Nuclear, Tech and Solar Duke It Out for Rare Metals
by Mark Ontkush, Boston, Massachusetts, USA 
on 09. 5.07
Metal scarcity is pushing some of the world's biggest industries into a regular Battle Royale, as they struggle to obtain enough raw materials to continue operations. Metals are chemical elements, and prized for their unique properties; usually no synthetic replacement can be developed. New Scientist magazine reports that the world is running out of several rare metals used to form key components in high-tech devices, including cell phones and semiconductors. The article mentions that supplies of indium, used in liquid-crystal displays, and of hafnium, a critical element for next-generation semiconductors, could be exhausted by 2017.
That's a problem, but a bigger one is other green (solar) and maybe-not-so-green (nuclear) industries need these minerals as well. For example, manufacturers of solar panels require large amounts of copper, indium, gallium and selenide. And hafnium (currently $187 per kilogram) is used for control rods in nuclear plants. It's only going to get more pricey - if current predictions for hafnium supply and demand prove accurate, in a decade we could be out of it.
Good news is that estimates of the available reserves of these elements vary widely, and can change daily - a significant find of indium was recently reported in Bolivia for example. But with the current crunch, it could mean that some of the rarest and most precious building blocks of the information age could vanish far quicker than previously thought, and make it tough to transition into new energy-related technologies. Do you really need that new computer? :: Information Week
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I had a hunch that my computer and electronics contained precious metals, but they're so cheap, I could afford not to think about it.
It's time for consumers know the ingredients to their durable products. The electronics industry needs to make a plan now to deal with the coming resource scarcity.
A few electronics companies have been offering recycling programs recently and this material scarcity explains probably the *only real* reason they are doing any recycling at all. I guess we'll have to take the improvements wherever we can get them.
[good point mjo]
Careful treehugger, your bias is showing.
i guess that's why recycling is so important. the next time you buy a computer, make sure to take it to your nearest recycling center...!
it costs nothing to you and keeps your environment, and now we see another bonus; keeping the resources available for years to come...!
Careful treehugger, your bias is showing.
As is yours. Get your own blog if you don't like the "bias" here. You probably won't become a Top 20 blog, I'm guessing.
Two Words:
Asteroid Mining.
"Careful treehugger, your bias is showing." -me
"As is yours. Get your own blog if you don't like the "bias" here. You probably won't become a Top 20 blog, I'm guessing." -Anonymous Coward
I enjoy your fallacious ad hominem attacks, as they only make me stronger and your position weaker. As for the blog itself, the very fact that solar electric power relies of rare metals for construction points to the conclusion that it is in fact not green nor sustainable, when the post clearly implies otherwise. Treehugger also has the habit of not accounting for the baseline initial investment costs of many things "green" and solar electric panels are one of the most visible examples. Ni-Cad electric cars are another.
The assertion that I'm biased by merely by pointing out someone else's bias is laughable. Such a conclusion belongs in the realms of politics and middle schools.
I enjoy your fallacious ad hominem attacks, as they only make me stronger and your position weaker.
But your numerous ad hominem attacks do what? Do they give you more regularity? Make your grass greener?
It's a good thing you're not an anonymous coward, either, Mr. Lincoln. How is the afterlife?
before we go all-out on the asteroids, we should perhaps consider mining the exinct smokers on the ocean floor which are the original source of our land-based ores...
As Buckminster Fuller had it, years ago, we have all the elements we need. It's a matter of putting them to use intelligently.
Abe Lincoln says, "Blah Blah Blah."
Goes to show that Recycling should be a Federally mandated Trash Removal System.
The idea that Recycling is not Federally mandated is unbelievably ludicrous. We know that a metals crisis, whether Platinum or other metal, could cost the US its future, particularly militarily. WW1 and WW2 proved this. Further when we recycle such materials as halfnium, we lose its base (according to a few articles I have read). IN addition, many of the recycleable materials are left for dead after they are shipped to China and India to be dumped.
Where are the Presidential candidates on this subject?
Where are Americans on this? I live i n the south, Atlanta to be exact, and I learned that we, on the southeast corner, can not recycle anything thats not a 1,2 or paper/cardboard. There are no other recycling centers for this function that are close enough to truck the materials to.
Excuse me?!!!?? How can this be?!
[truer words, never more spoken mjo]
This is only a problem for "renewable" energy sources since they use so much material to produce such tiny and fickle streams of energy.
Nuclear reactors can outbid almost anyone for these materials(I reckon Intel would outbid them for hafnium...) since they produce such monumental amounts of energy per mass of control-rod.
In addition, nuclear plants can use various combinations of silver, indium, cadmium, cobalt, hafnium, dysprosium, gadolinium, samarium, erbium, boron or europium for control rods if they are designed for it(Ag-In-Cd alloy is common). Some designs can operate without control rods; relying on passive control like doppler broadening(e.g. MSRs, pebble beds), thermal expansion(e.g. MSRs), reversible chemical decomposition(e.g. uranium-hydride reactors).
"Do you really need that new computer?"
Do you really need that photovoltaic panel? It will do almost exactly nothing to reduce CO2 emissions from the electrical grid and it will waste precious indium(for the ITO electrode) that could be better used for making an LCD screen.