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The Potential Scarcity of Rare Elements for the Energiewende

• Alex M. Bradshaw

  Alexander M. Bradshaw (b. 1944) studied at Queen Mary College, University of London. From 1980 to 1998 he was head of the Department of Surface Physics at the Fritz-Haber Institute of the Max-Planck Society in Berlin as well as 1981 to 1989 (with an intermission) scientific director of the synchrotron radiation source BESSY. From 1999–2008 he was scientific director of the Max-Planck Institute for Plasma Physics and chaired the German nuclear fusion programme. From 1998–2000 Bradshaw was also President of the German Physical Society (DPG) and is a member of several national academies. His current scientific interests are in surface physics as well as in energy questions and resource strategies.

  , Benjamin Reuter

  Benjamin Reuter (b. 1984) holds an engineering degree from the Technische Universität München (TUM) and was awarded a second one through a double degree programme with the Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. At both institutions his studies focussed on energy technologies, both conventional and renewable. He wrote his final thesis on solar air heaters during a stay with a small Indian company. In 2010 he began the research for his PhD at the Institute of Automotive Technology of TUM looking into questions regarding the sustainable use of materials for electric vehicles. Currently he is working with TUM Create in Singapore. The cooperation between TUM and Nanyang Technological University aims at the development of an electric taxi for megacities.

  and Thomas Hamacher

  Thomas Hamacher (b. 1964) studied physics at the Universities of Bonn and Aachen as well as at Columbia University, New York. After receiving a PhD in 1993 from the University of Hamburg for his research work in the area of particle physics at DESY (Deutsches Elektronensynchrotron), he worked as a post-doc at the University of Texas in Austin. He subsequently joined the Max-Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Garching near Munich, where he was appointed Head of the Energy and System Studies Group in 1999. Since 2010 he has been Professor and Acting Director of the Institute for Energy Economy and Application Technology at the Technical University of Munich (TUM). His research interests encompass urban energy systems, the integration of renewable energy sources into the electricity grid and innovative nuclear techniques such as fusion. Hamacher is a member of the Energy Group of the European Physical Society (EPS) and of the Wissennschaftszentrum Umwelt of the University of Augsburg.