Elemental Business: Rare Earths
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 21 July 2014
⏱️ 33 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The rare earth elements are the focus of the latest instalment in Business Daily's exploration of the real basis of the world economy - the basic building blocks of everything in the universe, the chemical elements.
And it's not a short list we cover: Lanthanum, cerium, praseodymium, neodymium, promethium, samarium, europium, gadolinium, turbium, dysprosium, holmium, erbium, thulium, ytturbium and lutetium.
You may not have heard of most of them but some have insinuated themselves deep into modern life. We'll be finding out the extraordinarily range of uses to which they've been put, as well as the big problem: The supply of these is overwhelmingly dominated by China.
We'll be hearing from Professor Andrea Sella of University College London, Jack Lifton of Technology Metals Research, the journalist Cecile Bontron who provides a first-hand account of the Chinese processing plant at Baotou, as well as Henrik Stiesdahl and Rasmus Windfeld of Siemens' wind turbine division.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is a BBC podcast. You can get all our podcasts and our terms of use at BBCworldservis.com |
| 0:07.2 | slash podcasts. |
| 0:10.9 | Hello, I'm Justin Rowlatt. Welcome to Business Daily and the latest instalment in our comprehensive exploration of the |
| 0:22.8 | periodic table. Today, we're taking not one, but a whole family of chemical elements, the rare |
| 0:29.3 | earths. Although they're chemically very, very similar, magnetically and electronically, |
| 0:35.1 | each one is completely unique and finds its very own niche |
| 0:40.3 | application. We'll be hearing how the rare earths have insinuated themselves deep into all our lives |
| 0:46.4 | and also just how difficult it is to get hold of these important elements. Of the 15, perhaps |
| 0:53.6 | five are important in our technological society. |
| 0:57.6 | Unfortunately, the ones we really need are only economical to produce in China. |
| 1:03.5 | Elemental Economics in Business Daily from the BBC. |
| 1:09.3 | Today we had almost to the very bottom of the periodic table to a bit that your |
| 1:14.8 | chemistry teacher at school probably skipped over, the rare earth elements. That's right, |
| 1:20.5 | this week we're looking at a whole family of obscure metals with bizarre sounding names like |
| 1:25.9 | neodynium, europium and prometheum. |
| 1:29.3 | But even while chemists have trouble reciting all their names, |
| 1:32.9 | some of these elements play an absolutely indispensable role |
| 1:36.2 | in the technological advances of the modern world. |
| 1:39.2 | And if you don't believe me, |
| 1:40.7 | then here is a bona fide professor to tell you more. I am, of course, referring to our regular |
| 1:46.9 | compare of the world of the chemical elements, Professor Andrea Seller of University College London. |
| 1:54.5 | The most important thing is that they're not rare. And secondly, they're not Earths. Earth is an old term, which really means |
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