Rare earth elements : Let’s invest in America

According to a recent report of the Washington-based Institute for the Analysis of Global Security (IAGS), China controls approximately 97 percent of the world’s rare earth elements market. Some 3 percent is controlled by a handful of other countries, such as Australia, India, Malaysia and Russia. The U.S. share is perilously close to zero. Should we be worried? What’s the problem? What’s the solution?In the form of metals or metal alloys, processed rare earth minerals, of which there are 17 principal types, are critical components of advanced 21st-century computers, cell phones, missile guidance systems, high performance magnets, batteries, hybrid vehicles and a range of critical military and green technologies. To take just one example: The rare earth element “samarium” has permitted the invention of “super magnets” which are (a) permanent (not requiring external electrical power), (b) miniaturized, and (c) thousands of times more powerful than conventional magnets. Hence their use for miniature electronics in everything from hand-held cell phones to drone missile systems.Rare earth minerals are not scarce, at least in the fact that they are found in practically every country on earth, but their distribution is very unequal, and they are hard to find, extract and process. They are “rare” in that sense. From the 1940s through the 1970s, the United States was the world leader in the discovery, innovation, extraction, uses and trade of rare earth elements. Molycorp’s Mountain Pass Mine in California was a primary source of rare earth elements for the world. Starting in the 1980s, with the rise of “global” markets, U.S. companies began backing out of the rare earth business because they couldn’t see enough short-term year-end profits, given the high cost of extraction, processing and pollution control.Thus, for example, GM’s Magnaquench, the only U.S. company making high-power lenthanum magnets, operating in the 1980s, was sold in 1997 to the Chinese. They shut down the Indiana plant in 2002, laying off all employees, and the owners moved the company to China, leaving nothing behind. The Clinton and Bush administrations looked the other way. It was all part of the global “free” market, wasn’t it?Meanwhile, China looked ahead and exercised its “planned capitalism” by systematically buying up known reserves and stockpiling rare earth minerals around the world. This includes the Middle East. While American troops today are fighting and dying to bring democracy to Afghanistan, for example, China has secretly contracted all the known rare earth mineral deposits in that country. The United States gets none.Today, the United States is totally dependent on China for virtually all domestic and military needs for rare earth minerals and products, including weapons systems. Yes, China, for its part, has been selling rare earth elements to the West, including the United States, but China is now considering setting up a scheme of deliberate declining export quotas because projections show that China will soon need the entire world supply for itself. Furthermore, a Chinese monopoly on rare earth metals is tantamount to a monopoly on products such as magnets, batteries, cell phones and hybrid vehicles, as well as green technologies, military equipment and component parts. U.S. national security is doubly threatened.So, what’s the answer? The solution is to “Put America First,” “Invest in America,” and “Buy American,” in the full sense of those terms. Let’s for once put the ideological political polemics aside for a moment, and look at the objective facts. We have to recognize that contrary to conventional wisdom, the rare earth predicament is a case where the for-profit motive, by itself, is not enough. We need government to step forward to prime the pump and legislate what private corporations have failed to do. The potential solutions are implicit in the nature of the problem. Why has for-profit business failed us?The for-profit corporate motive failed because the cost of current technology for the extraction, processing, manufacture and recycling of rare earth-based products is too high to ensure sufficient year-end profits for the corporations. These very challenges, however, provide unique opportunities for the current U.S. administration’s initiatives in technological innovation, education, training, manufacture, and creation of high-tech jobs, jobs, jobs. The United States has the opportunity to seize back leadership worldwide and solve our domestic economic and security problems at the same time.The United States has to take concerted steps to acquire a secure, long-lasting source of rare earth elements, both here and abroad. We need to encourage our universities, institutes and companies to carry out fundamental and applied research to raise the efficiency and lower the costs of extracting and refining rare earth elements. We need to discover more efficient means of avoiding or controlling toxic chemical byproducts of these mining and manufacturing processes. Also, we need to find new ways of utilizing left-over tailings from mining operations, and recycling rare earth metals from old computers, cell phones, magnets, batteries, aircraft, vehicles and other used equipment. Federal and state funding will be needed to prime the pump. Connecticut already possesses leading capabilities in the manufacture of batteries and other high-tech products that lend themselves to the use of rare earth elements. Let’s exploit that.All the above technological solutions are an exact fit for the current U.S. administration’s plans and programs for economic recovery, technological leadership and job creation. It’s the kind of business innovation Connecticut Gov. Dannel Malloy has been talking about to boost the economy and create jobs. It’s the kind of effort that Connecticut Congressman Chris Murphy has been championing in the proposed “Buy American Act” of 2011 which addresses purchasing for national defense. Let us put America first, invest in America and buy American. Our national security depends on it. Sharon resident Anthony Piel is a former director and general legal counsel of the World Health Organization.