RARE EARTH ELEMENTS
1.Context
The Centre has amended a key law so that it can specify competitive royalty rates for the mining of three strategically significant minerals — lithium, niobium, and rare earth elements (REEs). The decision comes after the government removed six minerals, including lithium and niobium, from the list of ‘specified’ atomic minerals, which could set the stage for private sector participation through auctioning of concessions for these minerals.
2.About rare earth metals
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
| The 17 rare earths are cerium (Ce), dysprosium (Dy), erbium (Er), europium (Eu), gadolinium (Gd), holmium (Ho), lanthanum (La), lutetium (Lu), neodymium (Nd), praseodymium (Pr), promethium (Pm), samarium (Sm), scandium (Sc), terbium (Tb), thulium (Tm), ytterbium (Yb), and yttrium (Y) |
Despite their classification, most of these elements are not really “rare”. One of the rare earths, promethium, is radioactive
Source:Thermo Fisher Scientific
3.Applications of rare earths
- 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
- Rare earth elements are used in space shuttle components, jet engine turbines, and drones
- Cerium, the most abundant rare earth element, is essential to NASA’s Space Shuttle Programme
- In recent years, rare earths have become even more important because there has been an increase in demand for green energy
- Elements like neodymium and dysprosium, which are used in wind turbine motors, are sought-after more than ever as wind mills across the world continue to grow
- Moreover, the push for switching from internal combustion cars to electric vehicles has also led to a rise in demand for rare earth magnets made from neodymium, boron, and iron and batteries
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For Prelims: Applications of rare earths, rare earth elements
For Mains:
1.Europe’s largest known deposit of rare earth elements found in Sweden: Could the discovery change geopolitics?
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Source:indianexpress
