My Visit to An American Rare Earth Metals Mine The electronic future is buried under the ground in Missouri
By Rebecca Boyle
Posted 03.10.2011
A chunk of magnetite guards the office door at the Pea Ridge iron mine near Sullivan, Mo., a mascot of the mine’s past and future. When Jim Kennedy bought the mine in 2001, he’d planned to restart production on a high-grade iron ore deposit. He didn’t realize he was sitting on a mother lode of 600,000 metric tons of high-grade rare earth elements -- elements the U.S. is desperately hungry for. Four years ago, he almost threw away reams of documents describing Pea Ridge’s deposit. “Nobody bothered to tell me about it,” he said.
At present, the U.S. is almost totally reliant on China for rare earth elements, which are used to make lasers, guided missiles, efficient batteries, and other technologies of the future. But China has recently slashed its exports of these materials, promising new regulations over their production, while raising prices — and the hackles of numerous national governments. As scientists work on possible alternatives to rare earths, some think renewed domestic production of the minerals could loosen China’s grip over 95 percent of the world’s rare earth supply.
Right now, the Pea Ridge mine is a quiet, muddy place with rusting mills, storage sheds cluttered with cracked core samples, and a marshy lake full of mine tailings. But when it’s renovated and reopened, Kennedy hopes to become only the second rare earth producer in the western hemisphere. He envisions a bustling mine producing billions of dollars of rare earths, feeding the renewable energy and defense industries. He has a few hurdles to clear before that dream becomes reality.
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Rare earths are recovered just like other metals — from rocks removed from the ground that are broken up, milled and processed into purified forms. It’s a water-intensive, toxic process, but Kennedy says his mine has plenty of rare earths in the mile-long, 100-foot-deep lake of tailings, a slurry-like waste byproduct of almost 40 years of iron mining. He aims to start mining the lake’s 22 million tons of waste by the end of the year and restart underground mining in 2012.
On the frigid day I visited...
http://www.popsci.com/technology/article/2011-03/rare-earth-mine