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I have been hearing about indium and platinum shortages from chicken littles for a couple of years now. In fact, there is 3 times more indium than silver in the Earth's crust and I haven't heard anyone shouting about a silver shortage - especially since digital camera's became popular. When the price goes high enough, more money will go into mining, extracting, and refining both minerals. And only solar cells, out of the currently common "sustainable" technologies, require these rare minerals.

The Indium Corp couldn't be biased.
It's an open market, so it must be true.
Back in 2006 this blogger noticed we use indium. Scroll down a bit.
The price is going up, but hey, copper prices sure fell.

I'm not worried. This just someone wanting some attention and web page hits.

Never has been, and probably never will be.

Indium and Gallium Sustainability â" September 2007 Update

I expect it's a metal related to these, http://www.indium.com/TIM/solutions/liquidmetal.php which are used as thermal interface materials in machines like Apple's 8 core Mac Pros. The heatsinks on those are wetted with a little of the liquid metal in place of stuff like arctic silver. While working on Mac Pros I found it's like mercury, but sticks to the processor heatspreader and heatsink base. It's liquid even in a cold room. There's toxicity info on that site somewhere, but I'm in a rush at the moment. No doubt someone else will find it and post.

Indium and gallium containing raw materials exist abundantly worldwide. The metals industry has been investing in process improvements and capacity over the last few years to bring more indium and gallium to the market. This industry can and will continue to do so if the demand is there. As described, price volatility and short-term availability will continue intermittently due to numerous factors including the time lag required to install additional capacity, government regulation, and the lack of information suppliers receive about future demand. Overall, we anticipate adequate indium and gallium supply and continued price affordability for current and new applications.

Indium and gallium containing raw materials exist abundantly worldwide. The metals industry has been investing in process improvements and capacity over the last few years to bring more indium and gallium to the market. This industry can and will continue to do so if the demand is there. As described, price volatility and short-term availability will continue intermittently due to numerous factors including the time lag required to install additional capacity, government regulation, and the lack of information suppliers receive about future demand. Overall, we anticipate adequate indium and gallium supply and continued price affordability for current and new applications.

OK, listen up:

1) Indium is not found in nature by itself, it is only found in combination with ores of Pb, Zn, Cu, Sn and other base metals. It is extracted from the metal ores.

2) If you don't believe that higher prices increase available supply, read this:

For primarily economic reasons, indium was originally only extracted from zinc and lead concentrates containing at least 500 ppm indium (and coming from ores containing about 50 ppm of indium). Due to improvements in the extraction technology combined with the economics of higher prices Indium is now recovered as a by-product of a wider range of base metals including tin, copper and other polymetallic deposits. Indium is also now being extracted from base metal concentrates containing as little as 100 ppm of indium.

Furthermore:

Base metal consumption has increased over the last few years and mining companies have started making positive financial returns. This profitability, in turn, has prompted new investments in mining. Furthermore, new indium containing ore bodies are being discovered and developed. As examples, note the new Neves Corvo Zinc mine in Portugal, Mitsui Mining's increased mining output in Peru, the Chinese exploration investments in the Guanxi and Yunnan provinces, the Chelyabinsk Zinc purchase of a majority stake in lead and zinc mine Nova Zinc of Kazakhstan, etc. Mining output is increasing, increasing supplies of indium containing feedstock.

3) What has been the price history of Indium? It peaked at $400/kg in 1996, went down to $100 in 2002, peaked again at near $1000 in 2005, and was down to $850 in 2007. As of June 27, Metal Bulletin has it trading at $620-680 per kg.

4) What has been the supply history of Indium? It is up from 250 MT in 1996 to 1,100 MT in 2007. More is being produced every year.

5) What about the future?

A number of smelters have accumulated large amounts of tailings and slags over the years. Many of these are indium containing residues from their production that have very low indium content and/or are particularly difficult to treat. Again due to the higher indium prices and improving recovery process technology, these tailings and slags are now economical to treat. China, as an example, has started treating many of these residues.

The abundance of indium in the earth's crust is estimated to be 0.05 ppm for the continental and 0.072 ppm for the oceanic crust, respectively (Taylor and Mclennan 1985). This concentration is higher than the concentration of silver. Consider that silver is now produced at a rate of 20,000 tons per year...

Here is a Canadian mine re-opening to extract more Tin and Indium

Before accepting the argument that we are imminently running out of a whole slew of elements, it would be nice to see a reasonably solid case presented for even one of them.

Looking around for a source that actually makes a case for running out of any of these elements what I came up with are references to New Scientist articles that do nothing of the sort: http://www.idtechex.com/products/en/articles/00000591.asp
and
http://www.science.org.au/nova/newscientist/027ns_005.htm

To the extent that this is even addressed, the articles make appeals to uncertainty - production figures are lacking and good estimates of reserves don't exist - then offer specific dates for running out, alluding to the USGS as providing the data used to make these claims. No explanation of how any of the calculations were done, nor an enumeration of the assumptions regarding supply on which they were based.

So lets pick one of the elements deemed most at risk, gallium say, nearly all of which is used in GaAs electronics.

Actually reading the relevant USGA report: http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/gallium/mcs-2008-galli.pdf and also consulting this industry paper (gallium is discussed near the end): http://www.indium.com/_dynamo/download.php?docid=552
we learn the following.

• The principal source of gallium is bauxite, a widely distributed ore of aluminium for which the reserves are immense.
• Currently, less than 10% of the gallium in bauxite is extracted, apparently due to technology and cost considerations (that is, at current prices and with current technologies it isn't sufficiently profitable to do it).
• Current refinery production is around 80 tons annually, substantial gallium is already recycled, but considerable growth in demand is expected.
• The total world supply of gallium in mineable bauxite ore is estimated at (whether or not the gallium is considered recoverable) is estimated to exceed one million tons.

So: if extraction rates can rise to 10% then the world supply is really 100,000 tons. About a 1000 year supply at current usage rates. If we suppose that higher prices and more advanced technology can increase the extraction efficiency beyond this, then the supply is correspondingly increased.

Now there might be an impending imbalance in supply and demand if the total extraction rate by the aluminum industry is too low to match demand in the future. But this is quite different from "running out". Better extraction and more efficient use of gallium could redress it (both natural results of higher prices), and new technologies might largely supplant GaAs with superior products (quantum dot lasers, organic solar cells, anyone?). At some point recycling might take over as the principal supply (one of the reasons that iron production has flattened).

First of all, Nanosolar HOPES to make the cells at $1/W, they are nowhere near that cheap yet, and this is the price their marketing department HOPES to achieve.

And your information comes from? Nowhere, that's where, because they're not sold on the open market yet, so claims like "they are nowhere near that cheap yet" are complete BS. All of their capacity is currently going to a German municipal plant. Secondly, all of the CIGS companies are giving numbers in the same ballpark, as are the CdTe companies.

Secondly, that is the price for the cells without factoring in energy storage devices, energy conversion systems, servicing etc

Duh. That's part of a general solar economics calculation. Only an idiot would just multiply $1/W times the desired number of watts. A large, batteryless installation in Anchorage, AK of nanosolar cells gets a 30 year IRR of 7-8%. In Las Vegas, it's more like 13-14%.

Thirdly, it is the price under optimal conditions, with perfectly aligned cells. (and on, and on...)

(Dragnet theme)Duh, duh duh duh. Duh, duh duh duh, duh!(/Dragnet theme)

Do you think we're idiots? What's next? "Third, the cells only produce power when the sun is visible. Fourth, you need to have wires to conduct the power. Fifth, you need "humans", who can use the power...."

They are also relying on indium, an element which is thought to become scarce due to increasing demand, and of course, mass-deployment of indium based solar cells would certainly push the price up.

Indium is more common than silver, is easier to recover than silver (because of its close interrelationship with zinc ores), and CIGS cells use a miniscule amount of it (nanoscale-thickness coatings). Indium's current high price is more related to a lack of demand for it before LCD TVs started using it in bulk; this led to a few of the world's only indium recovery circuits shutting down without new circuits replacing them at other mines. It's not a problem. It only takes a few years to ramp up production.

Finally, even if they were able to start producing these at competitive costs and at a large rate, you still have the problem that you will have to increase solar photovoltaic output by a factor of 1000 just to reach 20% of current energy demand.

Huh? Did you ignore my post, above, where it already addressed this?

With most of nuclear reactors built in the west ending their licensing in about 2030 - 2040, Oil running low and gas prices rising due to low demand

Whaa? For one, nuclear is making a serious comeback in the US. Two, oil is not running low. Light sweet crude is, but light sweet crude != world petroleum production capability. Venezuelan super heavy crude and Canadian bitumen syncrude are taking off. Third, the demand for gasoline has been rising constantly year to year. Are you confusing the annual demand fluctuations with year to year growth in consumption? Demand is always lowest in the winter, highest in the summer.

[quote]But no, we're going to gamble on some hypothetical solar breakthrough.[/quote]

Hypothetical? Yeah, about two dozen companies, some of which have been selling them in smaller volume for years, is "hypothetical". What's next -- are CFLs hypothetical as well?

[quote]Despite the fact that no realistic way to overcome the problems with intermittent supply, that they don't produce energy at night, diffuse and limited output, as well as the high price, having been demonstrated.[/quote]

In the pacific northwest, and to a lesser degree the west coast as a whole, energy storage is a non-issue. The west relies a lot on hydro power, and hydro pairs perfectly with solar (it already has a low capacity factor, so there's no additional economic cost to the hydro producers). Even in the east, solar alone with no storage can eliminate the p

Sounds like it would not work well:

"To be effective a TIM combines properties to minimize the total interface resistance. High conductivity (200-420 W/mC) materials, like copper, silver, aluminum and gold, maximize thermal conductivity, but do not flow into intimate contact because of the relative lack of compliance so the interface resistances are very high and the overall performance is poor."

http://www.indium.com/_dynamo/download.php?docid=3 10