Enforced rarity

Remember the periodic table of elements? I first saw it as a child in the end papers of a science book. If you took chemistry in either high school or college, it probably was displayed on one of the larger walls of the room. It made interesting viewing when the lectures got boring.

Some tables were full-sized, with every element in its proper place, based on the configuration of its electrons -- a configuration, as you recall, that determines the chemical properties of the element. Many charts, however, including the one in that book that impressed me as a youngster, had to be presented in a condensed form in order to fit into the space available.

One box on the table would thus be identified as the lanthanide series -- elements 57-71. Those fifteen elements were lined up, off the chart, at the bottom of the page. They were safely ignored. They were elements a kid had never heard of and that seemed to have no practical use: lanthanum, cerium, praseodymium, etc., ending up with lutetium, No. 71. Hardly in the same class as hydrogen, oxygen, iron, gold, chlorine, and many of the other commonly known elements. In fact, the lanthanides were called "rare earths." The name sounded appropriate, and that's all I knew about them.

But the "rare earths" -- now generally defined to include scandium and yttrium, in addition to the lanthanide series, since those two elements commonly accompany ore containing the lanthanides -- are crucial in many areas of modern technology. And have actually been increasingly crucial for decades, ever since the development of semiconductors, which require "doping" with trace amounts of those elements . Although the rare earths are plentiful in the earth's crust, they are sufficiently concentrated to make commercial mining practical only in certain areas, and are commercially mined at present in very few areas.

Primarily, China.

China at present has a virtual monopoly on production of rare earths, and produces 96 percent of the most critical rare earths. And China has been increasingly tightening up on export controls, recently announcing a 35 percent decrease in export quotas from last year, and increases in export taxes. China claims it wishes only to assure enough of a supply for domestic use, but mutterings of darker motives are being heard. China allegedly shut off exports to Japan for a couple of months earlier this year, in silent retaliaton for a dispute between the nations regarding ownership over islands in the South China Sea.

Fortunately, deposits of rare earths also exist in the U.S. and in Australia, Brazil, Canada and South Africa. In fact, not long ago, most of the world's production came from these sources. But production was shut down worldwide when China vastly increased mining and undercut market prices in about 1990. Now, because of the time required to restart production, experts estimate that it will take 15 years to again satisfy Western needs from Western sources. Mining of rare earth metals also raises environmental concerns that need to be addressed.

Business and government leaders have been getting nervous. Maybe China's restrictions on rare earth exports are wholly benign. But it never hurts to develop backup supplies to any critical resource. Rare earths will be scarce enough in the coming years without having to worry about China's aggravating that scarcity in order to further its own foreign policy.