Rare Earth Elements Explained: Uses, Ores, Supply and Alternatives

Rare earth elements are 17 metals (the 15 lanthanides plus scandium and yttrium), and the ones modern products need most are neodymium and praseodymium for permanent magnets, dysprosium and terbium to keep those magnets working when hot, cerium and lanthanum for catalysts, glass polishing and batteries, and europium, terbium and yttrium for phosphors. They come mainly from three minerals, bastnaesite, monazite and xenotime, which hold roughly 35% to 74% rare earth oxide by weight, plus ion adsorption clays that hold well under 1%. The alternatives found so far are real but partial: ferrite magnets, grain boundary diffusion that cuts dysprosium use, magnet free motors such as induction and switched reluctance designs, magnet recycling, and research magnets such as iron nitride and manganese bismuth that have not yet matched neodymium magnets.

This guide answers the founder question behind it ("which rare earth minerals are required, what composition, and any alternatives found till now") from primary sources: USGS, the US Department of Energy and its Critical Materials Innovation Hub at Ames National Laboratory, the text of the EU Critical Raw Materials Act, official export control notices and peer reviewed abstracts. Company news is labelled as such, and there are no company rankings.

Key takeaways

• There are 17 rare earth elements. USGS splits them into light (lanthanum through gadolinium) and heavy (terbium through lutetium), with yttrium grouped with the heavy ones.
• They are not rare in the crust: cerium is more common than copper. Rich, separable deposits are what is rare.
• Magnets are the leading global use. World mine production in 2025 was about 390,000 t of rare earth oxide (REO); China produced about 270,000 t and the United States about 51,000 t, per USGS.
• Composition decides economics. Carbonatite ores are about 80% lanthanum and cerium, with little dysprosium; south China clays are far richer in dysprosium and yttrium.
• China's MOFCOM and Customs Announcement No. 18 of 2025 put seven medium and heavy rare earths under export licensing on 4 April 2025. An October 2025 expansion was suspended for one year in November 2025; the April controls remained in effect, per USGS.
• The EU Critical Raw Materials Act names rare earths for permanent magnets as strategic and adds magnet labelling and recycled content disclosure for products such as cars, heat pumps and wind generators.
• No alternative replaces neodymium magnets everywhere. Each one trades size, weight, efficiency, noise, temperature range or maturity.

What are rare earth elements?

USGS defines the group as the 15 elements from lanthanum (atomic number 57) to lutetium (71), the lanthanides. Yttrium (39) is counted with them because its chemistry and ionic size are so similar that it occurs in the same minerals. The USGS scandium chapter states that scandium "is one of the 17 rare-earth elements", although it rarely occurs in rare earth deposits and is produced almost entirely as a byproduct of nickel and titanium processing.

Promethium (61) is radioactive and unstable in nature, so USGS leaves it out of any discussion of deposits. It counts among the 17, but nobody mines it.

The name is historical. Most of these elements were identified in the 18th and 19th centuries as "earths", materials heat could not change further, and they were less common than lime or magnesia. USGS notes that every rare earth except promethium is more abundant on average than silver, gold or platinum. Because they share a trivalent charge and similar ionic radii, they substitute for one another inside crystals, so one mineral grain usually holds several at once. That is the root of the supply problem: you never mine "neodymium", you mine a mixture and then work hard to pull it apart.

Light versus heavy rare earths

USGS Fact Sheet 2014-3078 lists the light rare earths as lanthanum, cerium, praseodymium, neodymium, samarium, europium and gadolinium (atomic numbers 57 to 64), and the heavy rare earths as terbium, dysprosium, holmium, erbium, thulium, ytterbium and lutetium (65 to 71), with yttrium grouped with the heavy set. Some authorities also count europium and gadolinium as heavy. The split matters because heavy rare earths are less abundant (terbium averages about 1.2 parts per million in the crust against 66.5 for cerium), are concentrated in different deposits, and include dysprosium and terbium, the elements export controls targeted first.

The 17 rare earth elements and their main uses

Crustal abundance is from the USGS 2014 fact sheet. Uses come from USGS Professional Paper 1802-O, the USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026 and DOE's critical materials application matrix.

For comparison, USGS gives 60 ppm for copper, 0.075 for silver and 0.004 for gold. Thulium, the rarest rare earth found in ore, is still more than a hundred times as common as gold.

Where do rare earths go?

Permanent magnets: neodymium, praseodymium, dysprosium, terbium

USGS calls NdFeB magnets "the strongest magnets known", used "wherever space and weight are at a premium": hard disk drives, phones, electric vehicle and wind turbine motors and generators, and aircraft actuators. The 2026 USGS chapter says magnets were the leading global end use of rare earths in 2025, while catalysts led in the United States.

USGS Scientific Investigations Report 2011-5094 broke down the 26,300 t of REO that went into NdFeB magnets worldwide in 2008: neodymium oxide 69%, praseodymium oxide 23%, dysprosium oxide 5.0%, gadolinium oxide 2.0% and terbium oxide 0.2%. The numbers are old, but the pattern still drives policy: magnets are mostly neodymium and praseodymium, and a few percent of heavy rare earths make them usable when hot. Professional Paper 1802-O explains that substituting dysprosium for a small part of the neodymium "improves high-temperature performance and resistance to demagnetization". Samarium cobalt magnets are less powerful but tolerate heat better, so they are used where heat stress decides.

How much is in an EV motor, a wind turbine, a phone or a hard drive?

Few primary sources publish per product figures. These are the ones the sources fetched for this guide state:

Treat any precise "grams per phone" figure without a named primary source as an estimate.

Catalysts, glass and polishing: lanthanum and cerium

USGS's 2014 fact sheet called the glass industry "the largest consumer of REE raw materials"; by 2025 USGS lists magnets as the leading global use. Cerium polishes glass and display screens and decolourises glass. Lanthanum raises the refractive index of optical glass and, per USGS, makes up as much as 50% of some digital camera lenses. Lanthanum catalysts refine petroleum, and cerium catalysts sit in catalytic converters.

These are the cheap rare earths. USGS 2025 average prices: lanthanum oxide about $1.00 per kg and cerium oxide about $1.71, against NdPr oxide at about $69, dysprosium oxide at about $239 and terbium oxide at about $1,010.

Phosphors, optics, batteries and the rest

USGS describes yttrium, europium and terbium phosphors as "the red-green-blue phosphors used in many light bulbs, panels, and televisions", and notes that in electronics, lasers and phosphors yttrium "is generally not subject to direct substitution". The USGS heavy rare earths chapter lists fiber optics, industrial and medical lasers, and medical and scientific equipment among heavy rare earth uses. Nickel metal hydride batteries use lanthanum based anodes, and USGS expects that demand to fall as lithium ion batteries replace NiMH. Mischmetal removes impurities in steelmaking, scandium strengthens aerospace aluminium, and smaller uses include microwave equipment, sensors and nuclear control rods.

Which minerals do rare earths come from, and what are they made of?

Professional Paper 1802-O cites a list of 245 rare earth bearing minerals, but only a handful have been ore. Formulas and composition ranges below are from USGS Scientific Investigations Report 2010-5220 (Table 3) and Professional Paper 1802-O. REO is rare earth oxide by weight of the pure mineral, not of the rock.

Ore minerals composition table

Every hard rock ore mineral carries some thorium or uranium, and USGS calls these contents "one of the biggest environmental challenges" of rare earth mining. A high percentage in the mineral is also not a high grade in the ground: Mountain Pass ore is only about 10% to 15% bastnaesite, with a reported reserve grade of 7.98% REO, and Bayan Obo is about 6% REO across an estimated 800 million tonnes.

Clays look like the worst ore on paper, but USGS explains why they are mined: the rare earths are "easily extracted from the clays with weak acids", the deposits are often enriched in high value heavy rare earths, and labour costs are low. USGS calls these south China clays the world's primary source of heavy rare earths.

Composition by deposit: why neodymium and dysprosium are scarce

USGS SIR 2010-5220 publishes rare earth oxide tonnages for several deposits. Converted to shares of total REO (our calculation from the USGS table, rounded):

Read that with a magnet maker's eyes. In a carbonatite, about 81% to 83% of the oxide is lanthanum and cerium, which sell for one or two dollars a kilogram, and only 15% to 16% is the neodymium and praseodymium you want. In the clay concentrate, dysprosium and terbium are roughly 10 to 80 times richer, depending on which carbonatite you compare with.

A 2022 paper by researchers affiliated with DOE's Critical Materials Institute describes cerium and lanthanum as "low-value byproducts" that "burden rare earth supply chains" because they must be separated out before the magnet elements can be used. New uses for them, such as aluminium cerium alloys, are part of how researchers want to make new mines pay.

How are rare earths mined and refined?

This is a description of the industry, not a process guide; separation involves hazardous reagents and radioactive residues and is regulated industrial work.

USGS says recovery "can be complex because they occur in minerals as a group of similar elements". The modern separation method has a US origin: in the 1940s, as part of the Manhattan Project, Frank Spedding and colleagues developed ion exchange procedures to separate and purify individual rare earths. Today Ames National Laboratory leads DOE's Critical Materials Innovation Hub.

Where are rare earths mined? USGS 2026 figures

USGS estimates of mine production, in tonnes REO, from the Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026 (February 2026):

On these figures China mined about 69% of the world total in 2025, and mining share understates concentration because separation, metal and magnet making are more concentrated still. For the United States, USGS reports:

• About 51,000 t REO of concentrate mined in 2025, mostly bastnaesite at Mountain Pass, plus monazite from southeastern mineral sands. Compound and metal output rose to an estimated 8,900 t from 4,300 t in 2024.
• Net import reliance of 67% for compounds and metals, and 100% for heavy rare earths every year from 2021 to 2025. Terbium, holmium and lutetium compounds and metals came 100% from China in 2021 to 2024.
• Import sources for compounds and metals in 2021 to 2024: China 71%, Malaysia 13%, Japan 5%, Estonia 5%, other 6%.
• Government financing in 2025: a $150 million loan for a heavy rare earth separation facility at Mountain Pass, an $80 million loan to a recycler in Marion, Indiana, $5.1 million to a recycler in Houston, and a $465 million US International Development Finance Corporation loan to a Brazilian ionic clay producer.

Export controls: what governments have actually announced

Policy moves quickly, so every item below is dated and sourced. Check the issuing authority before relying on it.

The one year suspension would come up around November 2026, close to this article's date. The US statement and the USGS record also differ in emphasis: one describes general licences as effectively removing controls, the other records that the April requirement stayed in force with licences granted to selected exporters.

In the United States, DOE's critical materials list under Section 7002(a) of the Energy Act of 2020 combines DOE's 2023 assessment, a May 2025 amendment and the USGS 2025 critical minerals list. DOE's matrix puts dysprosium, gadolinium, holmium, neodymium, praseodymium, samarium and terbium under magnets and motors.

The EU Critical Raw Materials Act and magnets

Regulation (EU) 2024/1252 of 11 April 2024 entered into force on 23 May 2024, according to the European Commission. Its rare earth provisions:

• Strategic list (Annex I): "rare earth elements for permanent magnets (Nd, Pr, Tb, Dy, Gd, Sm, and Ce)", alongside bismuth, cobalt, gallium, lithium, tungsten and others.
• Critical list (Annex II): heavy rare earths, light rare earths and scandium.
• 2030 benchmarks: at least 10% of EU consumption from EU extraction, 40% from EU processing, 25% from recycling, and no more than 65% from a single third country.
• Labels (Article 28): makers of MRI devices, wind generators, industrial robots, motor vehicles, light means of transport, cooling generators, heat pumps, electric motors, washing machines, tumble driers, microwaves, vacuum cleaners and dishwashers must label whether the product has permanent magnets and whether they are NdFeB, samarium cobalt, aluminium nickel cobalt or ferrite. The Commission had to set the label format by 24 November 2026; the duty applies two years after that act takes effect.
• Data carrier: the same products need a data carrier giving the weight, location and chemical composition of every magnet, coatings and glues, and the steps and tools to remove the magnets.
• Recycled content (Article 29): by 24 May 2027, or two years after the calculation rules (whichever is later), products whose NdFeB, samarium cobalt or aluminium nickel cobalt magnets total more than 0.2 kg must publish the share of neodymium, dysprosium, praseodymium, terbium, boron, samarium, nickel and cobalt recovered from post consumer waste.

Whether the Commission met its 2026 deadlines could not be confirmed from the sources fetched; check its current CRMA pages. For software teams, Article 28 will look familiar: it is a hardware bill of materials duty for one component class. Our HBOM complete guide and HBOM vs SBOM comparison explain how such records are structured.

What alternatives to rare earths have been found so far?

USGS's summary is blunt: substitutes "are available for many applications but generally are less effective", and light rare earths can substitute for heavy ones in several applications. DOE's Critical Materials Innovation Hub organises its work into diversifying supply, developing substitutes and unlocking secondary sources such as recycling; Ames reports 231 invention disclosures, 74 US patents and 27 licensed technologies, with the hub's third phase starting in late 2023.

Alternatives table

Ferrite magnets

Ferrite magnets contain no rare earths and are cheap; the issue is strength. A peer reviewed 2014 study in Machines redesigned a 12 kW NdFeB generator rotor for ferrite. It worked with the existing stator, but ferrite "has lower performance", so "more PM material has to be used, requiring more support structure", flux concentration such as a spoke type rotor is needed, and the machine "might require a larger diameter" for the same voltage. That is acceptable in many fixed motors and much harder in a car or aircraft where mass matters.

Grain boundary diffusion: same magnet, less dysprosium

A 2021 review in Metals notes that NdFeB magnets without heavy rare earths "exhibit insufficient coercivity to withstand the demagnetization field at elevated temperatures". Instead of alloying dysprosium or terbium through the whole magnet, grain boundary diffusion coats the finished magnet with a heavy rare earth source and heat treats it so the element moves along grain boundaries, where demagnetisation starts. The review calls it "the best route to fabricate high-coercive Nd-Fe-B magnets with low consumption of expensive HRE resources", and notes diffusion sources have moved from pure terbium or dysprosium toward cheaper alloys, light rare earth sources and even non rare earth sources. It reduces heavy rare earth use rather than ending it, which is why China's April 2025 list names dysprosium and terbium containing NdFeB magnet materials.

Iron nitride magnets

Alpha double prime Fe16N2 is made from iron and nitrogen. A 2020 review in the Journal of Magnetism and Magnetic Materials from the University of Minnesota reports a saturation flux density of 2.9 T and an anisotropy constant of 1.8 MJ per cubic metre, and positions it for "applications working at relatively low temperature" (below about 150 °C) that do not need high coercivity, from speakers to drives, motors and turbines. The review describes four different routes to bulk magnets, which is the honest signal: making a dense, stable bulk magnet from a metastable phase is still the hard part. No commercial magnet at NdFeB performance was reported in the sources fetched.

Manganese bismuth magnets

A 2021 paper in the Journal of Applied Physics reports an energy product of 17.7 MGOe at 300 K for MnBi and a coercivity that rises with temperature, but also a structural transformation to a non magnetic phase at 613 K. The authors model copper additions to suppress the cause, at a slightly lower calculated 15.6 MGOe. Bismuth is itself on the EU strategic raw materials list.

Rare earth free motor designs

DOE states that "almost all hybrid and plug-in electric vehicles use rare earth permanent magnets in their traction motors", in interior permanent magnet motors with high power density and efficiency. DOE describes the magnet free options:

• Induction motors have high starting torque and reliability and appear in some production vehicles, but their power density and efficiency are lower, and DOE considers the technology mature enough that large further gains are unlikely.
• Switched reluctance motors are low cost, easy to make, rugged and tolerant of heat and speed, but noisier, less efficient and in need of extra sensors and complex controllers.

DOE's transportation research is pursuing reduced rare earth magnet motors, non permanent magnet designs and new materials, including the Beyond Rare Earth Magnets project led by Ames National Laboratory.

Recycling magnets

USGS reports that only limited quantities of rare earths were recovered from batteries, magnets and lamps in 2025. Its 2011 report explained why: NdFeB magnets corrode with use, nickel plating complicates recycling, and separation often cost more than the recovered material was worth.

DOE's Critical Materials Innovation Hub developed an acid free dissolution process. According to Ames National Laboratory's March 2022 announcement, a water based, copper bearing solution dissolves the magnet out of shredded e-waste, leaves gold and platinum intact for separate recovery, and skips the pre heating above 600 °F that other methods use. Ames announced the technology was licensed commercially, with the licensee aiming to recover three to five tonnes of rare earth oxides in two years (a laboratory and company announcement; outcomes were not independently confirmed in the sources fetched). The EU's Articles 28 and 29 are designed to make magnets easier to find, remove and count at end of life.

Making the whole ore pay

Because carbonatite ore is about 80% lanthanum and cerium, a magnet supply chain outside China needs buyers for them. The 2022 CMI affiliated paper in the Journal of Sustainable Metallurgy reports that aluminium lanthanum and aluminium cerium alloys have higher strength than traditional aluminium alloys, can sometimes skip heat treatment and cast well. That does not replace neodymium, but it helps answer why new mines are so hard to finance.

Where Safeguard fits, honestly

Safeguard does not mine, separate or trade rare earths, track mineral provenance, audit smelters, or generate hardware bills of materials. Nothing in the mining, refining, export control or magnet sections above is something Safeguard touches.

The overlap is the way of thinking. A magnet supply chain and an open source dependency tree share a shape: many tiers, a few critical components, concentrated suppliers and sudden policy changes. Every motor controller, battery system, turbine controller and EV charger also runs firmware and software built from open source components. That software is where Safeguard works: scanning repositories, container images and SBOM files, matching components against vulnerability databases, using reachability analysis to rank what your code actually calls, showing which projects carry a given component and version, and evaluating policies and gates. For the hardware inventory side, see how to create an HBOM in CycloneDX, what to ask hardware suppliers and the CISA HBOM framework explainer. Our guides to how a car is made, how a laptop is made and how a smartphone is made follow the same path from materials to software.

Common mistakes: misconceptions about rare earths

• "Rare earths are rare." Not on average. Cerium is more common in the crust than copper. Concentrated, separable deposits and separation capacity are what is rare.
• "Rare earth means radioactive." Apart from promethium, the elements are not. The ore minerals often contain thorium and uranium, especially monazite, which is a waste handling issue, not a property of the magnet in your device.
• "A new mine solves the supply problem." Mining is the first of five stages. The United States mined about 51,000 t REO in 2025 and still had 67% net import reliance for compounds and metals and 100% for heavy rare earths.
• "All rare earths are one commodity." 2025 prices ranged from about $1 per kg for lanthanum oxide to about $1,010 per kg for terbium oxide.
• "EV batteries are where the rare earths are." In an EV the large rare earth use is the magnet motor. Lanthanum was a major input for NiMH packs in hybrids, and USGS expects that demand to fall as lithium ion replaces NiMH.
• "Grain boundary diffusion removes dysprosium." It reduces it. The magnet still contains heavy rare earths.
• "The export controls were lifted." Per USGS, as of December 2025 the April 2025 controls remained in effect with general licences for selected exporters; only the October expansion was suspended, for one year.

FAQ

What are the 17 rare earth elements?

Scandium, yttrium and the 15 lanthanides: lanthanum, cerium, praseodymium, neodymium, promethium, samarium, europium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, holmium, erbium, thulium, ytterbium and lutetium. USGS counts scandium as one of the 17.

Which rare earths matter most for electric vehicles and wind turbines?

Neodymium and praseodymium, which make up most of an NdFeB magnet, and dysprosium and terbium, which keep it working when hot. Older USGS estimates put up to 200 g of neodymium and 30 g of dysprosium in an EV motor and up to 1 t of neodymium per megawatt in a permanent magnet wind generator.

What is the difference between light and heavy rare earths?

Light rare earths are lanthanum through gadolinium (57 to 64); heavy are terbium through lutetium (65 to 71), with yttrium grouped with them. Heavy ones are less abundant and come mainly from ion adsorption clays.

What minerals contain rare earth elements?

Mainly bastnaesite, (Ce,La)(CO3)F with 70% to 74% REO; monazite, (Ce,La,Nd,Th)PO4 with 35% to 71%; and xenotime, YPO4 with 52% to 67%. Ion adsorption clays, at well under 1%, are the main heavy rare earth source, and loparite is mined in Russia.

Which country produces the most rare earths?

China, at about 270,000 t REO of about 390,000 t worldwide in 2025, per USGS. The United States was next at about 51,000 t, then Australia at about 29,000 t and Burma at about 22,000 t.

Are there magnets without rare earths?

Yes. Ferrite and aluminium nickel cobalt magnets contain none and are widely used, but they are weaker than NdFeB, so machines get larger or less powerful. Iron nitride and manganese bismuth magnets are research candidates that have not reached NdFeB performance commercially.

Can electric cars be built without rare earth magnets?

Yes, with trade offs. DOE notes induction motors are used in some production vehicles but have lower power density and efficiency, and switched reluctance motors are cheap and rugged but noisier and less efficient.

What export controls apply to rare earths?

China's MOFCOM and Customs Announcement No. 18 of 2025, effective 4 April 2025, requires licences for samarium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, lutetium, scandium and yttrium items, including some magnet materials. An October 2025 expansion was suspended for one year in November 2025. Check MOFCOM's current notices.

Fix it without waiting for upstream

No pull request can open a rare earth mine or change an export notice, and the magnet in a motor has to come from a magnet maker. But the motor controllers, battery systems, turbine controllers and factory software around those magnets are built from open source components, so the same patch discipline applies to the code your team ships with them.

Whatever the vulnerability, most of the risk sits in two gaps. The first is the time between a fix being published and that fix actually running in your production builds. The second, and worse, is the time before any fix exists at all, while a maintainer works out a patch and a release schedule. Waiting through both gaps is a habit, not a requirement. Safeguard gives teams three ways to close them.

1. Autonomous remediation: pull requests, not tickets

When a fixed version exists, Safeguard's Griffin models open a tested, policy gated pull request that moves the affected dependency to the safe version. You can run it on one repository or in bulk across every project that carries the vulnerable version. Remediation covers eight categories, including dependencies, licenses, security posture and findings. Reachability analysis ranks the vulnerable code paths your application actually calls first, so the first pull requests you merge are the ones that matter most. Autonomous remediation ships switched off, with every category set to Manual, so your team decides how much runs on its own and what still needs a human approval.

2. Gold Open Source: the safe version in seconds, free

gold.safeguard.sh is free and needs no login. Search any CVE or package to see affected and fixed versions, CVSS, EPSS, CISA KEV status and a recommended safe version, or use the "Am I affected?" checker. The same data is available through a free read API, README status badges and RSS threat feeds. The safeguard-sh/gold-scan-action GitHub Action can fail a build on a known exploited vulnerability, on any known vulnerability, or never, so a version you have just removed cannot quietly come back in next week's merge.

3. Gold Registry: start from components that are already fixed

registry.safeguard.sh provides hardened, drop in replacements for upstream packages and container images. Every Gold artifact is held continuously to zero exploitable critical or high CVEs, zero malware and a completed license check, with SLSA L3 or higher provenance, a Sigstore signature and a public evidence page you can hand to an auditor. An artifact loses its Gold badge if it regresses. Teams can point their own package directory at the registry so hardened equivalents resolve without changing how developers install anything.

When upstream has no fix yet, or will not ship one, Safeguard first works to get the fix accepted upstream. If the issue is severe or upstream will not move, Safeguard builds a fork, fixes the vulnerability there and publishes a hardened Gold build, so you are not stuck on a maintainer's release schedule. You can also request a hardened, compatibility tested build of a specific package. This fork and patch flow is in early access today, so ask which packages it covers before you plan around it.

One honest limit: when the vulnerable code lives in a vendor appliance, a hosted service or an operating system runtime you do not build yourself, the fix still has to come from that vendor or distribution. The steps above apply to the open source dependencies and container images you build and ship, which is where most teams carry the largest and least tracked share of their exposure.

To try it on your own machine, download Safeguard from https://safeguard.sh/download and see the CLI documentation at https://docs.safeguard.sh/docs/cli .

See how Safeguard would help

To be plain about the fit: Safeguard does not touch minerals, magnets or export licences. These demos show the software side, the part of an electrified product's supply chain your team builds and can fix itself.

The first demo sets up Safeguard's local runner on your own machine, approves it with its device code, and then scans from the terminal. Pointed at the repository for a charger backend or a motor controller's companion app, it lists the open source components and versions inside the release, the software counterpart of asking a magnet supplier what is in each part.

Click through it at your own pace, or open it full screen.

The second demo is a real Safeguard CLI session. Asked to fix a lodash CVE, it reads the finding and advisory, asks before each command, edits package.json to lodash 4.17.21, runs npm install and npm test with approval, prints a summary and pushes nothing. The same approve each step flow applies when a dependency in a fleet dashboard or device backend needs an upgrade.

Click through it at your own pace, or open it full screen.

The third demo connects Claude to the Safeguard MCP server with OAuth and lets you choose which tools Claude can use. Once connected, an engineer can ask in plain language which projects carry a given component and version, useful when a supply question arrives as suddenly as an export notice.

Click through it at your own pace, or open it full screen.

Quick check

Sources

• USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026: Rare Earths (PDF)
• USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026: Rare Earths (Heavy) (PDF)
• USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026: Scandium (PDF)
• USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026: Yttrium (PDF)
• USGS Fact Sheet 2014-3078: The Rare-Earth Elements, Vital to Modern Technologies and Lifestyles (PDF)
• USGS Professional Paper 1802-O: Critical Mineral Resources of the United States, Rare-Earth Elements (PDF)
• USGS Scientific Investigations Report 2010-5220: The Principal Rare Earth Elements Deposits of the United States (PDF)
• USGS Scientific Investigations Report 2011-5094: Rare Earth Elements, End Use and Recyclability (PDF)
• US Department of Energy: What Are Critical Minerals and Materials?
• US Department of Energy: Electric Motors Research and Development
• Ames National Laboratory: Critical Materials Innovation Hub
• Ames National Laboratory via DOE Science News Source: Green rare-earth recycling goes commercial in the US, 2 March 2022
• Regulation (EU) 2024/1252, the Critical Raw Materials Act
• European Commission: Critical Raw Materials Act
• European Commission press release IP/24/2748: Critical Raw Materials Act enters into force, 23 May 2024
• MOFCOM and General Administration of Customs: Announcement No. 18 of 2025
• The White House: Fact Sheet on the economic and trade deal with China, November 2025
• He et al., Grain Boundary Diffusion Sources and Their Coating Methods for Nd-Fe-B Permanent Magnets, Metals, 2021
• Wang, Environment-friendly bulk Fe16N2 permanent magnet: Review and prospective, Journal of Magnetism and Magnetic Materials, 2020
• Choi et al., Suppressing antiferromagnetic coupling in rare-earth free ferromagnetic MnBi-Cu permanent magnet, Journal of Applied Physics, 2021
• Eklund et al., A Complete Design of a Rare Earth Metal-Free Permanent Magnet Generator, Machines, 2014
• Sims et al., How Cerium and Lanthanum as Coproducts Promote Stable Rare Earth Production and New Alloys, Journal of Sustainable Metallurgy, 2022

Last reviewed: 23 October 2026.