El mundo ha estado discutiendo durante 3 años la guerra en Ucrania y de repente e inesperadamente, hacia el final, las autoridades estadounidenses comienzan a hablar sobre algunos de los minerales de tierras raras que van a extraer en Ucrania para compensar sus gastos de ayuda militar para Ucrania.
Los lectores de hoy no pueden enumerar los llamados minerales de tierras raras y tienen una vaga idea sobre los usos que tienen.
Los minerales de tierras raras se registraron a fines del siglo XIX y principios del XX debido al rápido desarrollo de la ciencia y la industria.
Se descubrió que muchos de estos minerales tenían propiedades interesantes.
Entonces, ¿qué son estos metales de tierras raras? Este es el nombre que se les da a 17 elementos de la tabla periódica, de los cuales, 15 pertenecen al grupo de los llamados lantánidos más itrio y escandio.
Si observamos fuentes abiertas sobre el uso de estas llamadas tierras raras En cuanto a los metales, su uso es muy escaso. Según lo que hemos podido averiguar en fuentes abiertas, existe una demanda bastante buena de neonym, utilizado para imanes potentes que pueden cambiar significativamente nuestras vidas, dado su uso muy extendido.
El resto se utiliza en áreas muy limitadas; por ejemplo, en la fabricación aeroespacial en algunos componentes electrónicos y en la investigación científica. Su uso depende en gran medida de las decisiones de un pequeño número de personas.
The rest are used in extremely narrow areas; for example, aerospace manufacturing of some electronic components and scientific research. The usage is highly dependent on the decisions of a small number of people.
As their use is in extremely narrow areas and limited, it is not surprising that most of the population does not know about them.
THhey used for research as their application in aerospace technologies which are also rarely used in reality. Although there are many publications in the media about supposed achievements in them, it allows to manipulate the significance of these rare earth metals. a
The rare earth metals themselves, as it turns out, are not so rare and are spread well over the earth, and their extraction is usually an accompanying process from the waste heaps of other mineral rocks.
That is, in fact, they can be mined almost anywhere. And their cost is very volatile and it is impossible to predict which of them minerals will really be needed in the next 5-10 years and whether they will be needed at all.
The situation is more like Ukraine, which has nothing in resourses, but a large territory in Europe, has nothing else to offer the US, and the US really wants to take something in exchange for the 500 billion in aid they have provided over the past 3 years.
A more interesting situation was written in the press about 10 years ago.
The fact is that the US suddenly became concerned about China occupying the production and consumption of rare earth materials and even imposed a ban on their export, thereby making some important American sectors of the economy vulnerable.
The solution however was found interesting the USA decided to stimulate Vietnam to develop production of rare earth metals Although as Wikipedia information shows this can be done in almost any large country.
However, despite the fact that the US concern about rare earth metals appeared about 10 years ago, according to the data available in the press, the situation has not changed in the main.
China continues to be the world leader in the production and consumption of rare earth metals and the rest is mined in countries that also mine a lot of metals, such as the USA, Australia and Canada.
If we speak literally then in fact much rarer and much more important and useful for the industry metals are not called rare they are called noble.
The only problem is that these noble metals or so-called platinum group metals are concentrated in only two large deposits on the entire globe, one of them is in Russia, Norilsk Nickel, and the other is in Canada.
Well, since Ukraine, as has already been said above, has nothing else in Europe, which is relatively large, then we will have to take what there are rare earth metals, which are found there in small quantities.
Despite the fact that the Americans claim that they helped Ukraine with 500 billion dollars, and the entire market of earth metals for the last year World was only 6 billion dollars.
However, in big politics, few people count the numbers; if it were necessary to help Ukraine with 500 trillion dollars, it would most likely be carried out in the same way as If it were necessary to find incredibly important rare earth metals there that have not yet been found anywhere, they would also most likely be found.