Danger! Rare earth elements may cause serious problems!

Rare Earth Elements

Last week, I raised a question concerning the sustainability of my Toyota Prius given its use of rare earth elements. Last year some of my students explored the issue in our Global Executive MBA program and the results of their research is striking and potentially scary!

Rare earths are 17 elements in the periodic table that were formed in supernova explosions eons ago and are scattered across the earth in very, very small concentrations making them difficult to mine and recover.

An entertaining video on the subject is provided by Hank Green from Sci Show:

 

He makes three critical points about rare earths:

• They are critical to the modern world and particularly to renewable energy
• Their production is an environmental nightmare
• Approximately 95% of rare earths are currently produced in China which creates a degree of geopolitical uncertainty

Batteries and Magnets

In addition to applications in flat screens, lasers, supercomputers and even glass making, rare earths are critical for electric and hybrid electric cars and wind turbines.

Neodymium, for example, is used for making light weight, powerful magnets that are used in most electric motors found in hybrid and electric cars (except Tesla)  and also in the frictionless gearboxes of advanced wind turbines. Tesla’s Wally Rippel explains the different types of Motors and their trade offs tradeoffs in cost, cooling, complexity, and performance.

The gearbox of advanced wind turbines is unreliable and frictionless direct drive is increasingly becoming the norm according to Jack McGuinn at GEAR.  Each turbine uses hundreds of kilograms of rare earths according to the U.S. Department of Energy!

In batteries, Nickel Metal hydride batteries use Lanthanum but Lithium Ion batteries, such as I have in my Prius Plug-in, do not. A standard Prius has 22-33 pounds of Lanthanum in the battery and another 2.2 pounds of Neodymium in the electric motor!

Rare & Messy

Reporters from Le Monde first broke the story of the enormous ecological costs of China’s rare earth industry in a village in Inner Mongolia called Baotou and the problem has to do with the chemical treatment needed to isolate and extract the small amounts of rare earth elements from the surrounding geological matrix producing  vast quantities of toxic tailings and waste.

The United States’ only rare earth mine, in Mountain Pass California was closed in 2002 for environmental reasons and is set to re-open with a reportedly cleaner extraction technology according to Wired.

Green Geopolitics

With its current environmental policy, China controls approximately 95% of the global rare earth market and in 2010 actually blocked shipments to Japan for two months during the Senkaku/Diaoyuti island crisis reportedly causing havoc in its high tech industry.

In 2012 Japan signed a memorandum of understanding with India which is ramping up its own rare earth production and the United States is reportedly  developing a rare earth strategic reserve to protect U.S. industry in the future.

In many industries the key R&D priority is to find substitutes to these expensive, messy, and risky materials!