The result has been numerous calls in recent years to better assess elemental resources and to determine which of them are ‘critical’, the aim being to minimize further disruptions to global and national technologies and economies"..Selenium, an extract from ores such as copper, nickel and lead, is used in photocopiers, x-ray detecting machines and developing battery technologies.Excerpts from an article published on World Economic Forum website. And discovering better ways of separating the rare elements from the matrices in which they exist as bare traces would help.Ensuring there are sufficient quantities of them could be essential if the high-tech future that governments and global companies keep promising is to happen. More recently, a decrease in exports of rare earth elements by China resulted in a variety of technological disruptions. They include gallium, indium, hafnium and selenium, all of which are created as the byproducts of other mining and extraction processes.As well as being harmful to natural ecosystems, mining also depends on fossil fuels that create carbon dioxide and other emissions that contribute to climate change and damage human health.A sci-fi solution?A 2008 study predicting the disappearance of gallium by 2017 prompted the science-fiction author Robert Silverberg to write: "All the hafnium [and gallium] will be gone by 2017..

Balancing the risk factorsTwo of the wider risks ACS highlighted are well known: one is the environmental hazards caused by the mining and extraction processes of metals, such as use of toxic mercury by artisanal miners to bind lumps of gold together. Even copper is an endangered item, since worldwide demand for it is likely to exceed available supplies by the end of the present century.Indium, also found in zinc, is used in solar cells, LCD screens, computer chips, LEDs and solar panels.."Silverberg then outlined what states and companies needed to do to guarantee the high-tech future they envisage: "Solutions will be needed, if we want to go on having things like television screens and solar panels and computer chips.Although their names may be unfamiliar to many, their uses are not. and another 20 years will see the extinction of zinc.The names of some of the metals in the research may leave non-specialists scratching their heads..Hafnium, a byproduct of zirconium, Wholesale Heavy Duty Shield Anchors Suppliers is found in nuclear reactor control rods, integrated microprocessor circuits and the liquid thruster nozzles of Apollo lunar spacecraft.But a third is underreported, and it is this: even metals that boast high natural reserves, such as gold and platinum, as well as being among the most environmentally damaging to extract, are "geopolitically highly concentrated".Gallium, a byproduct of zinc and bauxite ores, is used in semiconductors — which provide 98% of commercial demand for the element — as well lasers in Blu-Ray players..Gallium, indium, hafnium and seleniumA periodic table, produced for a report by the American Chemical Society (ACS) in 2015, ranked 62 different elements based on their supply risk, environmental implications and vulnerability to shortages.