Latest news with #JulieMichelleKlinger
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Science
- Yahoo
What are rare earth elements and why are they important?
STORY: EDITORS NOTE: THIS SCRIPT AND VIDEO HAVE BEEN REFILED DUE TO A U.S.-CHINA TRADE DEAL BEING REACHED WITH A FRAMEWORK TO REMOVE CHINESE EXPORT RESTRICTIONS ON RARE EARTH MINERALS. THE STORY WAS FIRST PUBLISHED ON FEBRUARY 28, 2025. Rare earth minerals are used in almost every technology you can think of. They're present in cellphones, medical devices, wind turbines, weapons and much more. But what are they? And why are they important? And are they actually rare? :: What are rare earths and why are they important? :: Julie Michelle Klinger, Geographer 'So the term rare earth elements, it refers to 17 chemically similar elements within the Lanthanide series.' This is Professor Julie Michelle Klinger, a geographer and senior visiting fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences. 'So, if you can picture the periodic table, it's that bar at the bottom. Elements 57 to 71 plus scandium and yttrium.' Reuters' special correspondent on commodities, Eric Onstad, has a bit of the history. :: Eric Onstad, Specialist Correspondent, Commodities, Reuters 'The elements were first discovered by a Swedish miner in 1787 near a village called Ytterby and that's reflected in the name of two rare earths, yttrium and ytterbium. Another rare earth, promethium, was named by the wife of one of the discoverers after the Greek god who stole fire from the gods and gave it to humans. China is by far the dominant producer. They account for 60% of mine production and 90% of processed rare earths. But interestingly, this wasn't always the case. In the 1980s, for instance, the United States was the biggest producer and Europe had one of the biggest processing plants in the world.' :: What are they used for? KLINGER: 'They are often described as the vitamins or the spice of industry because they have enabled our technologies to get smaller and faster and stronger and more resilient.' Elements like lanthanum and cerium, some of the most common rare earths, are used in TVs and lighting... While the application of erbium and yttrium can range from nuclear power to lasers. ONSTAD: 'There are two broad categories that have really got the spotlight. The first one is military uses, and that can be from night goggles, to precision missiles, to radar. And of course, that is a very sensitive issue for nations wanting to guard their access to those kinds of minerals. The second area is regarding the energy transition. And there are four specific rare earths that are used to make super-strong permanent magnets that are used in motors for electric vehicle and for wind turbines. So that is key for most nations' zero-carbon targets and cutting greenhouse gases.' :: What is the environmental impact of extraction? KLINGER: 'It's really because of the challenges, the heavy energy and resource and pollution risks that are associated with refining rare earth elements, that production has concentrated historically in so few places.' Processing rare earths often involves the use of solvents, which can produce toxic waste. More environmentally friendly technologies are being developed, but they are not yet widely used. ONSTAD: 'The other issue is that some rare earth deposits are radioactive. They include uranium and thorium. And so, some countries are not interested in having that be mined in their country.' :: Are they actually rare? But are they actually rare? Not really... ONSTAD: 'They are found all over the world. And in terms of the deposits, no, they are not actually rare. What's rare about them is sometimes they are found in very small quantities. And in addition to that, they're mixed with all kinds of other minerals. So, the difficulty is sometimes extracting each single rare earth from all the other minerals that are involved in the deposit. "
RTÉ News
26-04-2025
- Business
- RTÉ News
China has a monopoly on rare earths processing and its using it to fight the trade war
A new front just opened in the US-China trade war, and it wasn't good news for countries who do business with both. China reportedly instructed South Korean companies to stop exporting defence-related products to the United States if they contained rare earth products from China. Those are the natural metals - 17 elements on the periodic table to be precise - that go into everything from smartphones to satellites, deemed critical for renewable energy sources like solar panels and wind turbines as well as advanced weapons systems, robotics and rockets. And China produces most of the world's supply of them. According to Korean press reports, China warned that it may halt exports of rare earths to South Korea altogether, if the ban was ignored. "It's shocking," said Julie Michelle Klinger, professor of geography at the University of Delaware and author of Rare Earth Frontiers. "Under a liberal free trade regime, what right does one country have to tell another what it does with its business and trade transactions?" she said, adding "I think it's pretty clear that that's not the world that we live in anymore." Indeed, in retaliation for US President Donald Trump's 145% tariffs on Chinese goods, China was quick to play its ace card: ordering the restriction, through a licensing system, on exports of seven heavy rare earths and the high-performance magnets that contain them. It was a clear sign, observers said, that Beijing was willing to weaponise its dominance of the sector. "China made that list strategically," Mel Sanderson, director of American Rare Earths told Reuters news agency. "They picked the things that are crucial for the U.S. economy". This week Tesla CEO and close presidential advisor Elon Musk, who maintains deep business interests in China, acknowledged it was causing problems. He told Tesla investors on Tuesday that a magnet shortage could hold up the production of his AI-powered humanoid robots, designed to carry out mundane tasks like housework, serving drinks and assembly line production. And he's not the only one worried. Because while these magnets are handy to operate the arms of a tea-carrying bot, they are also to be found in the engines of fighter jets. Handwringing over global dependency on China for critical minerals has been going on in Washington - and indeed Brussels - for many years. Soon after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the deputy prime minister of Sweden, Ebba Bush, said Europe's dependency on Russian gas would "seem like a nice summer breeze," compared with reliance on China for the green energy transition. Critical mineral dependency quickly rose to the top of the Trump administration's agenda with the White House pushing for a deal with Ukraine for premium access to theirs and threatening to annex resource-rich Greenland for the same reason. But one detail that is often left out of the telling is China's near total monopoly on processing. In other words, countries can extract these resources from their own soil - say in Ukraine or Greenland - but they would still need to send them to China for separation and refining. Developing mining and processing capabilities requires "a long-term effort," meaning the United States will "be on the back foot for the foreseeable future," concluded a recent report by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC. Policymakers should have seen this coming, analysts said. "I hate to be the person who says this," said Ms Klinger, "but I remember saying over a decade ago, if we should have a rare supply chain crisis, it would be entirely avoidable". So how did the world get to this point? Why did the US - once the king of mining and refining - give its industry away? The answer is very simple, according to Ian Lange, associate professor of mineral economics at the Colorado School of Mines: it wasn't that profitable. "I would have said, it was a conscious decision to get rid of a low-value industry," he told RTÉ News. It's also heavily polluting. According to a study published by the Harvard International Review in 2021, for every ton of rare earth produced, the mining process "yields 13kg of dust, 9,600-12,000 cubic meters of waste gas, 75 cubic meters of wastewater, and one ton of radioactive residue". For many years, it made sense for the US, Europe and others to outsource to China, which ultimately, through state subsidies, weaker labour and environmental regulations, R&D investment as well as sheer industrial scale could - as in other manufacturing sectors - simply do it cheaper. The strategic vulnerability of this arrangement was first laid bare in 2010 when China cut exports to Japan over a territorial dispute involving a fishing trawler. China reversed the ban when the World Trade Organization ruled against it. But the shock reverberated around the world. It drew comparisons with the energy crisis of 1973 when Arab oil-producing nations in the Middle East cut off exports to the US and other countries in retaliation for their support of Israel during the Yom Kippur War. By the time the embargo was lifted, global oil prices had soared more than 300%. The power of energy-rich nations to exert leverage over energy-hungry ones was not lost on the former Chinese leader, Deng Xiaoping. "While the Middle East has oil," he famously declared on a visit to one of China's biggest mineral mines, "China has rare earths." But there's a crucial difference, according to Ian Lange. Oil deposits are concentrated in a few key regions. But "rare earths" is a misnomer, because they are really not that rare. "Everyone has good dirt," he said. The question is whether countries like the United States are serious about cultivating their homegrown industries - and their accompanying environmental costs - and crucially, if they can become profitable in a market dominated by cheaper alternatives from China. In the fifteen years when rare earths made the news over the Japan crisis, he said, the industry is not that much further along. "It's an economic issue," he said, "you're competing against a subsidised monopolist who doesn't care about profits". That's why China's export restrictions on rare earths in retaliation for Trump's tariffs "is a gift to western industry," Ms Klinger told RTÉ News. Entities outside of China have been trying to build up their rare earth supply chains for years, she said. "They just haven't been able to compete with China". Nevertheless, some diversification has taken place. Last year, the Australian mining company Lynas opened its first rare earth processing plant in Western Australia. In the United States, California's Mountain Pass mine in California's Mojave Desert, shuttered in the 1990s after toxic waste spills, reopened in 2018. The mine is now operated by MP Materials, which is also building a magnet-making facility in Fort Worth, Texas. And in Europe, there's are facilities in Estonia and Sweden, while Belgium chemical company Solvay just launched a rare earth magnet production line at its plant near La Rochelle, France By 2030, it is expected to meet 30% of Europe's demand for high-performance magnets. But, in the forty years since the rare earth industry began moving there, China has developed the technological know-how that other countries simply don't have and will struggle to build up in time. In 2023, Beijing announced restrictions on foreign access to that technology in a move seen to be, in part, a retaliation for a Biden-era ban on sales of US cutting-edge computer chips to China. But while China is prepared to use rare earths as part of its trade war toolkit, it's also wary of going too far. Holding the world to ransom risks undermining its dominance of the industry - by encouraging alternative sources - and damaging its reputation as a trading partner, analysts said. "Doing something dramatic like halting exports or anything that slows down the flow of material out of China has implications for firms that have invested in China," Ms Klinger said. "What happens if they leave?" China does not want to end up with a labour unrest problem, she added. But for firms - and indeed countries - doing business with both China and the US, Beijing's warning to South Korea this week was a reminder they could find themselves in the crosshairs of an intensifying trade war.
