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The 30 year plan/expansion of Molycorp's Mountain Pass Rare Earth Mine

In 1992 Molycorp made the decision to expand the mine based upon the determination that there were 30 years of reserves based on existing production. Without this expansion there would be little mineral left to mine.

Realizing the difficulties they would have in the permitting process, Molycorp did a land swap with BLM which put their operations totally on private property. With the operation on private land, the feds and the state would not have jurisdiction and the lead agency would be San Bernardino County, who's planning commission does have jurisdiction.

SB County published the Draft Environmental Impact Report(note that is a report and not a statement) last April and the comment period ended in May. The final report will be issued when the consultants work is done and another comment period will follow. The county will then issue a permit with the chosen alternatives. Click here for the report.

If the 150 page report is too much, this EPA document from 1998 is accurate in spite of its brevity

Everything you ever wanted to know about rare earth minerals and their production, consumption, tariffs, stocks, prices, foreign trade, World Review, and Outlook can be found in this USGS report

Rare Earth Magnets: Patents/History

Insight mag cites the mine shutdown in 1998....the mine's separation facilities were shutdown and remain so...due to problems from Bureau of Land Management (waste-water disposal) and Chinese competition. Pentagon says 75% rare-earth material is purchased from China, b/c it's cheaper. Whatever happened to "BUY AMERICAN?" Even though the Mountain Pass mine has the world's highest-quality rare-earth deposits. IN 1999, the National Defense Stockpile depleted all remaining reserves of rare-earths. From Molycorp site...."SEPARATION OPERATIONS Molycorp has the capability of producing lanthanide concentrates as well as high purity products in several forms. The separations facilities are temporarily suspended subject to the resolution of waste water disposal issues. Bastnasite is selectively leached to separate the insoluble cerium fraction from the other lanthanide elements. The cerium product is washed to remove any contaminants, then filtered and dried prior to packaging according to customer specifications. The dissolved lanthanides proceed through impurity removal steps, then to solvent extraction cells where a collector preferentially extracts the heavier elements and rejects the lighter fraction. The heavier fraction is separated at our Europium recovery facility where Europium is extracted as a high purity oxide. The lighter fraction may be precipitated, thickened, filtered, dried and packaged as lanthanum concentrate or further purified via solvent extraction to produce high purity lanthanum, praseodymium, or neodymium products. " ALso see US Code Chapter 30, Title 30...Strategic and Critical Minerals and their importance to the economy and defense.