mining

As the “tech wars” gear up and the “battery arms race” shifts in to higher gears, efforts to promote the securing of domestic critical mineral supply chains are not only underway in policy circles in Washington, DC, but in the private sector as well.  Companies including the world’s top diversified miners are intensifying their R&D efforts to meet the world’s increasing demand for tech metals. 

The latest case in point:  Rio Tinto’s successful production of lithium carbonate – a key component of electric vehicle battery technology – as part of the reprocessing of waste piles from its long-standing boron mine in southern California.

Part of a unit that produced borates [link to old Boron post], the Boron site is home to at least 80 minerals. The lithium find was part of waste reprocessing in an initial search for gold and other elements at the site.  Efforts now shift to improving quality and lifting volumes, according to Bloomberg.

As Simon Moores, managing director of Benchmark Mineral Intelligence and member of the ARPN panel of issue experts told the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources earlier this year, “The growth trajectory expected for lithium ion battery raw material demand is unprecedented. Lithium ion batteries are becoming a major global industry and the impact on the four key raw materials of lithium, cobalt, nickel and graphite will be profound.” Outlining theoretical demand scenario from megafactories in the pipeline at 2023 and 2028, Benchmark Mineral Intelligence estimates that lithium demand will increase by over eight times.

The Boron discovery, while in Moores’ view not necessarily a “volume play,” but rather an “IP [intellectual property] play” is significant because in recent years, there has been only one lithium production facility in the U.S. — prompting analysts like Moores to lament that the United States is a “bystander” in the battery arms race.  

Confirming Moores’ analysis, U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) called our nation’s over-reliance on foreign critical minerals our nation’s “Achilles’ heel that serves to empower and enrich other nations, while costing us jobs and international competitiveness.”

 

In a recent piece for the Washington Times, ARPN panel of expert member and author of “Groundbreaking!: America’s New Quest for Mineral Independence,” Ned Mamula and columnist and consultant for FreedomWorks Stephen Moore zero in on Uranium.

Embedding the discussion in the context of American mining and production of critical minerals in recent decades being “a self-inflicted wound that could imperil our economy and national security,” they point to the fact that while the United States is home to vast domestic Uranium resources and reserves, “more than 90 percent of U.S. uranium requirements are now imported.” More than 40 percent of the total of these imports, come from a “potentially adversarial trading bloc,” Russia, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan.

“This is not a friendly free-market group that America can depend on, especially in an emergency,” they lament. 

Globally, the percentage of uranium production “coming from state-controlled companies not located in Western market-based economies,” is on the rise.

Meanwhile, domestic issues have contributed to a drastic decrease in U.S. uranium production prompting U.S. Congressmen Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), Rob Bishop (R -Utah), and Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), spoke of a “dying” industry in an op-ed for Fox News earlier this year.  

Acknowledging the national security implications of the issue, earlier this summer, President Trump announced the formation of a “U.S. Nuclear Fuel Working Group” to conduct a “fuller analysis of national security considerations with respect to the entire nuclear fuel supply chain.” The findings of the working group are due soon, and it will be interesting to see what the recommendations to alleviate “America’s Uranium crisis” are going to be. 

Moore and Mamula argue that — as non-supporters of trade protectionism they are unsure what the best solution to address the issue of imports coming from “nations that are not allies,” but one thing is certain, they argue:

“The strategy of benign neglect is not working and must be replaced with a smart strategy that ensures reliable and affordable uranium for years to come.”

***

To read the full piece, click here.

For more context, see Ned Mamula’s series for Capital Research Center on “Uranium, an underappreciated energy source.”

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