you may not have heard of neodymium but you're probably carrying some of it
around with you right now it's in your cellphone your headphones and you might
be driving several pounds of it around in your car neodymium is one of 17
chemically similar elements called rare earth elements and demand for this metal
is on the rise neodymium is responsible for most if not all of the growth in
rare earth demand at the moment neodymium comes from the ground it's a
rare earth metal and none of them are actually rare they're just hard to get
out of the ground Merritt's are quite distinct among
themselves within that family but one of the characteristics that they do all
share are these fantastic magnetic and conductive properties for an iphone to
vibrate for air pods to play music for wind turbines to generate power and for
a Toyota Prius or Tesla Model 3 motor to spin they need magnets powerful magnets
if you combine neodymium with iron and boron you can make a
neodymium-iron-boron magnet which is the most powerful type of permanent magnet
ever created in the case of your cell phone and earbuds using neodymium
magnets means they can be physically tiny but still strong for motors using
permanent magnets means having powerful efficient motors that use fewer
electromagnetic components magnets might seem trivial and most useful for
sticking things on your fridge but the neodymium-iron-boron magnets was
actually worth eleven point three billion dollars in 2017 in a couple
decades who were forecast to have over a million electric vehicles on the road in
the US and that's gonna cause demand of neodymium as a surge demand is currently
outstripping supply on the order of two or three thousand tons per year today
that supply comes from China which produces more than 80% of the world's
neodymium in 2017 alone China mines 105 thousand metric tons of rare earths
while the US has only produced about 43 thousand metric tons combined in the
last twenty years but it wasn't always this way
the United States used to be the most important single produce
same country for errors from a single mine called the Mountain Pass mine in
Southern California near the border with Nevada in the 1960s and 70s this mine
was the dominant rare earth mine in the world around the time that was happening
China was investing a deeply in its own rare earth metal mining and production
and succeeded so from the late 90s to 2010 China became the dominant player
and they control a majority of market the risks involved in relying so
significantly on a single source for such a valuable commodity were
illustrated during a trade dispute in 2010 in 2010 the price per metric ton
was right around $50,000 and then in 2011 the price per metric ton jumped up
to 250,000 dollars while the price has since come back down concerns remain
earlier this year rare earths narrowly avoided being included on a new list of
u.s. tariffs on Chinese goods originally in the two hundred billion dollar
proposed tranche of Chinese Tarot's neodymium and other rare earth metals
were on that list interestingly the final list of 6,000 Chinese products
that were targeted a neodymium and the rare earth metals were exempted and I
think that's interesting it shows how important rare earth metals are to the
US economy shows were concerned about it and I think it shows to the Chinese that
were vulnerable they're more evidence of these elements importance is that the US
is going to start producing rare earths again the mountain pass mine in
California was recently bought out of bankruptcy by two US investment firms
called MP materials the company says it wants to rebuild a rare earth industry
in America and well right now MP material still has to ship material to
China for further refinement sources close to the company say that it plans
to be fully self-sufficient in the US within 18 months historically though
extracting and processing these materials has not been without
consequence if you want to open a neodymium mine you're going to bring up
a whole bunch of other elements sometimes thorium sometimes uranium and
what this does is it creates alongside your mining operation
a radioactive waste management problem it's very difficult to open a mine in a
particular place without destroying the landscape and livelihoods that were
previously there but clinger is optimistic that as demand rises better
processes will be implemented one of the things that is good about the projected
increase in demand for neodymium is that we will likely see a diversification of
neodymium supply and my hope is with that we will also see increased
international cooperation around recycling and reclaiming neodymium from
spent electronic motors when we succumb to these doomsday scenarios that China's
could quote unquote hold the rest of the world hostage with its for supply what
we're actually doing is we're failing to take responsibility for our own
production needs and we're also further distracting from the very real potential
to clean up the entire supply chain here at home and in collaboration of
international partners
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