"The United States consumes about 50% of the world's nuclear medicine every year, but we effectively make a tiny fraction of the supply of radioactive material that goes into that nuclear medicine. It’s primarily sourced from about 6 reactors around the world, but all those reactors are getting old. So I knew that these machines could do amazing things, but at their advanced age, there’s no way they should be underpinning the entire supply chain for nuclear medicine."

“Electrifying transportation will inevitably mean far greater use of electric traction motors, nearly all of which rely on magnets that contain rare earth elements, which cause substantial environmental degradation when their ores are extracted and then processed into industrially useful forms. And for automakers outside of China, there is an additional deterrent: Roughly 90 percent of processed rare earth elements now come from China, so for these companies, increasing dependence on rare earths means growing vulnerability in critical supply chains.

Against this backdrop, massive efforts are underway to design and test advanced electric-vehicle (EV) motors that do not use rare earth elements (or use relatively little of them). In the United States, these initiatives include long-standing efforts at the country’s national laboratories to develop permanent magnets and motor designs that do not use rare earth elements. Also, in a collaboration announced last November, General Motors and Stellantis are working with a startup company, Niron Magnetics, to develop EV motors based on Niron’s rare earth–free permanent magnet.” (IEEE Spectrum)