India to run short of high-tech minerals

• India will be woefully short of critical minerals necessary for developing clean-energy applications, infrastructure for its solar mission and for manufacturing high-technology products in the future.
• The country will be heavily dependent on China in the coming years to source these materials for its manufacturing sector, says a report commissioned by the Department of Science and Technology
• There are 12 minerals out of 49 that were evaluated as ‘most critical’ for India’s manufacturing sector by 2030. These are beryllium, chromium, germanium, limestone, niobium, graphite, rare earths, rhenium, strontium, tantalum and zirconium.current affairs
• Other minerals like limestone and graphite, while currently abundantly available in India, are deemed ‘critical’ because extractable resources could be scarce in the future.
• For others, the report says, India is 100 per cent import-dependent for seven out of 12 identified critical minerals and does not have any declared resources for them, except light rare-earths (found along with monazite sands) and beryllium.
• Almost 17-18 % of India’s GDP now comes from manufacturing, though this is currently dominated by low-value industries.
• The pricey minerals are used in industries and sectors such as aerospace, automobiles, cameras, defence, entertainment systems, laptops, medical imaging, nuclear energy, and smartphones
• China is currently a leading global supplier for six out of the 12 mineral resources identified as critical for India by 2030.
• Though India is endowed with vast mineral resources — it is among the top five nations with reserves of rare-earth minerals — its potential is untappedcurrent affairs
• For instance, minerals and metals such as bismuth, cadmium, gallium, germanium, indium, molybdenum, rhenium, selenium and tin are generally recovered as a by-product during processing of primary ores (lead, zinc, copper, molybdenum and aluminum). Rare earths are a group of 17 minerals necessary for making everything from nuclear reactors to flat-screen televisions, and, China currently controls 94 per cent of their global supply.

About Rare earth metal
There are 17 elements found on the earth that are classified as rare earth elements (REE). These elements found all over our planet but typically in small amounts. The term "rare earth” comes from their initial discovery in which only tiny portions of these minerals could be isolated from larger quantities of still more common elements. Today, "rare earth” is used to describe any of the 15 metallic chemical elements with atomic numbers from 57 to 71 (called "lanthanides”) and the chemically similar elements scandium and yttrium.  A List of All Rare Earth Elements: 

By: Vishal