Rare, by Keith Veronese
Review by Dave Gamrath
One-liner: Keith Veronese’s 2015 book Rare: The High-Stakes Race to Satisfy Our Need for the Scarcest Metals on Earth explores rare earth elements, or REEs, and how they are shaping Western civilization.
Book Review:
Our Western civilization is driven by technology, and much of that technology requires rare earth metals, also known as rare earth elements, or REEs. Today, a great deal is written about the difficulties in obtaining REEs, and the politics surrounding them. Wanting to learn more, I picked up Keith Veronese’s 2015 book Rare: The High-Stakes Race to Satisfy Our Need for the Scarcest Metals on Earth.
For the record, the 17 REEs are cerium, dysprosium, erbium, europium, gadolinium, holmium, lanthanum, lutetium, neodymium, praseodymium, promethium, samarium, scandium, terbium, thulium, ytterbium, and yttrium. (Knowing this will make you the life of any party.) Visually, REEs are nearly indistinguishable, with a “relatively bland, shiny silver exterior.” Ironically, REEs are not that rare, being relatively abundant in the Earth's crust. The term “rare” comes from REEs typically being scattered in minute quantities, requiring the processing of enormous amounts of raw ore to obtain REEs at usable purity levels, which is expensive and destructive.
REEs “often cost ten or more times the price of their less efficient, more common counterpart” metals. REEs are critical to many technologies, from medical technologies (MRIs, laser scalpels, cancer drugs, etc.) to defense technologies (satellite communications, guidance systems, aircraft structures, etc.), to “green” energy (wind turbines, electric vehicles, etc.), magnets, cellphones, computers, miniaturized electronics, telecommunications, transportation systems, and more. REEs, with their ability to improve the performance of other metals, have a wide array of uses, allowing products to be smaller and lighter. Most often, the amount of REEs used in a product is small, but in some cases, the quantity used is surprisingly high. For example, “there are over thirty pounds of rare earth metals inside each Toyota Prius,” and wind turbines use over 500 pounds.
Veronese writes about how China dominates the REE market. “China holds one-third of the planet’s rare earth supply, but the vast number of mining and refining operations ongoing within its borders allow China to account for roughly 97 percent of the available rare earth metals market at any given time.” The bulk are found in Bayan Obo, an area within Inner Mongolia on the northern edge of China. Veronese writes that China spent years building the infrastructure to control this market, as well as strategically undercutting global REE prices to gain market share. As China aggressively moved to expand REE operations, Veronese writes that “the US faltered,” and is now struggling to reestablish REE production within the US.
Veronese explains that there are many “man-made” REEs. “These elements are products of scientists and engineers slamming atoms and particles together at speeds of thousands of feet per second.” The pursuit of nuclear weapons helped drive this approach to REE production. Veronese explains how nuclear reactors operate, as well as the problems they create, including the creation of large amounts of spent radioactive fuel.
Veronese delves into the reprocessing of spent nuclear fuel to obtain REEs. These efforts come with many dangers, such as the “extreme destructive capacity” of nuclear waste, the risk of terrorist attacks on waste sites, how this waste can be used to fabricate dirty bombs, and the massive cost of decontamination if something goes awry. Veronese explains how our current approach with this waste is to “bury spent fuel rods in desolate areas for future generations to contend with.” He writes about the many “deep geological repositories...spread across the globe,” which use preexisting rock and salt formations within massive caves for storage. In attempts to prevent leakage, “gaps between metal caskets and their radioactive cargo are filled with cement, crushed salt, and soil to isolate the waste and prevent future movement.” This is done to ensure a “physical impasse between radioactive material and human life, while preventing any leaks into the groundwater supply.” The US has only one active geological repository, located in Carlsbad, New Mexico. Veronese is clearly a supporter of nuclear energy, and writes, “as a whole, it is quite safe.” He strongly lobbies for the option of processing the spent nuclear waste to obtain REEs, and calls today’s current strategy of just burying the nuclear waste “for the next hundred thousand years” both “shortsighted and irresponsible.” He sees this approach as helping America become a leader in REE production.
But Veronese also covers many of the negatives around obtaining these metals, including multiple horrific mining wars, such as the Second Congo War (1998-2003), which resulted in “five million people killed as a result of the fighting.” Veronese discusses the “dirty recycling” of REEs, including how electronic waste is shipped to poor countries such as Ghana, India, and Malaysia, where their poor try to eke out a dangerous, toxic living in primitive recycling efforts. He also discusses the massive amount of chemicals needed in the processing of REEs, and how it can take up to 24 steps to process REEs into usable metals.
Staying on topic, Veronese touches on REEs’ potential as a “revolutionary energy source” and their use in superconducting magnets. But surprisingly, Veronese also goes off on many tangents, including the existence of “natural” nuclear reactors in Africa, attempts at counterfeiting gold, and using REEs as poison in assassination attempts. He provides examples of how to go about amateur recycling efforts and explains the history of platinum. He goes into opium farming in Afghanistan. He provides a brief explanation of the politics and technical issues around mining in Antarctica and Greenland, as well as mining the ocean’s floor. He even writes about mining on the moon and on asteroids.
Again, Western civilization relies on acquiring and using REEs, especially in our pursuit of “green” energy. Veronese closes with stating that “whether the acquisition comes at the cost of the environment, human lives, or political alliances is the question, with the answer coming in the decades to follow.” True enough. But sadly, Veronese fails to adequately cover many other common forms of environmental degradation that come with mining, such as erosion, sinkholes, loss of biodiversity and habitat, air and noise pollution, and the contamination of soil, groundwater, and surface water by chemicals emitted from mining processes. Often the ore for REEs is located in areas with limited and dwindling water supplies, where you can have REE mining, or water, but not both. When communities go dry due to the massive water usage of nearby open-pit mines, will their conservative voters end their blind support for the feverishly pro-mining Republican Party? A parched mouth might actually drive change, but, today, anyway, it’s hard to imagine.
Reviewer Opinion: Some interesting tidbits, but one can learn as much (and more quickly) just surfing the web.
Reviewer Rating of Book: Thumb partly down