Massive Rare Earth Deposit Found In Australia

An anonymous reader writes "A north Queensland mining company has discovered one of the world's largest deposits of the rare earth, scandium, used in fuel cells."

Nice, but one of the less useful rare earths

[Animats]

That's nice, but scandium has only a few minor uses. A find of high-quality neodymium or europium ore would be much more interesting.

Re:Nice, but one of the less useful rare earths

[AliasMarlowe]

And Scandium is not really a rare earth. It's the first transition metal (3d valence orbitals) with atomic number 21. Rare earths don't begin until Lanthanum (4f valence orbitals) with atomic number 57.

Scandium does have uses, but these have been small in part due to the limited availability of the metal. Is is questionable whether those uses will increase markedly in the near future, just because the supply of Scandium has increased.

Re:Nice, but one of the less useful rare earths

[khallow]

And Scandium is not really a rare earth. It's the first transition metal (3d valence orbitals) with atomic number 21. Rare earths don't begin until Lanthanum (4f valence orbitals) with atomic number 57.

Geology and mining does things a little differently from chemistry. Apparently, Scandium is classified as a "rare earth" because it occurs in deposits with proper rare earths. Similarly, gold is often classified as a "platinum group metal" because it's a common associate of proper platinum group metals.

Is is questionable whether those uses will increase markedly in the near future, just because the supply of Scandium has increased.

Why? There are apparently a number of viable aluminum alloys that use scandium. Cheaper scandium makes these more competitive with similar alloys (apparently, titanium containing aluminum alloys).

Rare earths are not quite ... rare

[giorgist]

In fact they are quite common. One of te big problem with rare earths is that if you extract them, you generally find them in company with thorium. Now even though it is naturally there, one you took it out of the ground you are obligated to treat it as a radioactive waste. You are not aloud to mix it back into the ground at the same consistency you found it. The result is that one of the few places on earth you can get rare earths is ... China. Who by the way is storing the thorium, and is moving ahead into building Gen IV reactors.

In fact there is a dude that is petitioning to be allowed to extract "rare" earth metal and be allowed to store the thorium. This one mine will be able to produce all the energy the US needs as a ... byproduct. Now that is handy

http://energyfromthorium.com/2011/03/10/free-thorium/