Abstract :
What would happen if the production of laptops, cellphones, and MP3 players suddenly halted? Oh, and no more hybrid electric vehicles and MRI machines? It probably won´t happen, of course, but the fact that it could is scary enough. A single country, China, mines more than 95 percent of the world´s supply of rare earth metals, found in permanent magnets, phosphors, lasers, capacitors, and superconductors.
