The James Webb Space Telescope: A Rare Earth Telescope?

Slated to replace the now aging Hubble Space Telescope, is the James Webb Telescope deserve the moniker “Rare Earth Telescope” due to the amount of rare earth elements needed to make it do its cosmic exploration?

By: Ringo Bones 

Insiders from Lockheed Martin often joked that its rare earth element content equals that of three Predator drones, but why does the James Webb Space Telescope need such prodigious amounts of rare earth elements to do its intended function in exploring the cosmos? Well, maybe it has to do on where the new space telescope will be finally situated. 

Unlike the Hubble Space Telescope, which is situated in low Earth orbit 250 miles or 400 kilometers above us, the James Webb Space Telescope will be situated 1-million miles from the Earth so any fixing by NASA astronauts in case of a post launch in-space field repairs will be much, much harder than the Hubble fix in low Earth orbit by EVAing astronauts back in the early 1990s. The unfurling of the James Webb Space Telescope’s over-sized mirrors and heat shield 1 million miles in space must go as planned or it will become a sad multi-billion US dollar astronomical blunder. 

In order for the James Webb Space Telescope to achieve reliability in the hostile vacuum and near absolute zero cold of outer space, its servo motors are especially made with advanced proprietary samarium rare earth magnets that can still reliably function at 2.7 Kelvin – the average temperature of the hard vacuum of outer space. These servo motors not only unfurl the over-sized mirrors once the space telescopes arrive in a point in space 1-million miles away from Earth but also the aluminized gold plated mylar heat shield that would protect the James Webb Space Telescope’s main mirror from the relentless unfiltered glare of the Sun. 

Minami Torishima Island: Japan’s Latest Geopolitically Contentious Rare Earth Metals Strike?

In an attempt to wean the country’s over-dependence on Mainland China for rare earth needs, is Japan’s latest rare earth strike on the Minami Torishima Island too geopolitically contentious?

By: Ringo Bones

From recycling obsolete consumer electronic equipment to prospecting the seabed of the country’s territorial waters, Japan has for the past few years seems to be in a mad dash to wean itself from the People’s Republic of China when it comes to meeting its rare earth metal needs. But is the latest find on Minami Torishima Island might just too geopolitically contentious for Japan and other countries desperate to get its rare earth metal needs other than Mainland China?

Upon hearing sketchy reports of Japanese rare earth explorations of the Minami Torishima Island – also known as Marcus Islands – via CB radio “DX-ing” a few days ago, it seems like Minami Torishima Island is a place forgotten by Google search because the “instant search results feature” of the famed search engine can’t even redirect “confused online researchers” who don’t know how to spell the said Japanese in its accepted Roman letter spelling who are just recently looking for facts about Minami Torishima Island.

Even on the entry on Wikipedia, the island seems to be a 21^st Century geographical obscurity in itself. Minami Torishima Island also known as Marcus Island is located 1,848 kilometers South-East of Tokyo – quite veritably for all intents and purposes in international waters in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. And as of late, the island is claimed by two East-Asian regional superpowers – namely Japan and The People’s Republic of China. And anytime soon, either the island’s native inhabitants or some other countries would be voicing their sovereignty on the contentious island, making the situation akin to a real-life version of the TV series Last Resort.

The latest exploratory results of a Japanese rare earth metals mining firm on the said island have shown that the seabed surrounding the island contains commercially viable deposits of dysprosium – a rare earth metal vitally important for the manufacture of tiny, powerful magnets for use in motors of modern computer main memory drives and other indispensible contemporary hi-tech applications. But will Japan’s bid to wean itself form Mainland Chinese sourced rare-earth metals creates more regional geopolitical harm than good?

Even if Japan will win an internationally recognized claim on the Minami Torishima Island – otherwise known as the Marcus Island – it will only be just a first of the very difficult hurdles that it will overcome in extracting the economically viable deposits of dysprosium in the island’s seabed. First of all, the economically viable dysprosium ore – literally beige colored mud ooze – on the island’s seabed lies on average 3,000 to 5,000 meters below the Pacific Ocean. And given that there’s this 1970 UN General Assembly declaration that deep-sea minerals were the common heritage of mankind, Japan could end up sharing some of the profits with the Beijing government, and with a preexisting dispute with the People’s Republic of China over the Senkaku Islands, this situation could get ugly fast.

International law rigmaroles aside, Japan’s rare earth metals mining operations on the Minami Torishima Island – if it ever gets the green light – could and might soon attract ship-borne environmental picketing from the world’s leading environmental pressure groups like Greenpeace. This scenario has a high probability of certainty because every commercially viable rare earth metal ores that have been currently so far tend to be weakly to strongly radioactive due to the fact that that rare earth metals’ actinide homologues - like thorium and uranium - also occurs naturally in these ores, which is the main reason why mine tailings of rare earth metal mining and refining facilities can be significantly radioactive – at levels that can certainly pose a clear and present health risk to humans who come close to it.             

German Rare Earth Metals Recycling Program: Now Economically Viable?

Though still developed by an “East-German born” chemist, will Germany’s rare earth metals recycling program eventually reach economic viability?

By: Ringo Bones

Thanks to The People’s Republic of China’s “stranglehold” on the global commercial rare earth metals supply, some in the affluent industrialized West are already contemplating novel ways to develop an alternative method of acquiring their quotas of rare earth metals. Had anyone already checked their used and busted compact fluorescent bulb pile for rare earth metals?

German chemist Wolfram Palitzsch has during the past few years been developing an economically viable method to extract rare earth metals from used and/or busted compact fluorescent bulbs that as for now been just thrown away. Somewhat appalled by the sight of garbage-bags full of phosphors being thrown by German factories, Palitzsch was compelled to find a way to recover the increasingly precious rare earth metals from just winding up in a communal landfill.

At present and using his own proprietary methods, Palitzsch successfully developed a chemical extraction method for europium – a rare earth metal commonly used as component for red phosphors in color TV sets – from the white powder phosphors from used compact fluorescent bulbs. Even though his method worked, it can’t still be yet classified as an economically viable method to extract rare earth metals from busted compact fluorescent bulbs – compared to mining rare earths directly from the Earth’s crust - because different brands and models of compact fluorescent bulbs require somewhat different chemical extraction methods to recycle the rare earth metals – making a cost-competitive one-size-fits-all chemical process the next step for him to develop.

But after the environmental protests of low-level radioactive residues in some rare earth metal mines and processing mines not located in Mainland China – like the Australian owned Lynas rare earth metal mine and processing plant in Kuantan, Malaysia – recycling rare earth metals from “urban wastes” like phosphors from used compact fluorescent bulbs might only be the best long-term solution for the current rare earth metals shortage. Primarily it is a contentious political issue, but most people think that recycling rare earth metals from their own industrial and urban wastes – instead of buying it from a relatively despotic nation-state like The People’s Republic of China – might give the rest of us a cleaner conscience when it comes to corporate social responsibility.

When he was growing up in then communist East Germany, chemist Wolfram Palitzsch got first-hand lessons on recycling and resource conservation from his father because at that time, anything in the supposed resource Utopia of the then socialist East Germany might suddenly be in short supply. Palitzsch watched his father recycle bottle tops for latter use in handy do-it-yourself repairs and the rest to be sold in the local scrap-yard for a bit of extra cash and to barter for other goods. Palitzsch’s method of chemically extracting rare earth metals, as in europium extraction, from busted fluorescent bulbs is an offshoot from a chemical process he previously developed in extracting indium – an increasingly expensive and rare metal – from used solar photovoltaic cells. Ironically, he named the firm that he founded for extracting valuable elements from industrial and urban wastes “Loser Chemie” even though someday it might be a winner when it comes to extracting rare and precious elements from urban and industrial wastes.   

The Rare Earth Metals Industry Versus Mother Nature

Is it really worth compromising established environmental laws in the name of easier rare earth metal access for the whole world?

By: Ringo Bones

Thanks to The People’s Republic of China’s strategic stranglehold of the global rare earth metals supply, countries denied easy access to rare earths could resort to disregarding established legal precedents protecting the environment. A case in point is the latest courtroom battle between the Australian owned Lynas Rare Earth Plant and the local political constituency and environmentalist of Kuantan, Malaysia.  As the local court is on an ongoing negotiation to whether allow Lynas a permanent application to run the plant, environmental concerns cast a long shadow over the proceedings given that a similar rare earth metals processing plant located near the place was closed down 18 years ago for failure to comply with preexisting environmental laws. 

Given that The People’s republic of China controls about 97% of the global rare earth metals mining and processing, any country with a beef with the Beijing government – either on the issue of Tibet, human rights or unfair international trade practices – has no other choice but to put ethics in second place over access to the coveted rare earth metals commodities. But will restarting rare earth metals mining and processing facilities elsewhere in the world even though they don’t quite pass muster the rather stringent local environmental laws be a better option?

Even though Malaysia’s Lynas Rare Earth Plant is the biggest rare earth metals processing and refining facility outside of Mainland China, its operation has been more or less on hold since May 2012 due to environmental concerns voiced by local environmental activists and the local inhabitants of Kuantan - by the way, Kuantan is the capital of Pahang, Malaysia's third largest state. Both locals and environmentalists are currently picketing the plant due to concerns over lack of oversight when it comes to the safe disposal of the low-level radioactive wastes which are a by-product of rare earth metal purification and processing. The thorium and radon gas content of the overburden in a typical rare earth metals processing plant has a radioactivity level sufficient enough to increase the likelihood of cancer on any persons exposed to it for a prolonged period of time. Will more stringent disposal of low-level radioactive wastes still make the rare earth metals produced by the Malaysian Lynas plant be still cost-competitive compared to ones made by Mainland China?

Thulium: The X-Ray Visioned Rare Earth?

Given that it is the rarest of the rare earth metals, is thulium more famous for its portable X-ray related use than any of its rather relatively “obscure” applications? 

By: Ringo Bones 

Even though in terms of its abundance in the Earth’s crust, thulium does truly qualify as the rarest of the rare earth metals, although in truth, it is only slightly scarcer than the halogen iodine. As a reminder to the uninitiated, the term “rare earth” is actually a misnomer – the widespread use of the term arose near the end of the 19^th Century when the chemists who first discovered these rare earth elements used to prepare the elements’ oxides, which were, at first, taken from the elements themselves. Thulium was discovered as a distinct chemical element back in 1879 by Per Theodore Cleve. Atomic number 69 and chemical symbol Tm, its name is derived from Thule or Northland. For the first half of the 20^th Century, thulium was only known as mere “impurity” in your run-of-the-mill misch metal alloys destined for pocket cigarette-lighter flint production. 

Thulium became more well-known to the unsuspecting public when in 1954, a portable X-ray unit was developed which employs radioactive thulium as its source of radiation – produced by irradiating a pure sample of the metal inside a nuclear reactor. Like those small nuclear reactors often found in some Ivy League university physics labs that costs 200 US dollars an hour to run. A small amount – usually button-sized specimen - of this thulium radioisotope that gives off X-rays is encased in a lead-lined compartment which affords full protection to personnel involved in its operation, produces X-ray radiographs without the use of electricity, water or darkroom facilities. The unit, which weighs only 40 pounds, is simple to operate and produces a finished radiograph ready for inspection in five to ten minutes. The “hot” thulium radioisotope used in portable X-ray machines is replaced every few months or so since it spontaneously decays into a more stable element that no longer gives off X-rays. 

Lutetium: Underutilized Rare Earth Element?

Ever since its discovery in 1907 does chemical element lutetium truly deserve the title as an underutilized member of the rare earth family?

By: Ringo Bones

Lutetium, chemical symbol Lu, is named after Lutetia, the ancient name for Paris. The element was discovered back in 1907 by Georges Urbain of France and by Carl Auer von Welsbach of Austria. And it is the heaviest of the rare earth metals.
Although rare earth alloys intended for commercial use – such as misch metal – costs as low as US$3.15 a pound, a pound of chemically pure lutetium costs US$1,300 – or about US$108 an ounce, which is more expensive than gold at the time when gold prices hovers at around US$38 an ounce for much of the 1960s.

Back in the 1960s – when America was at the height of the Space Age – many of lutetium’s chemical and physical properties were yet to be studied – i.e. lutetium’s practical value has yet to be discovered. Currently, as the heaviest and most expensive member of the rare earth elements, a naturally occurring radioactive isotope of lutetium is used in determining the age of recovered meteorites in relation to the age of the planet Earth. In the petrochemical industry, lutetium is now often used as a super-efficient catalyst for polymerization, alkylation and hydrogenation.

Alkylation is a petrochemical refining process in which light gaseous hydrocarbons are combined to produce high-octane components in gasoline. The light hydrocarbons consist of olefins such as propylene and butylenes and isoparaffins such as isobutene. These compounds are fed into a reactor where under the influence of a sulfuric acid or hydrofluoric acid catalyst combine to form a mixture of heavier hydrocarbons. The liquid fraction of this mixture, known as alkylate, consists mainly of isooctane, a compound that lends excellent antiknock characteristics to unleaded gasoline.

Alkylation units were installed in petroleum refineries in the 1930s, but the petrochemical process became especially important during World War II, where there was a great demand for reasonably-priced aviation gasoline. Since then, alkylation is used in combination with fractional distillation, catalytic cracking and isomerization to increase a petroleum refineries’ yield of automotive gasoline. Although other rare earth based catalysts – like cerium - are used in alkylation. But lutetium based catalysts require way much less energy to keep the chemical reaction going in comparison to other petrochemical alkylation catalysts.

An American Rare Earth Industry Revival?

As Mainland China looks more and more likely to reduce future rare earth element export quotas, will an American rare earth industry revival fill in the global shortfall?

By: Ringo Bones

If you're one of the few concerned citizens of this planet closely watching the concerns surrounding the global rare earth metals demand, then it is inevitable that one of these days, a news that the United States is seriously playing catch-up with the established 21st Century global rare earth industry - namely Mainland China - which controls 97% of the global rare earth industry. But is America's rare earth industry revival nothing more than a toe-in-the-water exercise in economic terms?

In a July 12, 2011 interview with the BBC, Molycorp spokesman Jim Sims says that Molycorp has already reactivated a "retired" open-pit rare earth mine high in the Mojave Desert of California that has been closed 10 years ago. Even if the long-term economic and political will driving this endeavor remains uncertain, are there other obvious advantages of reviving America's home-grown rare earth industry?

Whatever the incumbent and/or incoming administration decides in the near future, America's concern for securing her rare earth metal demands is not just combined to high-tech and carbon-neutral technologies anymore like laptops, loudspeaker magnets, hard-disk drives, color TVs, electric cars and wind turbines anymore. Rare earths also serve a very important component in the American defense industry. From unmanned drones, actuators in JDAMs and guided missiles just to name a few. The question now is not only whether or not the occupational health and environmental concerns surrounding the revival of America's rare earth industry is worth it in the long-run, but also if America can still afford to chose not to revive and then expand its long dormant rare earth metals industry?