Platinumis a chemical element, with symbol Pt and atomic number 78.

This metal is the sixteenth non-renewable resource set to disappear thanks to intensive exploitation by mankind.

Remaining workable deposits are estimated at 13,000 tonnes.

June 2008: at current rates of production, 230 tonnes per year, deposits will last 56 years.

Extractable deposits of platinum will therefore disappear for good in 2064.

Most of this information comes from the USGS (United States Geological Service) http://minerals.usgs.gov/

Another, more alarmist, source estimates that platinum deposits will only last 15 years, being exhausted in 2023.

Link: http://environment.newscientist.com

Platinum is used in jewellery (44%). Other applications include: catalytic converters for vehicle exhausts (31%), the electronic and electrical industries (11%), others (14%)

It is well-known that the hydrogen fuel cell makes use of this precious metal. Fortunately, scientists have succeeded in replacing it with tungsten carbide or Pedot, an electrically conducting plastic, reducing fabrication costs by a factor of ten.

Problems arising from its disappearance will start to make themselves felt well before this fateful date.

Of course, there will still be platinum in the ground, but in extremely diluted form, rendering extraction impossible.

Even if, thanks to advances in technology, we find new deposits by digging deeper and deeper into the Earth"s crust, this will afford us only a few years"reprieve and will not make a major impact on the situation.

Platinum was created when a star exploded and the Sun and the Earth were formed from the debris, over five billion years ago.

You cannot produce it artificially and there is no substitute. The Moon and the asteroids do not contain the metal in an extractable form. And just imagine the energy it would take to bring some back from Mars or Venus!

There will still be recycling but demand, which will keep growing exponentially with the development of the emerging economies, will far outstrip supply.

80% of the world"s platinum production comes from South Africa.

To learn more about platinum, see: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platine

Translation Nicholas ROSE

Don"t miss reading Point of view by Michel Walter , a programme for the end of our civilisation of wastage.