Rare Earths

Rare Earths

Part of: GS Prelims and GS-I – Geography and GS-II- International Affairs

In News

• The United States Army plans to fund the construction of a Rare Earths processing facility to secure the domestic supply of minerals that are used to make military weapons and electronics

• This will be the first financial investment by the US military into commercial-scale Rare Earths production since the Manhattan Project to build the first atomic bomb during World War II.

• The decision comes after China threatened to stop exporting Rare Earth materials to the US amid the ongoing trade war between the countries
• Rare Earth Elements or Rare Earth Metals are a set of 17 chemical elements in the periodic table — the 15 lanthanides, plus scandium and yttrium, which tend to occur in the same ore deposits as the lanthanides, and have similar chemical properties.
• These elements are important in technologies of consumer electronics, computers and networks, communications, clean energy, advanced transportation, healthcare, environmental mitigation, and national defence, among others.
• Scandium is used in televisions and fluorescent lamps, and yttrium is used in drugs to treat rheumatoid arthritis and cancer.

• Cerium, the most abundant Rare Earth element, is essential to NASA’s Space Shuttle Programme

• The estimated size of the Rare Earth sector is between $10 billion and $15 billion. About 100,000-110,000 tonnes of Rare Earth elements are produced annually around the world.
• China’s Rare Earths deposits account for 80% of identified global reserves