In 1965, this message appeared on a Holiday Inn sign in Ames, Iowa, to greet the attendees of the 5th Rare Earth Research Conference (RERC). Rare-earth chemistry was at a fulcrum point in its history. Previously, during World War II, chemists working in Ames at Iowa State University had played a critical role in rare-earth technology. As part of the Manhattan Project in 1942, the researchers developed methods to remove traces of rare-earth metals from the uranium used to create the first nuclear chain reaction and to make the first nuclear bombs.
Not much was known about the chemistry of the rare earths in the 1940s, or even by the 1960s. This group of 17 elements, which include the lanthanides—lanthanum to lutetium—along with scandium and yttrium, seemed to consist of fairly unreactive metals that all behaved similarly. Most of the research and development involving the elements was metallurgical, not chemical.
Rainbow Rare Earths Ltd (LON:RBW) is a mining company focussed on production from, and expansion of, the high grade Gakara Rare Earth Project in Burundi, East Africa. With in-situ grades in the range of 47-67% Total Rare Earth Oxide (TREO), Gakara is one of the world’s richest rare earth deposits.