What Are Rare Earth Elements (REEs)?
The rare earth elements are also known as lanthanides and include the 15 elements in the lanthanide series of the periodic table plus yttrium and scandium. The better known elements are cerium, lanthanum, neodymium, praseodymium, gadolinium, europium and samarium.
What are REEs Used For?
About half of the rare earths produced are used as catalysts in the petroleum and automotive industries. The other half are used in a variety of high-technology applications including permanent magnets used in many types of motors, computer data drives and magnetic resonance imaging instruments; polishing media used in manufacturing microchips and many types of precision optical lenses; phosphors used in television screens, monitors and lamps; as a "doping" material in fibre optics to increase bandwidth; as an alloy with other metals to remove non-metal impurities; in rechargeable batteries; in fuel cells and numerous other applications that take advantage of the REEs unique physical qualities.
Where Are They Found?
In fact, the rare earth elements are not really rare. Gold, for instance, is much rarer and even lead is less common than some REEs. What is rare, is their occurrence in economic quantities compared to other mineral commodities. The REEs are usually found in commercial quantities in the minerals monazite and bastnaesite. China produces over 80% of the world's rare earths - 77% of world production coming from one mine. The United States used to produce approximately 6% of the world's supply from one of the only in-situ rare earth mines in the world at Mountain Pass, California. Mountain Pass, the only producing mine in North America, has recently closed its separation plant, and reduced production of concentrate.
The Hoidas Lake rare earth showings are somewhat unique in that the REEs are found in the silicate mineral allanite and the phosphate mineral apatite as opposed to the monazite and bastnaesite mined in China and California. Should the project prove feasible, Hoidas Lake would likely become the only producer in North America operating at full capacity and join Mountain Pass as one of the only in-situ rare earth mines in the world.
Are REEs Valuable?
In a word, yes. Typically, once the rare earth ore is mined and concentrated, it is further processed (either by the mining company or a third party) into a mixed rare earth powder (as oxides or chlorides for example). This mixed rare earth product can be sold as is or processed further by separating the individual REEs into a purer product (ie cerium oxide or neodymium oxide). Depending on the purity, oxide powder, for example, varies in price from US$3.00 per kg for cerium oxide in a one tonne lot size to US$15,000 per kg for scandium oxide in 100 g quantities. The individual powders can also be further refined into metal and, depending again on purity and lot size, can range in price from US$15.00 per kg for lanthanum metal to US$30,000 per kg for scandium metal. To put this into perspective, gold is currently worth about US$8,800 per kg. However, a high-grade gold deposit might have a gross value of only US$100 per tonne, but a high-grade rare earth deposit could easily have a gross value of US$1,000 per tonne or more.
Who Consumes REEs?
The major consumers of rare earths are Southeast Asia (Japan, Korea, Thailand, China) and the USA. The USA is the world's biggest single consumer of rare earths at approximately 27% of the world total. The USA currently imports over 75% of its RE requirement with the value of rare earth products consumed in the USA estimated in excess of US$1 billion per year.
Could A Saskatchewan-Based Rare Earth Industry Compete With China?
Absolutely. Great Western Minerals has established contacts in Japan and the USA who have indicated in writing that they would be prepared to purchase significant quantities of specific rare earth products from a North American producer in order to reduce their reliance on one source. Quality, proximity to market and security of supply are the major selling points with both Japanese and North American consumers.
As China gears up for their own huge industrial and technological revolution, they are consuming a greater percentage of their own natural resources internally and importing more and more metals etc from the West. China will undoubtedly increase their own use of rare earth elements paving the way for a North American producer to become the major source of rare earth elements to Western consumers.
Saskatchewan has no shortage of global marketing experience. Uranium, potash and farm machinery are some of the provinces well-known export successes. A rare earth industry would be well supported in Saskatchewan, from mining, through processing, right down to the research and development of new applications at the research facilities available in the City of Saskatoon.
What we need to do is find an alternative to the rare earth metal magnets, plain and simple, just like we need to start producing an alternative to petroleum. The sooner we can stick it to the Persians, Arabs, and Venezuelans the better!
Kind of dated. Shut down currently. Isn't it interesting how China tried to snag control of UNOCAL...which owns these mines?
China also just snapped up a Canadian oil company...wonder if they also didn't manage their rare earths resources.
I gave a stick of jeweler's rouge to my son this year that I have had for over 40 years, at the time my dad bought it, that stick was the smallest size for sale; he is likely to use maybe one-sixteenth of an inch of the five inches left on the stick which was six inches long when new.
My guess is that the Pentagon has a few tons of these critical materials stashed somewhere.
It isn't exactly like we use several hundred cruise missles every day.