Despite the name the rare-earth elements (lanthanoids) aren’t all that rare. Many are more abundant than well-known metals. But they are hard to get at. They aren’t concentrated in big ore bodies. Rather, the rare-earths are disseminated widely, in many rock types, and moreover are very similar to each other chemically. That makes them hard to separate. Many weren’t isolated until late last century.

The Greek word dysprositos means “hard to get at.” The chemist who first identified the metal (Paul Émile Lecoq de Boisbaudran in 1886) coined the name.

Seventeen elements are lumped under the REE banner:

Despite the relatively high crustal abundance REEs are not produced on the same scale as copper or lead:

TREO means Total Rare Earth Oxides which is how the global trade is measured (in metric tons).

These days the rare-earths are in the news. They have a lot of applications in the high-tech world we now inhabit. Fortunately we only need small amounts—compared to the massive amounts of copper we need, that is. But demand is going up. Most of the REEs are mined in China. There’s a mine in California (Mountain Pass) that has produced REEs in the past and has re-started operations. There’s a lot of interest in new domestic supplies and new processing plants.

Only 100 tonnes of dysprosium is produced each year. Neodymium magnets used in electric vehicle motors benefit from a small amount of dysprosium thus we will need more and more of the stuff going forward.