal that because what's happening is let's let's
(09:09):
let's talk about where these metals are currently coming from. Okay,
They're almost all coming from China, Yes, Lamonica said about
of the world's rare earth metals are coming from China
right now. The figure I saw was between and so
the vast majority of these metals are all coming out
of China. And China doesn't just export these. China uses
(09:32):
these metals in various electronics and applications as well. Right, what,
it's one of the world's fastest growing economies, if not
the fastest growing economy, and of course, uh, you know
the popularity of electronics, um, you know in that country.
Plus they've the government has been really pushing green technology.
(09:54):
So with the applications and electronics and green technology, Uh,
they've wanted to keep a lot of their rare earth
metals to themselves to use in that and those applications.
The problem being that they've they're plentiful in China and
they've driven down the cost of mining them, so it's
been sort of economically counterproductive for other countries to do that.
(10:18):
They just import it from China. Yeah, that's a good point. Um,
you might say, well, why why is it all coming
from China? Does that just mean that all the metals
are in China? No, I mean China is an enormous country.
So that's that's part. Yeah, But the other element of
that is, as us see, it just happens. It's like
a drinking game. Every time you hear me say, element
(10:39):
have a sip of fruit juice. Yes, So China's big country,
there are a lot of rare earth metals there, but
there are a lot of rare earth metals across the
entire globe. Because China has driven the cost of mining
down so much, it made more sense to just go
ahead and purchase the metals from China than it did
to invest in mining operations in other parts of the world.
(11:00):
In fact, the United States had a rare earth metal mine.
Yes it did, and it was shut down in two
thousand two. Yes, I believe it's in Colorado. Uh that
I can't tell you because I don't know for certain
it is too. It definitely did shut down. No, wait,
but one the one to shut down in two thousand
two that I was reading was a complex in Mountain Pass, California, California.
And that's right, the Colorado connection was the executive director
(11:24):
of the Rare Earth Industry and Technology Association, Keith Delaney,
who Lamonica quoted, and he is based in Colorado. But yeah,
that that mine had shut down in in two thousand two.
But they're bringing it back. Yes, because here's the deal is.
As Chris was saying earlier about the wind generation um turbines,
(11:47):
China's building a big green windmill type of network within
the borders of China, and because it requires a lot
of this or maybe not even a lot, but it
re wires more neodymium than China actually produces. So that's
why China is saying, you know what, We're not gonna
export this anymore because we need it. In fact, we
(12:10):
need more than what we produce in order to fulfill
this project that we have planned. So um, you're not
gonna get any And so that's when the rest of
the world said, oh, you know what, depending upon one
supplier for this one really particular material is maybe not
(12:30):
the best idea because that one supplier can get cut off.
The same thing actually happened, Actually, a similar thing happened
with Japan. Uh. And this may or may not be
politically um motivated, right Japan. China actually shut down expert
exportation of rare earth metals to Japan and uh that
(12:53):
might have been because of a diplomatic dispute. China says, no,
that's not the reason, but the rest of the world
kind says, yeah, that's kind of the reason. Um. And
so that raised a lot of fears and the rest
of the world saying, well, if China can do that
if they're just gonna shut down exporting out these materials
that we depend on in order to make the various
(13:14):
electronic devices that are coming out today, where does that
leave us, because we're not getting it from anywhere else. Um,
right now, what that means is that it would leave us,
uh in panic mode. We wouldn't we wouldn't necessarily run
out of the metals immediately, because, as I said, in
most applications, we're only using a tiny amount of these medals,
(13:36):
you know, maybe a gram for a particular electronic device,
with a big exception being hybrid and electric vehicles. Because
supposedly a prius uses around thirty pounds of the stuff,
So that's a lot compared to you know, an iPod
or something. Yeah, and uh, from from what I can tell,
(13:58):
apparently according to to Delaney, that is one of the problems.
Even when the mine out in California comes back online
and they said sometime in the next couple of years,
there's also one in Australia, even with those new efforts, um,
it is unlikely that the producers of rare earth metals
(14:22):
can keep up with the world's demand for them. So
I would imagine that the cost will remain high until
there there is a way to produce them efficiently. Thankfully,
China has said, you know, no, no, we're not going
to shut down all exports of rare earth metals completely
to the world. You know, I would imagine not that
they can still make quite a bit of money on
(14:43):
the world market with that. But uh, you know, they're
the the brewjaja that erupted for about I'd say maybe
a couple of days. Uh, sort of has subsided now
that they the government has said, you know no, no, no no, no,
don't read you know, that's not we're doing. You know,
we will continue to export these things. But it has
caused people to go, hey, you know, we really need
to step this up. Maybe we need to actually invest
(15:05):
in this technology. So this could mean one of many things.
For one thing, China now that I mean essentially has
the world over a pit right now, China could say,
you know what we're gonna We're gonna increase the cost
of these because there is a real value to this
material and the and the value is greater than what
we're charging and um and until that until that price
(15:30):
exceeds what it would be to do the mining here
in the United States or other parts of the world.
It would still make more sense to buy to to
pay up right, So the price would keep going up
and we would keep paying because we'd say, well, the
alternative is to mind it ourselves, and it's still not
cheaper to mind it ourselves. That would be to pay
(15:51):
pay extra money to China. UM. I'm sorry you were
about to say, well, no, I was. I was going
to get into something else that we had planned on
talking about, which was the reason that this is sort
of a sensitive issue too, is that it's not easy
to get pure uh forms of the rare earth elements um,
(16:11):
simply because they are most often found as oxides, so
and they're mixed in with other things that can be
mixed in with thorium and I believe uranium. So it's uh,
you know, it's something that's difficult to do, and it's
not a cheap process where you just go out and
get a shovel and a wheelbarrow and start digging it up.
So that's one of the things. Also that China has
(16:31):
an advantage over the rest of the world. It appears
that most of the rare earth metal deposits in China
are not accompanied by radioactive uranium or or thorium. Yes,
so they don't have to worry about radiation very much.
That's not the way it is with through most of
the world, which means that if we start mining these
rare earth metals, we have to take into consideration the
fact that there is radioactive material there as well. Yes,
(16:54):
so that raises safety concerns. You have to figure out
how you're going to store and or dispose of that
radioact to material. How do you separate the rare earth
metals in a reasonably safe way that's not going to
drive the cost up so much that uh. You know, ultimately,
what this can mean to you as a consumer is
that the electronics that you purchased today could end up
(17:15):
being way more expensive down the road once we start
hitting these these limits with the these metals. Uh. And
in China, the way that they mine these rare earth
metals can be really destructive for the environment as well.
What typically what they'll do is they'll cut down the
vegetation in an area and they'll raise up the top
(17:37):
soil and they use acids to leach out the rare
earth metals UM and those acids can run off into
the nearby water table. And that can kill off um plants,
and it can affect animals um it's it can it
containt water supplies. There's also some allegations that some of
(17:59):
these rare earth metal minds in China, for some of
the particularly rare metals, that they're actually um somewhat overseen
by a criminal element. Chinese gangs essentially are are running
these um some of these rare earth metal minds. So
that's another issue, is that when we start purchasing these
(18:21):
these electronic devices over here, technically we're kind of funding
a criminal organization overseas well. I would imagine too that
it's not it's probably like most industries where there is
a group and then you know some of the others
are not. And the problem is that the problem is
that manufacturers over here can't necessarily tell where they're rare
(18:45):
earth metals. Like it's it's not like you can go
to the rare earth metal market and get the hey, look,
this is free range thorium over your not thorium obviously,
but yes, I don't need to worry about the fact
that this metal came from this my because this mine's
a legitimate mind. There's no criminal element here there's no
way to tell, right, So it's I'm not I'm not
(19:06):
placing blame on the manufacturers necessarily because they have to
get the stuff from somewhere. Um, I'm just saying that
it's a bad system overall because there's no way to
know for sure whether or not. Uh, you're enabling this
criminal element of like speak. Oh man, how many times
am I gonna use that word? The sad thing is,
(19:26):
I think you're actually catching it by no doing an
accidentally and then catching it. I did find, as it
turns out, I didn't accidentally delete my notes. Um. Yeah.
The volume, the volume I was stunned to see was
Keith Delaney again speaking of the the direct drive wind
turbines used in wind power. Um. Because each megawatt of
(19:46):
electricity generated requires half a ton of permanent magnets. Wow,
I see that's all. That's a whole lot of um.
There's a whole lot of uh these rare earth manimls.
And the thing is UM to that, you know, talking
about the electronics, The cost of your electronics going up,
the cost of the electricity depending on where you live
and what's being used to generate it. Uh, cost of
(20:07):
electricity to power those electronics could also go up. Yeah,
So I mean it's it's something that matters to us,
but we don't normally think about it. And going back
to the green element for just a second, it also
means that going green could end up becoming much more expensive,
depending on whether or not China, uh, you know, allows
(20:29):
exports of these rare earth metals or the green technology. Um,
if we do start opening up more minds across the world,
it'll all depend upon how efficient those mining processes are. Uh. Otherwise, again,
we could see that this green technology, the price of
green technology may rise exponentially. So then you're getting to
a point where you're saying, all right, does is it
(20:50):
economically feasible to switch from a petroleum based economy or
petroleum based fuel source to renewable in g doesn't make
sense financially. And the scary thing is is if this
these prices go up high enough, the answer to that
is going to be no, it doesn't make sense financially
until it gets so bad with the the you know,
(21:13):
the oil situation that it almost becomes like a panic
to try and fund green technology so that you can
you know, close that gap. And one of the the
objections some people have to using oil as an energy
source is that it means that we're dependent upon foreign
(21:36):
countries for two in order to get our fuel right,
and that we're essentially funding some of these countries that
have anti American sentiments. So we're giving money to people
who don't like us very much, is what that kind
of boils down to, the same sort of problem happens here.
If China is the only supplier and we are have
(21:56):
to play by China's game, then we are giving money
to a foreign power and we're dependent upon that foreign
power for energy needs. It's no better than the oil
as far as that part of the equation is concerned. Now, granted,
there's the whole other part of it. You know, you're
not generating pollution by using this kind of power, and
that that's a totally different argument that that. You know,
(22:20):
you can still say, well, green technology is superior, but
from a from a dependence on foreign nation perspective, it's
the same. Yeah. And of course, uh, we're speaking from
a point of view from the United States, and many
of our listeners come from other countries, but in many
cases there a lot of them aren't importing a lot
(22:43):
of their rare earth metals from China and other countries too.
It's not something like in the case of Japan, apparently
there are not many. It's hot. They really are very
rare in Japan itself, and they do rely on imports
there more than they would in other countries like we do.
Apparently India is heavy a reasonably good supply and they
(23:03):
are are minding them themselves as well. But UM, I
don't know about a lot of the other countries around
the world. So yeah, I mean it's there's a security
situation there too, for whatever countries that may need this
for you know, I'm sure a lot of defense electronics
rely on on these medals. There was actually a report recently,
uh in the United States government from the Department of
(23:23):
Defense saying that, um, they were not worried about this
current situation and that they did not see it impacting
the national security. Uh. I don't know how they could
have said anything else without generating a panic. So I'm
not saying that they are being optimistic or they're painting
(23:45):
it a certain way. I'm just saying that, UM, I
really hope for a resolution of this problem. Well, I uh,
you know, I think it's interesting that these medals which
really have been you know, they've known about out for
a very long time. Uh, you know, I have just
sort of come into providence prominence in the last hundred
(24:07):
years or so, and now they are part of, you know,
one of you know, some of the more important substances
we've really Yeah, and to think that, you know, three
years ago, we had no idea what they are, and
now we depend very heavily upon them. Uh. Actually, I
guess the only hope I have otherwise is that the
(24:28):
whole carbon nanotube thing works out to the point where
we find out carbon nanotubes are superior for all of
these different applications. I know that, I know carbon nanotube
strength to weight ratio is insane depending on how you
align the the the graphite sheets. Oh yeah, yeah, Well
that that's another fascinating topic that maybe we can talk
(24:48):
about all of that. Maybe another that's again another science, Yeah,
carbonano tubes. Yes, Also it makes me want to quote more.
Yeah nano nano. Oh. Oh, I almost saw that one coming.
It was just about the hand me before it really did. Okay,
I think that that wraps up this discussion because I
don't I don't think I can talk anymore. I was
(25:09):
relying on the element of surprise drink. So, guys, I
hope you enjoyed this episode on Rare Earth Metals. We
will talk to you again soon. If you have any
suggestions for topics or comments or questions, you can contact
us on Twitter and Facebook are handled. There is tech
Stuff h s W or you can shoot us an email.
(25:30):
That email address is tech stuff at how stuff works
dot com and Chris and I will talk to you
again for really soon. For more on this and thousands
of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot com.
The House stuff Works dot com. I phone app is
coming soon. Get access to our content in a new way, articles, videos,
(25:52):
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