Battle for the Tech Metals: What Are the 17 Rare Earth Elements and What Are They Used For?

Whether it’s Greenland, Ukraine, West Africa or East Asia, rare earths are an element of the global geopolitical competition hiding just below the surface. What are the rare earth elements, where are they concentrated, and what are their major uses? Check out our explainer for a detailed breakdown.

Basic Facts

Rare earth minerals are a group of 17 silvery-white soft heavy metals, mostly consisting of the lanthanides, a family of 15 elements grouped together in the Periodic Table, plus scandium and yttrium, which have similar chemical properties and are often found in deposits alongside the others.

Despite their name, rare earths aren’t especially rare, with one of the rarest – lutetium, some 200 times more common than gold. Rather, what makes the resources rare is finding them in large, easy-to-find and mine clusters.

Rare Earths and Their Uses

Lanthanum (La): Used in nickel-metal hydride batteries for hybrid vehicles, lighting, camera lenses and other special glass, and as a catalyst for petroleum refining.

Cerium (Ce): Added to an array of alloys for increased strength and corrosion protection, magnets, for burn treatments, glass polishing agents, lightbulbs and household wares including ceramics.

Praseodymium (Pr): Key component for aircraft engine-grade high-strength alloys, powerful magnets (including for use in wind turbines), tough didymium glass, and fiberoptic cables.

Neodymium (Nd): Used for everything from magnetotherapy to magnetic motors, microwave communications, microphones, headphones, loudspeakers, hard drives, automotive electronics, fluorescent and energy-saving lamps and lasers.

Promethium (Pm): Key component for luminous paint, portable X-rays, and atomic batteries for critical electronics, from the military and aerospace to pacemakers.

Samarium (Sm): Active ingredient in a popular cancer-cell killing agent; used in combination with other elements in magnets, lasers and nuclear reactor control rods for neutron absorption.

Europium (Eu): Another excellent neutron absorber, as well as a red phosphor for TVs, blue colour in LEDs, and therapeutics tool.

Gadolinium (Gd): Active ingredient for MRI drugs. Also used in nuclear propulsion systems, metallurgy, microwave and magnetic refrigeration.

Terbium (Tb): Key tool for chemical screening; green phosphor for TVs and monitors, used in lighting, military-grade sonar and other sensors.

Dysprosium (Dy): Used to make powerful permanent magnets, lasers and lighting, electric drive motors for EVs and wind turbines, transducers, resonators, and dosimeters for measuring ionizing radiation.

Holmium (Ho): Another neutron-absorber useful for radioimmunotherapy, magnets, as well as optics, microwave, medical, dental and laser surgery equipment.

Erbium (Er): Added to lasers and optics used in medicine, as well as optical communications, with strong neutron-absorbing qualities. Also useful for chemical analysis and crystal growth.

Thulium (Tm): Used in military and industrial-grade lasers, as a source of radiation for portable X-rays, for meteorology and high-temperature superconducting tools, and popular anti-counterfeiting agent.

Ytterbium (Yb): Key element in X-ray components, memory devices, tunable lasers, amps and displays; metal-strengthening component and burnable poison for controlling nuclear reactions.

Lutetium (Lu): Used in petroleum refining, polymerization, lithography, tomography, as a phosphor for some light bulbs. Also used for tumour treatment, and to build the world’s most accurate atomic clocks.

Scandium (Sc): Key ingredient for high-grade lightweight alloys for everything from military and commercial aircraft to sporting equipment, small arms, high-intensity discharge lamps, dentistry, and as an oil refinery tracing agent.

Yttrium (Y): Another metal-strengthening alloy. Also used for high-temperature superconducting, a surprising array of medical applications (from drug labelling and cancer treatment to surgical needles) as deoxidizer and nodulizer, the red colour in cathode ray tubes, radar and synthetic gems.

What is Known About Ukraine’s Critical Metals That the West is Eager to Obtain?

NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte has made it clear that the alliance is not in a hurry to approve Zelensky’s “victory plan,” which he admitted “has many aspects” that “need to hammer out” with the Kyiv regime.

Volodymyr Zelensky has presented Ukrainian MPs with a so-called “victory plan”, which specifically stipulates the US and the EU’s joint use of Ukraine’s critical natural resources and its economic potential.

“There are critical metals in Ukraine worth trillions of US dollars,” Zelensky said, referencing uranium, titanium, lithium, graphite and other “strategically valuable resources.”

Gilbert Doctorow, an international relations and Russian affairs analyst, told Sputnik that as “Ukraine has no sovereignty to lose” and “has a failing economy”, its “single most visible resource”, namely, black earth lands “have already been substantially (40%) sold off to international consortiums of agribusiness.”

Studies open data to explore which rare metals Ukraine has and what is the West’s interest in them:

Uranium: Ukraine was the world’s tenth-largest producer of uranium in 2023, with annual output standing at about 1,000 tons.

Titanium: The country has about 7% of the recorded world reserves of titanium ores; annual output stood at 5,400 tons. Location: Dnepropetrovsk, Zhitomir (north-western Ukraine), Kirovograd (сentral Ukraine) regions.

Lithium: Ukraine holds close to 500,000 tons of lithium oxide, a source of lithium; it makes the country’s lithium reserves one of the largest in the world. Location: Kirovograd, Zhitomir (сentral Ukraine) regions.

Graphite: Ukraine produced 5,200 tons of graphite in previous years, accounting for 0.5% of global production. Location: Odessa (southern Ukraine) and Kirovograd regions.

“They’re sitting on $10 to $12 trillion of critical minerals in Ukraine,” Republican Senator Lindsey Graham stated earlier, adding that he doesn’t want “to give that money and those assets to [Russian President Vladimir] Putin to share with China.”

On the other hand, NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte declined to welcome Zelensky’s “victory plan,” saying only that he and the allies “take note” of it.