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Politics : Rat's Nest - Chronicles of Collapse -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Wharf Rat who wrote (11406)	10/29/2010 1:05:12 PM
From: Wharf Rat	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 24233

Rare earth recycling By Nickie Polson, Courier-Islander October 29, 2010 Electronics recycling might just have become a lot more appealing this year. Why? Because anything that has computer technology in it must contain rare earths, and the world's rare earth supply is not as free-flowing as it used to be. Who should care about rare earths? Anyone with a computer, a smartphone, or cable TV, or any other piece of technology. Anyone wanting to access healthcare, or concerned with national defense. The "rare earths" are seventeen chemical elements that have become highly useful in our increasingly technological world. Their names tend to be a mouthful: Lanthanum, Neodymium, Samarium, Praseodymium, and Ytterbium, for instance. Some of the rare earths have been playing a valuable role in the greening of technology. Dysprosium makes the magnets in electric motors 90% lighter. Terbium makes electric lights 80% more efficient. Wind turbines, low-energy light bulbs, and hybrid car batteries all depend on rare earths. We are most likely to run into rare earths by that name when we do something that requires a rare earth magnet. Those magnets are the tiny ones with an incredible pulling power. They are used in many devices, including computer hard drives, audio speakers and headphones, fishing reel brakes, and the permanent magnet motors in cordless tools. They are the secret to the flashlights that generate light when they are shaken. Rare earths are crucial to some lasers; they are used in superconductors; and they are important in optical fibre communication. We now use fibre optic cables as a conduit for telephone, internet and cable television. Rare earths are critical to national security as well. Night vision goggles, certain types of radar, and the propulsion systems of modern destroyers all use rare earth elements - to say nothing of the computer systems. Basically, in our modern technological world, rare earth elements are everywhere. The catch is that 97% of the world's rare earths are mined in China. China's manufacturing economy has now grown to the point where they find it useful to restrict exports. It seems likely that they want to sell us the technology, rather than the raw rare earth metals. If they choose to use their supply of rare earths internally, then we could be out of luck. It would be useful to develop our own sources. The rare earth problem is yet another interesting twist in the world of global power struggles. It came to the world's attention only last month. China shut down the export of rare earths to Japan because of a dispute over a group of small islands in the East China Sea. It led to the arrest of a Chinese fishing boat captain by Japanese authorities. His arrest was due to a collision between his vessel and two coast guard ships close to the islands. Suddenly the world woke up to a problem. China currently provides almost all of the rare earths consumed worldwide. We have all heard about peak oil, global warming, ocean acidification, and water shortages, but this opened up an unsuspected looming crisis. One of the reasons China dominates the world's rare earth supply is that they have focused on research. China supports two laboratories that concentrate on rare earth research, and the Chinese Society of Rare Earths has 100,000 registered researchers. The rest of us have not been paying quite as much attention. The demand for rare earth metals just grows and grows - but our current supplier has no competition. That puts the rest of us at risk. At one point, some sources in China proposed dropping their exports completely in the next few years. That would likely create an international crisis - so it probably won't happen. While we contemplate the problem, solutions may be negotiated. Perhaps Canada will discover previously unknown deposits. Twenty percent of the world's known commercially available non-Chinese rare-earth reserves are said to be in the United States, so why couldn't we have something similar? (The US has not yet moved to make use of those reserves.) In a worst case scenario, the Western World could find their source of rare earth elements runs dry. That would mean the end of producing many technologies here. Where would we turn? Well, China of course. That is the country with the needed resource. However, the beginning of a crisis is also the beginning of opportunity. Many countries are racing to find their own production. That could take a few years, however. In the meantime, prices for rare earths are likely to shoot into the stratosphere. That would give new value to recycling electronics that contain rare earths. nickiepolson@shaw.ca canada.com