Rare Earth elementsThe U.S. rare-Earth industry can rebound -- over time

Rare-Earth elements were obscure until the past year, when China, their primary producer, tightened export quotas on the materials. Rare-Earth elements are used in a multitude of technologies, including magnets for wind turbines, hybrid-car batteries, fluorescent lightbulbs, and hard drives.

China is not the only country with significant reserves of these valuable materials; in fact, the United States was their primary producer until the 1990s, when the Chinese began undercutting the Americans on cost. Now companies in the United States and Australia are ramping up production at two rich sites for rare earths, but the process will take years. Getting from rocks to the pure metals and alloys required for manufacturing requires several steps that U.S. companies no longer have the infrastructure or the intellectual property to perform.

Technology Review Katherine Bourzac reports that contrary to their name, rare-Earth metals are abundant in the Earth’s crust, and significant reserves are concentrated in the United States, Australia, Brazil, and other countries. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, there are 13 million tons of extractable rare earths in the United States, 5.4 million in Australia, and 19 million in Russia and neighboring countries. In 2009, China had 36 million.

In the 1970s and 1980s, the Mountain Pass mine in California produced more than 70 percent of the world’s supply. Yet in 2009, none were produced in the United States, and it will be difficult, costly, and time-consuming to ramp up again. “When you stop mining in this country, as investment goes down, expertise on cutting-edge technologies is exported as well,” says Carol Raulston, spokeswoman for the National Mining Association. Rare-Earth researcher Karl Geschneidner of the Ames National Laboratory in Iowa also sees a lack of what he calls “intellectual infrastructure” for rare-Earth technology development in the United States.

The two mines that will be stepping up production soonest are Mountain Pass, being developed by Molycorp, and the Mount Weld mine, which is being developed by Lynas, outside Perth, Australia. Mountain Pass has the edge of already having been established. The company, however, cannot use the processes used in the mine’s heyday: they are both economically and environmentally unsustainable.

Bourza notes that several factors make purification of rare earths complicated. First, the seventeen elements all tend to occur together in the same mineral deposits, and because they have similar properties, it is difficult to separate them from