On a dusty road at the northern edge of the Mojave Desert, a pair of 100-ton haul trucks — their wheels twice the height of a fully grown man — emerge from a deep chasm, their cargo beds loaded with ore.
And this haul won’t stay in the U.S. for long: the concentrate produced at Mountain Pass is sold to refiners in China. Ultimately, the refined materials are converted into powerful alloys and magnets for users around the world. All of which leaves the U.S.’s access to rare earths, a critical market still dominated by China, highly vulnerable.
“You don’t know how much everything is interconnected until you lose access to one piece of the puzzle,” Najieb-Locke said. The risk of relying on Beijing for these components was brought into stark relief in September, when the Pentagonfor about a month after discovering that a magnet in the jet’s turbomachine was made with cobalt and samarium alloy that came from China. The alloy, which is sourced only in China, does not transmit sensitive information, or put the fighter at risk, Najieb-Locke said.
In November, MP announced that it had begun commissioning assets for the second stage of production, which is currently done primarily in China: separation and purification. The company has also begun building a new manufacturing facility in Fort Worth, Texas, that will convert the refined minerals from Mountain Pass into metals, alloys and magnets.
The issue is a tricky one for the Biden administration, which has prioritized green energy. Rare earths are key components in electric car motors and some batteries. But some climate advocates have opposed increased spending on mining certain metals, including on a proposedSo far, Biden has continued Trump’s approach to rare earths mining, a rare instance of bipartisan agreement.
The security threat is particularly acute for a group of minerals known as “heavy” rare earth elements. Together, China and Myanmar produce 100 percent of the world’s “heavy” rare earth elements, primarily dysprosium and terbium. Distinguished from “light” rare earths by their higher atomic numbers, heavy rare earth elements “blanket” the strongest rare earths magnets to protect them from high temperatures, said Ryan Castilloux, founder of the independent research group Adamas Intelligence.
MP Mine Operations LLC, now MP Materials, was formed in 2017 for a second attempt at reviving the Mountain Pass mine. | Bridget Bennett for POLITICO Scenes from MP Materials’ facilities. It is one of 3 percent of mining operations — the only one in the global rare earth industry — that recycles the water used for the process and produces dry tailings. | Bridget Bennett for POLITICO
But that, too, may be about to change. In September, MP completed the building shell for the company’s future magnetics manufacturing facility in Fort Worth. The company expects to be able to start producing metal and alloy next year and magnets around 2025.
WE GATA DIG MORE!!
We just need to recycle our smartphones. A single iPhone contains eight different rare-earth metals. If you examine several varieties of smart- phones, you can find 16 of the 17 rare-earth metals. I've got 3 old ones sitting in a drawer right now.
Not environmentally destructive the go green haulers yell!
So, I beg the question again, why focus on dying islands w/o resources? US needs in Africa and South America China can deal with AFG. They’ve already lost Chinese citizens in a hotel blast.