Rare Earth Elements
Summary
TLDRThe video script discusses lanthanides, a group of elements crucial for modern technology like laptops and wind turbines. Despite their importance, extracting and refining them is challenging and produces hazardous waste. China dominates the rare-earth market, raising geopolitical concerns over supply. Alternative refineries are emerging, but dealing with toxic by-products remains a challenge.
Takeaways
- 📚 Lanthanides and actinides are special groups of elements placed at the bottom of the periodic table to keep the table compact.
- 🌐 Lanthanides are crucial for modern technology, including laptops, cell phones, plasma TVs, solar panels, wind turbines, and pollution control equipment.
- 💸 Despite their importance, lanthanides are challenging to extract and refine due to their widespread distribution in small concentrations.
- 🚫 The refining process of rare-earth elements generates significant low-level radioactive waste, posing environmental and health risks.
- 🌏 China dominates the market for processing rare-earth metals, handling about 95% of the world's supply, which raises geopolitical concerns.
- 💰 China's control over rare-earth metals gives it significant political and economic leverage, potentially affecting global supply chains.
- 🏭 Other countries, including the United States, are investing in cleaner and more expensive rare-earth refineries to reduce dependence on China.
- 🔬 A reopened rare-earth mine in California is attempting to address environmental concerns with innovative solutions like covering toxic waste with plastic balls.
- 🌱 The environmental impact of rare-earth mining and refining is a significant concern, with some processes creating vast amounts of acidic waste.
- 🔍 The script encourages viewers to learn more about rare-earth elements, their controversies, and their importance through provided resources and social media engagement.
Q & A
What are lanthanides and why are they placed at the bottom of the periodic table?
-Lanthanides are a group of 15 metallic elements with atomic numbers 57 to 71. They are placed at the bottom of the periodic table because their inclusion in the main table would make it too large to fit on a standard paper size, so they are set apart to conserve space.
How are lanthanides used in modern technology?
-Lanthanides are used in various modern technologies such as laptops, cell phones, plasma screen TVs, solar panels, wind turbines, catalytic converters in cars, and pollution control equipment in coal-fired power plants.
What is the dark side of lanthanides mentioned in the script?
-The dark side of lanthanides refers to the difficulty in extracting and refining them, which results in the production of large amounts of low-level radioactive waste, posing environmental and health risks.
Why are rare-earth elements called 'rare' despite being relatively common?
-Rare-earth elements are called 'rare' because they are not found in large concentrations and tend to mix with other minerals, making them difficult to extract in pure form.
What role does China play in the processing of rare-earth metals?
-China has been processing about 95% of the world's rare-earth metals due to the lack of desire for dealing with the associated toxic waste in other countries. However, their refineries are often poorly regulated or illegal, leading to significant environmental issues.
What are the geopolitical implications of China's dominance in rare-earth processing?
-China's dominance in rare-earth processing gives it significant political power, as it could potentially withhold critical elements like neodymium, impacting the production of new wind turbines and high-powered electric motors for hybrid cars.
What measures are being taken to reduce dependency on China for rare-earth processing?
-Countries, including the United States, are building more expensive and cleaner rare-earth refineries to reduce their dependency on China, despite the associated higher costs and challenges in waste management.
What is the significance of the reopening of a rare-earth mine in California after being shut down in 1998?
-The reopening of the rare-earth mine in California signifies an attempt to reduce reliance on foreign sources and to address the environmental concerns by implementing new waste management strategies, such as covering toxic waste water pools with plastic balls to prevent evaporation.
How does the script describe the environmental impact of rare-earth mining and refining?
-The script describes the environmental impact as severe, mentioning 'giant sizzling lakes of acidic waste' and 'unholy godforsaken mess' as a result of the lack of regulation and illegal practices in some refineries.
What are some of the challenges faced in managing the toxic by-products of rare-earth refining?
-The challenges include finding effective and environmentally safe ways to handle low-level radioactive waste, as well as the high costs associated with cleaner refining processes.
Outlines
🧪 Lanthanides: The Periodic Table's Hidden Gems
The script introduces lanthanides as a group of elements located in their own section at the bottom of the periodic table. Despite their name suggesting rarity, they are common but hard to find in large quantities. Lanthanides are crucial for modern technologies such as laptops, cell phones, plasma TVs, solar panels, wind turbines, and pollution control equipment. They are often found mixed with other minerals, making extraction and refining a complex and messy process that results in low-level radioactive waste.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Lanthanides
💡Actinides
💡Rare-earth elements
💡Nuclear weapons
💡Refining
💡Toxic waste
💡China
💡Neodymium
💡Catalytic converter
💡Plasma screen TVs
💡Wind turbines
Highlights
Lanthanum and the lanthanides are crucial for modern technologies such as laptops, cell phones, plasma screens, solar panels, and wind turbines.
Lanthanides are located at the bottom of the periodic table to keep the table compact.
Actinides contain elements used in nuclear weapons and are also placed at the bottom of the periodic table.
Lanthanum and lanthanides are responsible for many 21st-century technological advancements.
Despite their name, rare-earth elements like lanthanides are relatively common but are difficult to find in large concentrations.
Extracting and refining rare-earth elements is challenging and produces low-level radioactive waste.
China has become the primary processor of rare-earth metals, handling about 95% of the global refining.
Lack of regulation and illegal practices in Chinese refineries have led to environmental issues.
China's dominance in rare-earth processing gives it significant political and economic power.
Other countries, including the US, are building cleaner and more expensive rare-earth refineries.
The reopening of a rare-earth mine in California after a 1998 shutdown due to toxic leakage.
Innovative solutions, such as covering toxic waste water pools with plastic balls, are being implemented to prevent evaporation.
The periodic table's design is a compromise to fit all elements on a single sheet of paper.
The lanthanides' role in pollution control equipment for coal-fired power plants.
The potential negative impact on the environment and human health due to improper handling of rare-earth waste.
The geopolitical implications of China's control over the rare-earth market and its potential to disrupt global supply chains.
The economic and environmental challenges faced by countries attempting to establish their own rare-earth refineries.
The importance of finding sustainable solutions for the by-products of rare-earth element processing.
Transcripts
Welcome! You're just in time to learn about lanthanides!
[SciShow theme]
It's a- it's the periodic table of elements, it's- it's wonderful.
You got your noble gases over here, and hydrogen, the building block of everything in the universe over here,
you got your alkali metals and gold and other lovely regular metals in the middle here.
What is this?
What are these elements that aren't.. in.. They're not in the table proper, they're like, in their own table.
What makes you guys so special? Those are the lanthanides on top and the actinides on the bottom.
And they're down there because they can't be trusted around the other elements!
That's not true. They actually could be a part of the table,
but if they became part of the table, the table would be too big to put on a piece of paper,
so they sort of shove them down to the bottom. Basically, like Alaska.
You always sort of like disembody Alaska
and bring it down because, it's just too big. You gotta- it just big... gotta break it off.
They are actually kind of crazy actinides are, uh,
they contain all the elements that we make nuclear weapons out of. But the lanthanides on top there.
Uh, they're actually responsible for a lot of the coolest things that we have as 21st century citizens:
laptops, cell phones, plasma screen TVs, solar panels, wind turbines,
the catalytic converter on your car, that makes your car not so horrible for the environment.
And also the pollution control equipment that we stick on top of big, gigantic coal-fired power plants
All that stuff is made possible by our friends, the lanthanides.
Yeah! Rare-earth elements for president!
Oh, hold on a sec.
Uh, yeah, mhm. N- no!
[bleep]
Because our rare-earth Lanthanide friends are so frickin' awesome of course,
they have to have a dark side.
Despite their name, a lot of rare-earths are really common.
They're called rare because they're hard to find in large concentrations.
Th-they like to mix together with a bunch of other minerals and elements underground,
there- there's never, like, a vein full of Indium.
So extracting rare-earths, and especially refining them, is a huge pain in the ass.
In addition to giving you a huge pain in the ass,
refining rare-earths also gives you, uh, mountains of low-level radioctive waste
And I mean, who wants to deal with that.
I'm actually going to give you a second to think about who would want to deal with all that.
Yeah, it's China.
In the past 20 years we've become extremely dependent on rare-earth metals for our, you know, everything.
And since none of us want gigantic piles of toxic waste dumped in our backyards,
we've left about 95% of the processing of rare-earth metals to Chinese refineries,
which are hardly regulated at all, and in some cases just totally illegal.
And believe me when I say that they're making an unholy godforsaken mess over there.
I'm talking giant sizzling lakes of acidic waste.
Oh God, I can't breathe. [heayy breathing]
But the Chinese are also totally making bank off of all of this and they're also wielding a lot of political power.
Like, if China got angry at the Unites States tomorrow,
they could be like, "No more neodymium for you!"
And then we wouldn't have any neodymium, which would mean, like, no new wind turbines or uh, like
high-powered electric motors for- for hybrid cars.
So other countries, including the United States, have cautiously begun building their
much more expensive, much cleaner rare-earth refineries.
Probably just in time for the bubble to pop on all of this stuff.
But we still have to figure out something to do with all that toxic by-product.
Nobody has come up with a really good solution to that problem
Just recently a rare-earth mine in California opened back up after being shut down in 1998 for toxic leakage
Now the company- promising that they've got it all figured out.
No big deal.
One of their solutions involves covering toxic waste water pools
with interlocked 18 sided plastic balls to prevent evaporation.
Yeah, plastic balls.
Covering a radioactive sludge pond.. I'm not filled with an overwhelming sense of confidence in that idea,
but the state of California seems to be satisfied.
21st century problems, y'all.
Do you want to know where we got all the information for this episode?
We've set you up with some links below
so that you can learn more about rare-earth elements and all of the controversy
and awesome things surrounding them.
And you can also check us out on Facebook and Twitter if you have any questions for us.
You can also leave those in the comments, we're always there.
And we're always looking for new ideas for episodes of Scishow
so please let us know what you're curious about.
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