Supercomputers Predict Rare Earth Market Vulnerabilities.

• Author: Magnuson, Stew

Argonne National Laboratory researchers are using supercomputers and agent-based models to predict market fluctuations for rare earth elements.

Events such as mine shutdowns or export embargos could cut off supplies and disrupt markets, found a study, "Agent-Based Modeling of Supply Disruptions in the Global Rare Earths Market," first published in the January issue of Resources, Conservation and Recycling.

Rare earth minerals are becoming increasingly important to the global economy and are used in a variety of electronics, military weapon subsystems found in precision-guided missiles, radars and jet engines. They are relatively common and mined throughout the world, but China currently has a stranglehold on refining them. The nation in the past has threatened to cease exports of refined rare earths during political disputes.

Researchers under a Defense Logistics Agency program analyzed the potential effects of three supply disruption scenarios for 10 of the 17 rare earth elements--along with a handful of associated compounds--to determine the market effects. DLA is obligated to send a report to Congress on rare earth supplies every two years.

They used Argonne's Global Critical Materials (GCMat) tool, an agent-based model, which is a computational framework for simulating interactions among different entities in a given system.

"If there's a disruption to the flows of rare earths from China, that can have large effects," said one of the report's co-authors, Matthew Riddle, assistant energy scientist at Argonne. It can take up to seven years to kick-start a mine into production, he added.

Allison Bennett Irion, group leader, nuclear/radiological proliferation analysis and modeling at Argonne and the report's co-author, said, "One area that we looked at in the model is... to say what are the decision points that would make somebody want to open or close a mine." The "location of the deposit is a factor and largely, it comes down to a lot of regulatory elements," she said in an interview.

"Critical materials are ones where we've seen disruptions in the past and seen that they can happen quickly, so I think there's a degree of just making sure we understand the market," she added.

Riddle said: "With agent-based modeling...