The mine was closed in 2002 amid environmental issues and low rare earth elements prices.
Molycorp and the rare earth elements it aims to produce have suddenly been receiving overwhelming public attention.
China appears to be hoarding its rare earth elements for its own use and is curtailing exports dramatically.
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.
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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In doing due diligence on Molycorp, Bhappu learned that many consumers of rare earth elements desperately wanted a Western-supply source.
Disruption in the supply of critical products, such as rare earth elements, could also affect the availability of information technology equipment.
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China denied it had imposed a ban or that it was using its domination over rare earth elements for political purposes.
Molycorp can expect financial losses for at least two or three more years, but Bhappu claims current prices of rare earth elements are sustainable.
The US wants to reduce its dependency on China, which produces more than 95% of the world's rare earth elements, and address local shortages.
China maintains enormous industrial and economic leveraging through a virtual monopoly on supplies of vital rare earth elements used in virtually all advanced electronic products.
While defining lodes is easy, refining the various rare earth elements is hard and each step of the process is likely to cost a billion dollars.
Resource Capital decided to lead the effort, which ended up including Traxys, Goldman Sachs and Pegasus Capital Advisors, just as prices for rare earth elements tumbled.
Metals, platinum-group elements, rare earth elements, and other volatiles, like H, H2O, and carbon compounds, are abundant on asteroids, many of which are relatively accessible from Earth.
In the light of the Chinese hegemony for its own energy projects, it is feared that a paucity in the global supply of rare earth elements (REEs)will ensue.
The two superpowers are competing over a valuable new resource -- the rare earth elements used in the construction of nearly all smartphones, tablets and other electronic gadgets.
Specialty metals include metals like rare earth elements, which are being used more often in applications such as consumer electronics, solar panels and magnets used to power hybrid vehicles.
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The prospect of such selling, and the fear that prices for rare earth elements might crash as quickly as they have risen, has caused the stock to weaken in 2011.
But the Moon is a source of rare earth elements, as well as Helium-3, a possible future fuel for nuclear fusion reactors (if we ever actually invent them).
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But rare earth elements were not known to exist until a couple of hundred years ago, and only in more recent history have their unique properties been put to significant use.
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According to a report focused on rare earth elements performance for the upcoming year from A.L. Waters Capital, the firm highlighted some specific rare earths and their current prices compared to their peak prices.
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Rare earth elements are also used for military applications, such as advanced optics technologies, radar and radiation detection equipment, and advanced communications systems, according to a 2011 research report by the US Government Accountability Office.
These are after all mines, often big mines, and the minerals extracted require complex and challenging refining to separate the chemically similar constellations of rare earth elements that are always collocated in various mineral concentrations and combinations.
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Among them are the rare earth elements, in particular neodymium, production of which, it is reckoned, will have to increase five times to build enough magnets for the number of wind-turbines deemed necessary for a fully renewable future.
As I noted in previous posts, there is the further question of whether there will be sufficient quantities of rare earth elements (REEs) available on the world markets to make the turbine magnets, which need about one ton of neodymium per 4 MW of rated capacity.
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Information provided by Metal Pages, a news site that focuses on non-ferrous metals, ferro alloys and rare earths, indicated that rare earth elements exports have dropped 65% in 2011 and that China has only exported 11, 000 metric tons of rare earths through the first three quarters of the year.
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Virtually all U.S. advanced electronics, as eminent chemist Arthur Robinson reported last month in his newsletter Access to Energy, are dependent on rare earth elements used to enhance the performance of microchips and held in a near global monopoly by the Chinese firm Baotou Steel Rare-Earth Hi-Tech Company in Mongolia.
The plant is finally operating, but prices for some rare-earth elements are now 80% off their peaks.
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