Credit: DOE
As Eileen notes in her post, the DOE has updated its assessment of factors affecting the availability of critical materials for energy applications, particularly in regard to rare earth elements. To give readers a quick sense of what has changed in a year, I put together comparisons of the criticality charts in the 2010 and 2011 reports.
The above chart, as indicated, demonstrates how the short-term risk evaluations are evolving. In brief, the short term concerns have increased in regard to europium and terbium, and they now join dysprosium as being in the most important/highest risk sector, while the importance of yttrium has been elevated.
Likewise, the graphic below shows the medium-term risks are shifting, but little has changed in what elements are considered to be critical (in red).
