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Endangered elements?
OPINION
A rare mistake Despite their name, rare earth elements are not especially rare. So how come we are so worried about them running out, asks Mike Pitts THE periodic table is a thing of beauty, yet we seem to be quite happy to exhaust parts of it before we’ve fully realised its potential. Helium will probably run out within the next 100 years. Gallium and indium are running low. Phosphorus, too, may soon become an “endangered element”. The latest part of the table to arouse such fears is a block of 17 metals known as the “rare earth elements”. China, which produces most of the world’s supply, is increasingly protective of its deposits, sparking concern over their future availability. Both the US and European Union have set up initiatives to look at these strategically important metals. The UK’s Royal Society of Chemistry is making them a focus of its activities during the 2011 International Year of Chemistry. It is good to make a fuss – but the issue isn’t one of absolute scarcity, it’s about how we manage resources. The rare earth elements – or as chemists call them, the lanthanides plus scandium and yttrium – might not be household names, but they are common in every household. They are used in a wider range of consumer goods than any other group of elements due to their unusual electronic, optical and magnetic properties. Rare earth elements are an everpresent part of our lifestyles and in many cases difficult to replace in terms of functionality. Without lightweight magnets made from alloys of rare earth elements, computer hard-drives and iPod headphones and speakers would be impossible. 26 | NewScientist | 12 February 2011
They colour our liquid crystal magnetic refrigeration and displays, darken our sunglasses hydrogen storage. If any of these and provide phosphors for lowtechnologies is implemented on energy light bulbs and LEDs. the scale required to significantly They are a vital ingredient in reduce carbon emissions, demand lightweight alloys for aircraft and for certain rare earth elements in catalysts to process crude oil will almost inevitably exceed and clean exhaust emissions. current supply – and quite Industry uses them in lasers for probably known reserves. high-precision manufacturing; Which brings us back to the hospitals use them for medical topic of scarcity. Despite their imaging. The list goes on. name, rare earth elements are Rare earth elements are also not especially rare – they are thus expected to play a big part in called because there were few the future. It turns out they are known concentrated deposits of indispensable for a range of “Rare earth elements are urgently needed green energy technologies such as wind turbine used in a wider range of consumer goods than any generators, low-energy lighting, other group of elements” fuel cells, rechargeable batteries,
their ores, or “earths”, when they were first discovered. Cerium, the most common, is similar in abundance to copper and more abundant than lead, tin, cadmium, boron, tantalum, germanium and numerous other commonly used elements. Even so, rare earth elements are in short supply. Of course, elements can’t be made or destroyed except in nuclear processes, so we can’t “run out” of them. Scarcity is largely a political question due to the fact that at least 95 per cent of the global supply originates in China. Accurate data on how much it has and produces is difficult to obtain, but the country is becoming increasingly protective of its resources. At the turn of the year the Chinese government announced that it was drastically reducing exports of the rare earth elements. What is the rest of the world to do? Economists will argue that the market will correct itself: as the price goes up then lower grade ores become viable. This already appears to be happening. The world is scrambling to open up new sources and reopen old ones, such as Mountain Pass Rare Earth Mine in California which used to supply the majority of the world’s demand but has been mothballed since 2002. But it takes several years to start or restart a mine and demand for several rare earth elements – notably neodymium, europium, terbium and dysprosium – is forecast to outpace supply in the near term, according to a 2010 report by the British Geological Survey.
Comment on these stories at www.NewScientist.com/opinion
Mike Pitts is the sustainability manager for Chemistry Innovation based in Runcorn, UK, which promotes innovation and knowledge transfer in the UK’s chemistry-using industries
One minute with...
David Ferrucci When a supercomputer competes on US quiz show Jeopardy! next week, it will be a pinnacle in AI, says one of its creators We face many challenges that computing could help with: climate change, economics, social modelling. Why did IBM choose to test its computer on the quiz show Jeopardy!? It’s what Jeopardy! represents that’s important. The ability to understand natural language, to analyse what it means and to respond quickly and appropriately is one of the grand challenges in computing. You call the computer Watson. What kind of questions will it tackle on Jeopardy!? Jeopardy! is the reverse of a normal quiz show. The clues are essentially like a conventional answer and the contestant has to phrase the response as a question. For example, when Watson took part in a practice round last year – which it won – the quizmaster asked: “You gotta know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em,” on July 28 1984, this Texas Ranger with a familiar name did.” Watson replied correctly: “What is Kenny Rogers?” What makes Watson so special? It is an entirely self-contained supercomputer. It isn’t connected to the internet so doesn’t track down answers using a search engine. Instead, it has a huge collection of documents which it has analysed in depth. This information – enough to fill about a million books – is structured so that the computer can access and analyse it quickly using algorithms we’ve spent four years developing. How does Watson tackle a question? The key is to divide the problem into many parts and process them simultaneously in different threads. Watson analyses questions by asking what the most important parts of questions are and what different interpretations there may be. These answers become the start of new threads, each of which may lead to hundreds of potential answers. Next Watson has to prove which of these answers is right. So all these threads fan out like a tree and Watson is running them all in parallel. Eventually, all this has to collapse into a list of the top answers. Finally, it will decide on the answer it has the highest confidence in.
Profile David Ferrucci is head of the semantic analysis and integration department at IBM’s Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, New York. The Jeopardy! episodes featuring IBM’s Watson supercomputer will be on air 14 to 16 February
How long does it take Watson to answer? On average, 3 seconds, the same as for humans. The trick is to start computing an answer before the host finishes reading the clue. That must eat up lots of power. Yes, 80 kilowatts, compared with the 20 watts it takes the human brain. Why are our brains so much more efficient? Working with human language is much harder for a computer. Language and the human brain probably evolved together, so the brain is optimised for this task. The huge number of connections between neurons are probably why it uses far less power, less space and is still incredibly fast. We imagine it does this in a highly parallel way, which is the approach we’ve taken with Watson. Sounds impressive. When will I have a Watson-like system on my smartphone? I don’t know. Call me in a few years and we’ll talk! Interview by Justin Mullins
12 February 2011 | NewScientist | 27
chris ware/bloomberg/getty
The economic argument also ignores the environmental cost of accessing lower grade ores, which may outweigh the benefits delivered by the end uses. In any case, price isn’t always a good indicator of scarcity. The real problem is the way we obtain, use and discard rare earth elements. In our linear economy, getting hold of them depends on finding sufficiently concentrated sources. We then smash the ores out of the ground, expend huge amounts of energy purifying them, use them and then discard them. The concentration of rare earth elements and other precious metals in our waste streams is often higher than in the ore. We need a different approach to managing the elements: better mining and extraction, more efficient production, sustainable use and planned recovery. The principles of reduce, replace and recycle must be applied at every stage to ensure we utilise rare earth elements efficiently, substitute more common materials where possible and design products to be dismantled and recycled. It may eventually be necessary to reserve key materials for vital applications rather than for short-lived lifestyle goods. Many industries already carefully recycle their valuable “waste” materials – photographic silver and catalysts from the fine chemicals industry are good examples. We need to adopt those approaches everywhere. Ultimately, the scarcity of rare earth elements comes down to our own short-sightedness and the apparent low cost of business as usual – dig it up, use it, discard it. If we value modern society and want to build a better future, business as usual is no longer an option. We must treasure our rare resources. n
A rare mistake Despite their name, rare earth elements are not especially rare. So how come we are so worried about them running out, asks Mike Pitts THE periodic table is a thing of beauty, yet we seem to be quite happy to exhaust parts of it before we’ve fully realised its potential. Helium will probably run out within the next 100 years. Gallium and indium are running low. Phosphorus, too, may soon become an “endangered element”. The latest part of the table to arouse such fears is a block of 17 metals known as the “rare earth elements”. China, which produces most of the world’s supply, is increasingly protective of its deposits, sparking concern over their future availability. Both the US and European Union have set up initiatives to look at these strategically important metals. The UK’s Royal Society of Chemistry is making them a focus of its activities during the 2011 International Year of Chemistry. It is good to make a fuss – but the issue isn’t one of absolute scarcity, it’s about how we manage resources. The rare earth elements – or as chemists call them, the lanthanides plus scandium and yttrium – might not be household names, but they are common in every household. They are used in a wider range of consumer goods than any other group of elements due to their unusual electronic, optical and magnetic properties. Rare earth elements are an everpresent part of our lifestyles and in many cases difficult to replace in terms of functionality. Without lightweight magnets made from alloys of rare earth elements, computer hard-drives and iPod headphones and speakers would be impossible. 26 | NewScientist | 12 February 2011
They colour our liquid crystal magnetic refrigeration and displays, darken our sunglasses hydrogen storage. If any of these and provide phosphors for lowtechnologies is implemented on energy light bulbs and LEDs. the scale required to significantly They are a vital ingredient in reduce carbon emissions, demand lightweight alloys for aircraft and for certain rare earth elements in catalysts to process crude oil will almost inevitably exceed and clean exhaust emissions. current supply – and quite Industry uses them in lasers for probably known reserves. high-precision manufacturing; Which brings us back to the hospitals use them for medical topic of scarcity. Despite their imaging. The list goes on. name, rare earth elements are Rare earth elements are also not especially rare – they are thus expected to play a big part in called because there were few the future. It turns out they are known concentrated deposits of indispensable for a range of “Rare earth elements are urgently needed green energy technologies such as wind turbine used in a wider range of consumer goods than any generators, low-energy lighting, other group of elements” fuel cells, rechargeable batteries,
their ores, or “earths”, when they were first discovered. Cerium, the most common, is similar in abundance to copper and more abundant than lead, tin, cadmium, boron, tantalum, germanium and numerous other commonly used elements. Even so, rare earth elements are in short supply. Of course, elements can’t be made or destroyed except in nuclear processes, so we can’t “run out” of them. Scarcity is largely a political question due to the fact that at least 95 per cent of the global supply originates in China. Accurate data on how much it has and produces is difficult to obtain, but the country is becoming increasingly protective of its resources. At the turn of the year the Chinese government announced that it was drastically reducing exports of the rare earth elements. What is the rest of the world to do? Economists will argue that the market will correct itself: as the price goes up then lower grade ores become viable. This already appears to be happening. The world is scrambling to open up new sources and reopen old ones, such as Mountain Pass Rare Earth Mine in California which used to supply the majority of the world’s demand but has been mothballed since 2002. But it takes several years to start or restart a mine and demand for several rare earth elements – notably neodymium, europium, terbium and dysprosium – is forecast to outpace supply in the near term, according to a 2010 report by the British Geological Survey.
Comment on these stories at www.NewScientist.com/opinion
Mike Pitts is the sustainability manager for Chemistry Innovation based in Runcorn, UK, which promotes innovation and knowledge transfer in the UK’s chemistry-using industries
One minute with...
David Ferrucci When a supercomputer competes on US quiz show Jeopardy! next week, it will be a pinnacle in AI, says one of its creators We face many challenges that computing could help with: climate change, economics, social modelling. Why did IBM choose to test its computer on the quiz show Jeopardy!? It’s what Jeopardy! represents that’s important. The ability to understand natural language, to analyse what it means and to respond quickly and appropriately is one of the grand challenges in computing. You call the computer Watson. What kind of questions will it tackle on Jeopardy!? Jeopardy! is the reverse of a normal quiz show. The clues are essentially like a conventional answer and the contestant has to phrase the response as a question. For example, when Watson took part in a practice round last year – which it won – the quizmaster asked: “You gotta know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em,” on July 28 1984, this Texas Ranger with a familiar name did.” Watson replied correctly: “What is Kenny Rogers?” What makes Watson so special? It is an entirely self-contained supercomputer. It isn’t connected to the internet so doesn’t track down answers using a search engine. Instead, it has a huge collection of documents which it has analysed in depth. This information – enough to fill about a million books – is structured so that the computer can access and analyse it quickly using algorithms we’ve spent four years developing. How does Watson tackle a question? The key is to divide the problem into many parts and process them simultaneously in different threads. Watson analyses questions by asking what the most important parts of questions are and what different interpretations there may be. These answers become the start of new threads, each of which may lead to hundreds of potential answers. Next Watson has to prove which of these answers is right. So all these threads fan out like a tree and Watson is running them all in parallel. Eventually, all this has to collapse into a list of the top answers. Finally, it will decide on the answer it has the highest confidence in.
Profile David Ferrucci is head of the semantic analysis and integration department at IBM’s Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, New York. The Jeopardy! episodes featuring IBM’s Watson supercomputer will be on air 14 to 16 February
How long does it take Watson to answer? On average, 3 seconds, the same as for humans. The trick is to start computing an answer before the host finishes reading the clue. That must eat up lots of power. Yes, 80 kilowatts, compared with the 20 watts it takes the human brain. Why are our brains so much more efficient? Working with human language is much harder for a computer. Language and the human brain probably evolved together, so the brain is optimised for this task. The huge number of connections between neurons are probably why it uses far less power, less space and is still incredibly fast. We imagine it does this in a highly parallel way, which is the approach we’ve taken with Watson. Sounds impressive. When will I have a Watson-like system on my smartphone? I don’t know. Call me in a few years and we’ll talk! Interview by Justin Mullins
12 February 2011 | NewScientist | 27
chris ware/bloomberg/getty
The economic argument also ignores the environmental cost of accessing lower grade ores, which may outweigh the benefits delivered by the end uses. In any case, price isn’t always a good indicator of scarcity. The real problem is the way we obtain, use and discard rare earth elements. In our linear economy, getting hold of them depends on finding sufficiently concentrated sources. We then smash the ores out of the ground, expend huge amounts of energy purifying them, use them and then discard them. The concentration of rare earth elements and other precious metals in our waste streams is often higher than in the ore. We need a different approach to managing the elements: better mining and extraction, more efficient production, sustainable use and planned recovery. The principles of reduce, replace and recycle must be applied at every stage to ensure we utilise rare earth elements efficiently, substitute more common materials where possible and design products to be dismantled and recycled. It may eventually be necessary to reserve key materials for vital applications rather than for short-lived lifestyle goods. Many industries already carefully recycle their valuable “waste” materials – photographic silver and catalysts from the fine chemicals industry are good examples. We need to adopt those approaches everywhere. Ultimately, the scarcity of rare earth elements comes down to our own short-sightedness and the apparent low cost of business as usual – dig it up, use it, discard it. If we value modern society and want to build a better future, business as usual is no longer an option. We must treasure our rare resources. n