Hafnium, page-13

Basic reading on Hafnium production:

Hafnium was used as a metal crucial in the application of the industries, like nuclear energy and aerospace sector. It is a silver-gray, shiny metal usually used as alloy in nuclear science. The supply of the material is not at all limited. It is available in abundant quantity in the Earth's crust. The material is never a rare metal, even in supply it is there more than that of silver, gold, germanium, molybdenum and tantalum. However it is only produced in quite a very small amount of quantity such as approximately 70 tons a year. There are two reasons for the fact. Firstly the application of Hafnium is limited to as a byproduct for refining zirconium for nuclear-related applications. And secondly, the cumbersome production procedure of the metal, as it is very difficult to separate Hafnium from zirconium. ... (more)
https://storify.com/samaterials/rising-price-of-hafnium-with-a-rise-in-demand

The maybe most important new use:
New Reflective ‘Ultra-Thin Film’ Cools Buildings without Electricity
Researchers at the Ginzton Laboratory at Stanford University have found that coating a roof with a specific inorganic compound mixture could help not only cool buildings without the use of electricity but also release warmth in a way that it would pass through the Earth’s atmosphere ...
“Every object that produces heat has to dump that heat into a heat sink,” said one of the report’s authors, Sanford Professor Shanhui Fan. “What we’ve done is create a way that should allow us to use the coldness of the universe as a heat sink during the day.”
Hopefully this new breakthrough can both help those without access to electricity survive in sweltering temperatures and help break the more developed world’s reliance on fossil-fuel-driven electricity to power air conditioners. At the rate we’re going, any and all clean-energy breakthroughs are desperately needed.
http://www.ringoffireradio.com/2014...-buildings-by-40-degrees-without-electricity/

More new uses:
Ferroelectric Hafnium Oxide: A game changer to ferroelectric random access memory (FRAM)?
http://www.nvmts2014.org/download/invited/T06-0113_JohannesMueller.pdf

Chemical industry (polyethylene films):
http://www.google.com/patents/WO2014144397A2?cl=en

No idea what that should be good for exactly (specialty ceramics?), but it involves Hafnium and Niobium:
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/09507116.2014.884329?journalCode=twld20#.VOR5zdQ1jkg

Last comment:
If you listen to the interview in the beginning, I.C. stresses that our flow-sheet "naturally" reduces the hafnium in the zirconium/hafnium mix. What's important about that is that if (and that's a big if indeed) we somehow were able to get out the Hafnium early in the process, this would then allow for a much purer zirconium product stream further down the line, which in turn might make it possible for us to economically produce pure zirconium metal. And guess what: zirconium metal sells for a whole lot more money than chemical zirconia does ...