稀土作为一种主要或独立的矿产资源加以利用,国外已有50余年的历史,比从其它副产品中提取稀土元素的工业利用大约要晚半个世纪。我国稀上工业利用与其矿产资源开发则大致同步,均始于50年代后期,可见我国稀土资源的开发历史与国外差距不大,而稀土的工业利用则比国外晚了半个多世纪。 Rare earths have been used as a major or independent mineral resource for over 50 years abroad, about half a century later than the industrial use of rare earth elements extracted from other by-products. The rare industrial utilization in our country is roughly in sync with the development of its mineral resources, both of which originated in the late 1950s. Therefore, we can see that the development history of rare earth resources in our country is not far from the foreign ones. However, industrial utilization of rare earth is more than half a century later than foreign countries.