Yesterday the BBC News Web site published a short article on rare earths entitled "Why China holds 'rare' cards in the race to go green", ahead of a 30 minute piece on the subject, as part of BBC Radio 4's Costing the Earth series, broadcast yesterday and again today. For those of you unfamiliar with Radio 4, it is the "channel of choice" for serious news and commentary in the UK, not unlike National Public Radio in the US [although unlike NPR, it also features the world's longest running soap opera called "The Archers", first broadcast 60 years ago next week, all about the farming folk of the fictional village of Ambridge - go figure].

The program featured an interview with the University of Birmingham's Professor Rex Harris, a distinguished materials scientist and an expert on permanent magnet materials, who took the reporter for a trip on the Ross Barlow. This is a hydrogen fuel cell-powered canal boat that uses a neodymium-based permanent magnet motor to power the barge along the Birmingham & Worcester Canal in the UK's West Midlands. This boat is a nice demonstrator of a range of new technologies for the transportation and other sectors. Rex also happens to have been my grad school research supervisor many moons ago, so it was good to hear him being featured on the program.

Also interviewed was Dave Kennedy, Managing Director of the Metals and Alloys division of Great Western Minerals Group [GWMG]. Dave explained how the rare earth metals are used in a variety of alloys and other end uses, with the reporter getting to play with lumps of alloy at GWMG's Less Common Metals facility in Birkenhead, England.

Jack Lifton was also featured in the program, talking about the recent history of the rare earths industry, and the unavoidable fact that the future of green technologies relies on a shift in perception of the mining operations required to extract the metals needed. As Jack said in the piece, "the Green Road always starts in the black earth".

We then heard from Don Bubar, CEO of Avalon Rare Metals, who discussed the existence of rare earth deposits outside of China, and the challenges of mining in a manner that is both sensitive to concerns of the Canadian First Nations people on whose land some of these deposits are located, and which attempts to minimize the impact on the environment.

Overall I thought it was a good summary of what's going on in this space, with enough time to cover the basics of a variety of sub-topics. Well worth a listen via this link.