00:00From a strategic perspective, critical minerals are really vital.
00:08The demand for them is rising, but for so many, China controls the market.
00:16While the rest of the world slept, China built end-to-end supply chains.
00:23The rest of the world's woken up now.
00:26This vast expanse of mineral sands north of Perth is rich in zirconium,
00:35an element vital to China's military build-up.
00:39Australia has the world's largest reserves, but China dominates processing.
00:48Well, we're in the middle of one of the world's largest fields
00:55for heavy mineral sands.
01:00We've come to meet adjunct professor Ian Satchel,
01:03one of Australia's leading authorities on critical minerals.
01:10What's the significance of this area?
01:12Heavy mineral sands generally have come out of volcanoes,
01:16been worn down into sand,
01:18stirred by the sea and the tides over many, many millions of years,
01:22and not degraded.
01:24So they are very robust minerals.
01:27Well, zirconium has a wide, wide range of uses,
01:30everything from whitening our bathroom tiles and our basins and toilets,
01:35through to sheathing nuclear fuel rods.
01:39China needs zirconium, and lots of it.
01:45With a melting point of more than 1800 degrees,
01:48it's used in the protective coating for hypersonic missiles
01:52that travel at more than five times the speed of sound.
01:57It's also a vital ingredient in the nuclear fuel cycle.
02:02Zircon exists in some places in abundance, particularly in Australia,
02:08but in other places like China, they have very little or none of it.
Comments