27-year-old chemist discovers a process for recycling rare earths.
Gordon Edwards, 17 Mar 25 – The article copied below, translated by Google Translate, adds an optimistic note to the rise of renewables as the most affordable choice for rapidly reducing greenhouse gas emissions.
Toxic materials are often used in the construction and operation of industrial infrastructure of many kinds. This includes renewable energy equipment such as wind, solar, geothermal and other renewables.
The so-called “rare earths” (also named “lanthanides”) are a group of 17 metals in the
periodic table that have unusual properties that are ideal for use in electronic and electricity generating devices. Mining these metals is very dangerous for the workers and the environment. The metals themselves have a high chemical toxicity. But they are needed for renewable energy systems as well as many other electronic applications.
Note, however, that wind and solar do not create toxic waste. They simply make use of these naturally-occurring toxic materials that can, in principe, be recycled and used again and again. Recycling and reusing such toxic materials ought to be an essential built-in requirement of renewable energy systems.
Nuclear power, on the other hand, literally creates hundreds of highly toxic new elements that cannot be recycled or re-used for civilian purposes simply because they are too radioactive – meaning their atoms are unstable and will spontaneously disintegrate, giving off biologically damaging atomic radiation. A radioactive variety (“isotope”) of any given element is always much more toxic than the non-radioactive variety of the same element.
Even the finest stainless steal and zirconium-alloy structures used in the core of a nuclear reactor will have to be kept out of the environemnt of living things for thousands of years as radioactive waste. These originally non-radioactive metals have become intensely radioactuve.
Such is not the case with materials used in wind and solar. No new toxic materials are created, and those toxics that are used can be recycled and reused many times.
Ironically, one of the reasons why rare earths are so dangerous to mine is because of the inevitable presence of radioactive elements – uranium, thorium and their decay products – leading to excessive exposure to radon gas and radioactive dust that can be very harmful over the long term. It turns out that rare earths have a strong geochemical affinity with uranium and thorium, the two principle primordial radionuclides on Earth.
P.S.
One of the reasons why Donald Trump wants to acquire Greenland is because there is a mountain of rare earth ores near the Inuit community of Narsaq. Thanks to Nancy Covington and the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, Canada (IPPNWC) (then called Physicians for Global Survival) I was sent to Narsaq in 2016 to explain the radioactive dangers of mining that mountain, called Kvanefjeld in Danish or Kuannersuit in Greenlandic (the native Inuit language).
ETH Chemist Discovers Process for Recycling Rare Earths
The mining of rare earths is environmentally harmful and controlled by China. Chemist Marie Perrin (27) has developed a method that could solve both problems.
“Why is the sky blue? How do clouds form?” Marie Perrin asked herself as a child. “Even then, I was very curious,” she recalls. Her curiosity not only ensured that the daughter of two scientists understood the world around her better with each passing year. It could also soon be a reason why this world is changing. The now 27-year-old and her team at ETH Zurich have developed a method for recycling rare earths.
Important Resource for the Energy Transition
Rare earths are 17 metals that are used in all modern devices: in batteries, smartphones and computers, in wind turbines and electric cars. “They’re all around us,” says Perrin, “but only one percent of all rare earths are recycled.” Recycling is important because the energy transition is requiring ever more rare earths. Their extraction is not only expensive but also highly harmful to the environment and often releases radioactivity.
There’s also a geopolitical problem looming over them: Around 70 percent of rare earths are mined in China. What this could mean for the rest of the world became clear in 2010, when a conflict arose between China and Japan. China informally stopped exports of rare earths to Japan. Prices rose by over 1,000 percent, and supply shortages arose around the world. “If you compare it to oil, the largest exporting countries have a market share of 30 to 40 percent,” explains Marie Perrin.
Lightbulbs made from ETH waste
“We were lucky to have discovered this method,” recalls Perrin. Originally, her research had nothing to do with the recycling of rare earths. But she discovered that the molecules she was studying had the potential to do just that. The chemist devoted herself to her research: “I fished old energy-saving light bulbs out of the ETH recycling bins and experimented with them in the lab,” says Perrin. Until she succeeded in separating the rare earth europium from the light bulb.
Perrin compares the process to baking pizza: Imagine mixing a pinch of salt into pizza dough. How can you recover the salt that has now dispersed throughout the dough? You need something that can distinguish and separate the elements in the dough from those in the salt.
In Marie Perrin’s case, this ingredient is called tetrathiometalate. “Using the known methods, this process had to be repeated several times,” explains Perrin. “This requires an enormous amount of resources.” With Perrin’s process, the rare earth europium can be separated from the other elements in a light bulb in a high degree of purity in a single step.
Initiative Required
Perrin’s research team published their results in the journal Nature Communications, filed a patent, and was faced with the question: What next? “Either you sell the license to larger chemical companies or you develop the technology further in-house,” explains Perrin. “It was clear to me that I wanted to do it myself.” The risk of the process gathering dust in a drawer at a large company was too great for her – as was her curiosity to find out where the technology could lead her.
Together with an old school friend and her doctoral supervisor, Marie Perrin founded the startup REEcover. The goal: to make the process scalable with light bulbs in a first step. In a second step, it will be expanded to include other of the 16 remaining rare earths. “I’m a researcher and had no entrepreneurial experience,” says the Frenchwoman. But her curiosity drives her forward here too: “There’s something new every day, which is fun.
“A Promising Future“
Our timing is good,” Perrin is aware. The European Union passed a law on critical raw materials in 2024. One of the goals of the law is to reduce dependence on rare earths from China. This is another reason why REEcover is considered one of the most promising startups at ETH.
The Lizard’s Revenge
topnrosdeS146ag, https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100064594993745
Anti-nuclear activists target BHP headquarters and block Collins St to mark the 14th anniversary of the Fukushima nuclear disaster.
Just after 10am today around 20 anti-nuclear activists dressed in white radioactive suits used barrels marked with the radioactive symbols and a car decorated with anti-nuclear statements to block the BHP head office. Inside the car a man in his 60s
secured himself to the steering wheel using a bike lock.
The Desert Liberation Front, who organised the protest highlighted the relationship between uranium mined by BHP and the Fukushima disaster:
“BHP makes its billions from destroying the planet and it is not only complicit in Fukushima by supplying the uranium but is part of the push for nuclear power in Australia, a plan that puts all of us and our planet in danger of another Fukushima.”
“The 14th anniversary of the Fukushima nuclear disaster comes at a time in Australia when the Liberal Party is attempting to dress up nuclear power as safe and the Labor Party is continuing with its commitment to AUKUS, a plan that will not only bring nuclear subs to ports around the country but will also result in nuclear waste dumps on sacred land.”
“We call on all political parties and private companies operating in this country to commit to banning the mining of uranium and the banning of all forms of nuclear power, both for weapons of war and as a false alternative to renewable energy.”
The end of coal and the fake nuclear energy ‘red herring’
Coal has had its day as Australia’s key energy source — regardless of what politicians driving an energy debate full of distractions tell you over the next few months.
And the suggestion that nuclear energy is a viable replacement is a red herring.
John Quiggin, New Daily, 16 Mar 25
Coal-fired power is more expensive than renewable alternatives, more polluting and the power stations that use it now are old, generally obsolete and unreliable. They won’t be rebuilt. That’s not just an opinion, it’s backed by all the evidence, regardless of how many political agendas argue otherwise.
Coalition claims that nuclear energy can replace coal simply don’t stack up. It’s expensive and can’t possibly be delivered in time to replace coal-fired energy. And gas is not the stopgap solution some would like to think.
The genuine answer to deliver on Australia’s growing energy needs is to quickly manage the nation’s transition to renewables.
Yet the debate over future energy supply and power prices, which will be front and centre during the election campaign, is part of the ongoing culture wars over energy largely imported from the US.
Coal: the facts
The core of the problem is simple. The coal-fired power stations that supply about 50 per cent of electricity to Victoria, NSW and Queensland are old, unreliable and polluting.
Most are 40-50 years old, using obsolete ‘subcritical’ technology – which is constrained by the boiling point of water, and is about 34 per cent efficient. Even the newest plants at Kogan Creek and Tarong in Queensland use outdated supercritical technology, which is about 39 per cent efficient.
The state of the art in coal-fired power, still highly polluting, is ‘ultra-supercritical’ at 43 per cent efficiency but there are no Australian plants of this kind. Worse still, despite their relative youth and modernity, Kogan Creek and Tarong have been among the least reliable plants in the network.
Most of these plants are due for retirement soon: On current plans, all but a handful will be gone by 2035. Meanwhile, electricity demand is set to grow with the electrification of transport, industry and home heating and perhaps with the development of energy-hungry data centres.
There is no prospect of building new coal-fired power stations. The cost far exceeds that of solar photovoltaics and wind, even after allowing for the cost of battery storage.
Outside China and India, which had 97 per cent of new or revived coal-fired proposals in the first half of 2024, almost no one is building new coal-fired power stations.
Even in those two countries, where demand is growing rapidly, the great majority of new capacity is renewable.
There may be some role for gas in meeting peak demand, though even this is doubtful. Gas is a hugely expensive source of electricity, with the problem made worse by the way successive governments have mishandled Australia’s gas resources, selling gas cheaply to foreign buyers that might have to be bought back at a loss.
It becomes obvious the only real question — despite the imported culture wars — is how rapidly we can manage the transition to renewables and what mix of generation, storage and transmission technologies will best achieve this.
Coalition politicians like Barnaby Joyce have led campaigns against solar and wind projects and the transmission lines needed to incorporate them into the grid………………………………………………………………
Nuclear red herring
Rather than concede that its policy can only delay the transition, the Coalition has relied on the claim that nuclear power will provide a replacement for coal.
Apart from being massively expensive, nuclear power can’t possibly be delivered in time to replace existing coal-fired power stations.
Even in countries with established systems of regulation, trained workforce and ‘brownfield’ sites, construction of reactors commonly takes 15 years or more.
For Australia, starting from scratch, 20 to 25 years is more likely.
Nuclear power is, quite simply, a red herring. Senator Matt Canavan incautiously admitted as much last year, saying that while nuclear is expensive “we’re latching onto it as a silver bullet, as a panacea, because it fixes a political issue for us”.
This dishonest campaign, along with wider voter concerns about the cost of living, may be enough to get the Coalition past the next election.
But the real energy issues will remain and wishing them away with the illusory prospect of nuclear power won’t work. Australians deserve some reality in the political debate.
Professor John Quiggin is a professor of economics at The University of Queensland and a former member of the Climate Change Authority. https://www.thenewdaily.com.au/life/science/environment/2025/03/15/end-coal-nuclear
Bandt says Australia should cancel Aukus payments and leave pact.
Bandt says Australia should reconsider its relationship with the US and particularly the Aukus pact.
“It is being led by a very dangerous man, and we should get out of Aukus. Now is not the time to be hitching Australia’s wagon to Donald Trump. It puts Australia at risk, and it is billions of dollars that is being spent on submarines that might never arrive, even the United States Congress has said that they’re not building the submarines at the rate that is needed to in order to abide by the Aukus agreement.”
Bandt says that Aukus commits Australia to serving as “an attack force of the United States” and that any assumption the Trump administration is committed to standing with Australia if there was a security threat is a mistake.
“Thinking that Donald Trump will ride to our rescue if there’s any security threat, is now absolutely wishful thinking.”
Money being spent on Aukus submarines could be reallocated in defence: Bandt
Asked about whether Australia should close Pine Gap, Bandt says his “priority right now is Aukus” given that Australia has already been paying the US and UK to rebuild their shipyards.
“The prime minister and the government just gave Donald Trump the best part of $1bn in the last couple of weeks for submarines that may never arrive. And what’s happened in return? We have tariffs imposed on us and now the threat of more.
That is something that we could concretely do right now, instead of spending hundreds of billions of dollars on submarines that may never arrive.”
Pressed on the possibility of increased defence spending if Australia were to walk away from the US alliance, Bandt says the money currently being spent on nuclear submarines could be reprioritised, including to other parts of the defence force.
We have costed the Aukus contributions. It’s over the near-term, the next decade. We’re looking at $70bn being spent on it. Now, reallocating that would go a long way to ensuring that Australia has a fit for purpose defence force.
1 This month
of the week – Disrupting War & Militarism in Oceania. Active solidarity. Radical practice.
Antinuclear 