It is difficult, if not impossible to find the exact top ten strategic minerals at any given time for all of the developed nations for two reasons: governments tend to be cagey about letting the world know what they are using for military and other advancements; and industry tends to be cagey about what is used in their patented and protected processes.
Even looking at the markets for the strategic minerals can be misleading. The term “Strategic” is the operative word in mineral supply and demand.
Strategic minerals are most easily defined as those which are essential to the military, strategic, economic, medical, industrial or other needs of a nation. A nation could have large stockpiles, room enough in planned stockpiles, a desire to corner markets and other issues that can affect the demand for a particular strategic mineral.
Copper, for example, is one of the easiest minerals to recycle, since it retains it’s property after unlimited rounds of recycling, making it a mineral that is obtained mostly from reuse in some developed countries.
Nimobium is the host for two rare earth minerals that are used in many types of batteries, from batteries that power hybrid cars to the little powerhouses that power smart phones.
Columbium-Tantalum is an ore that yields up tantalite and columbite. It is all called Coltan. These substances have a host of industrial and military uses, especially in shaped charge technology. This is a dicey mineral because of the social and political instability where they are mined.
Of the rare earth elements, Lanthanum, neodymium and dysprosium and terbium might be the top four commercially strategic minerals due to the bulk required for a hybrid car battery and for other electro magnetic uses. At one point, China had corned the entire market on these minerals, causing quite a stir of negotiations and need for loosening up the market. Amazingly, the rare earths are among the most abundant elements in the Earth’s crust, but it is damaging and messy to get to them and to extract them in a form that works for computer screens, Prius batteries and hundreds of other essential components of life in developed countries, and increasingly, the world.
Beryllium and Uranium are simply rare. While the developed countries have more than enough excess of radioactive material that can be brought down to power production levels, there are specific types of radiation that are needed for medical and other processes.
Cobalt, chromium, manganese and platinum are classic strategic minerals due to the host of military, industrial, medical and other needs for these minerals, combined with the fact that they might not be plentiful. The US and other developed nations may have no natural or economically feasible ways to get these minerals.
Of course, there are more than ten strategic minerals listed here, and that is the nature of the issue: the list is constantly changing as markets, availability, strategy and other issues create an ever changing dynamic for deciding which are the most critical or important at any given time.
