The European Commission estimates that those resources could total 9.16% of the global rare earth deposits.
The mine was closed in 2002 amid environmental issues and low rare earth elements prices.
The analysis released Wednesday showed more than 20 ingestions were of high-powered, "rare earth" magnets.
If there is a bubble in rare earth metals, China is likely to blame.
Rare earth minerals are often mixed with radioactive elements, and processing creates low-level radioactive waste.
At the higher level, the company would be one of the world's leading rare earth producers.
For his part, Bhappu does not believe the Chinese want to politicize rare earth minerals.
Honda Motor, for instance, said it would start recycling rare earth metals from used batteries.
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Examples discussed included export restrictions in China on rare earth metals and in Indonesia on palm oil.
When the present decade began, the biggest rare earth mine in the world was operating in California.
Molycorp and the rare earth elements it aims to produce have suddenly been receiving overwhelming public attention.
Rare earth metals are a key component of products such as MRI scanners and computer hard drives.
One of the more important but mainly overlooked resources related to national security are rare earth minerals.
But to do that, American manufacturers need to have access to rare earth materials -- which China supplies.
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Behind the surge: China, which supplies the vast majority of rare earth minerals, has started to restrict exports.
China appears to be hoarding its rare earth elements for its own use and is curtailing exports dramatically.
Rare earth exports amounted to 39, 000 metric tons in 2010 but have since dropped to 30, 258 metric tons.
Rare earth elements are a group of 17 heavy metals, which despite their name, are not particularly rare.
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Singer suggested this dwindling supply of rare earth elements could be a feasible backdrop for a new Cold War.
The most common source of thorium is the rare earth phosphate mineral, monazite.
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Idaho also boasts a large vein deposit of thorium and rare earth metals.
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Which is fine, there could be a shortage of rare earth metals.
In a popular book called Rare Earth, paleontologist Peter Ward and astronomer Donald Brownlee laid out a pessimistic hypothesis.
The national security implications for rare earth minerals are as acute as ever.
That is, either the mixed rare earth concentrates or as the separated individual salts or metals of the rare earths.
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China is tapping into huge, previously unknown reserves of coal, copper, oil, gold and rare Earth elements in nearby Mongolia.
Materials such as platinum and rare earth elements are crucial to electronics, increasingly scarce on Earth and abundant in space.
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China began mining rare earth minerals in the 1980s, and by the mid-90s was well surpassing the U.S. in production.
In doing due diligence on Molycorp, Bhappu learned that many consumers of rare earth elements desperately wanted a Western-supply source.
Last week, for instance, China's Ministry of Commerce announced it will reduce by 72% China's exports of rare earth minerals.
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