Photo Courtesy Ucore
A rendering of the Alaska Strategic Metals Complex that is planned for Southeast Alaska.
West, as well.” “On February 24th President Biden issued an executive order directing an immediate 100-day review across fed- eral agencies to address the United States’ supply chain vulnerabilities and specifically called out rare earths used in our electric motors and generators. You can’t have a green energy electri- fication revolution without getting the materials that you need from mines. “Front and center it is going to take mining. And you have to look at how you get a mine into production, so the permitting doesn’t take seven to nine years as it typically does now, instead perhaps two to three years, like in Can- ada or Australia. “We have no idea yet where Biden will land on this issue but we are hope- ful that the current vulnerability of a virtually single-point rare earth supply chain will be addressed and that there will be additional government support for Ucore and others in North Ameri- ca with solid plans to assist the US in achieving this independence.” Ucore’s initial focus is opening the Alaska SMC facility to process rare earth concentrates for the production of rare earth oxides, which has vastly different permitting issues from those for permitting to open a mine. “Based on initial discussions with the State of Alaska, we envision that this will be a very straightforward man- ufacturing type permitting process,” Schrider said. “But Bokan Mountain
is also in our plans. We are currently conducting engineering studies to in- corporate additional co-products into the Bokan flowsheet to see if we can lower the economic threshold for start- ing the development of the mine.” The Alaska SMC project could be a definite game-changer for Ketchikan, and a switch from its traditional focus on timber, ships, fishing, and tourism. “We selected Ketchikan for the plant location so that when ultimately we develop the mine, it provides separa- tion and processing for the mine. From a business perspective, it is the first component of the mine,” Schrider said. While Ucore is considering other rare earth deposits in Alaska for even- tual feedstock for the plant, the current timeline is based on getting the plant operational and beginning to produce rare earth oxides from feedstock from elsewhere, eventually incorporating mineral concentrate from the Bokan resource. The RapidSX™ technology that Ucore has acquired and plans to employ in Ketchikan is a fundamental leg of the plan, simplifying and speeding up the refining process. “RapidSX is the key component of our plan,” Schrider said. “One of the fundamental obstacles in the rare earth business is that of separating them from each other and other materials … this is the most difficult part of the rare
UCORE, CONTINUED from PAGE 25
separation technology, developed by IMC for the separation of critical and other metals. With early-stage support from the United States Department of Defense’s U.S. Army Research Labo- ratory (ARL) program, RapidSX™ was then successfully demonstrated by IMC at a pilot-scale for the separation of rare earth elements. The RapidSX™ technology combines the time-proven chemistry of SX with a proprietary column-based platform, which significantly reduces processing time through a substantial reduction in the numbers of processing steps re- quired and increased reaction rates. “With conventional SX technology the separation plant we’ve envisioned would be about the size of a football field,” Schrider said. “However, with RapidSX technology, we can reduce the size of the plant significantly, so things become much more economical.” “Thus, what we are trying to do is to make sure that the U.S. and North America can be independent of China regarding a rare earth supply chain. China has visions of an electric vehi- cle world centered around the manu- facturing of EVs in China. We need to ensure that there is an equitable distri- bution of rare earth resources, process- ing and downstream metals, alloys and components for manufacturing in the
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The Alaska Miner
April 2021
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