Rare earth minerals are mostly sourced from China. Can we get them here?

USA Today

4 days ago

Rare earth minerals are mostly sourced from China. Can we get them here? | The Excerpt
On a special episode (first released on May 28, 2025) of The Excerpt podcast: We need rare earth minerals for use in items we rely on for modern life. New tech holds possibilities for mining at home for them. Scott McWhorter, a distinguished fellow in the Strategic Energy Institute at Georgia Institute of Technology, joins The Excerpt to dive into the details.
Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.
Podcasts: True crime, in-depth interviews and more USA TODAY podcasts right here
Dana Taylor:
Hello and welcome to The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Wednesday, May 28th, 2025. And this is a special episode of The Excerpt. Most electronic devices you use, your phone, laptop, earbuds to name a few, require certain materials called rare earth minerals to function. These minerals also power a wide range of other things critical to our lives like cars, aircraft engines, medical equipment. The US imports most of its supply of rare earth elements from China, which given the current climate of global trade, has led experts to wonder, any way we get more of these minerals here at home? We're diving into the question today with Scott McWhorter, a distinguished fellow in the Strategic Energy Institute at Georgia Institute of Technology. Thanks for joining me on The Excerpt, Scott.
Scott McWhorter:
Thank you, Dana. Glad to be here.
Dana Taylor:
Can we start by explaining to those of us who aren't familiar, what are rare earth minerals and why are they so important in modern life?
Scott McWhorter:
Rare earth minerals are just a group of minerals that are naturally found, but they have certain properties, typically magnetic properties or strength to performance properties, that really enhance what we do in certain products. That's really the importance of these minerals that we find every day.
Rare earth minerals are mostly sourced from China. Can we get them in the US?
We need rare earth minerals for use in items we rely on for modern life. New tech holds possibilities for mining at home for them.
Dana Taylor:
They're called rare earth minerals. Are they in fact rare?
Scott McWhorter:
That's a misnomer. They're found just about in most soils that we have. They're not found in places that we can go dig up and extract and so that's why they're typically rare.
Dana Taylor:
Scott, where in the country have we started mining rare earth minerals? And generally, can you tell us more about the process being utilized?
Scott McWhorter:
Yeah. So in the US for rare earths in particular, there's two places. There's Mountain Pass in California and that's the main source of rare earths in the US. Now, the rare earths that are extracted there are light rare earths, but all of those are taken out, they're extracted. Some are pre-processed there in California and then they're shipped to Asia for further processing in other countries. Because we typically don't have that middle processing, the acid leaching and means of extracting and purifying those rare earth metals in this country because of some of the environmental regulations due to the old processing techniques. The other place that we find rare earth or we're mining rare earths today is in Georgia and in my backyard. So where we find a lot of sand mining that occurs and they're looking for zinc and titanium and things of that nature. But they have rare earths that are byproducts of that process and those aren't processed here in the US.
Dana Taylor:
Are there approaches that minimize financial and environmental costs or harm? How is that being explored?
Scott McWhorter:
There are several companies that have come up with ways to use what I would call more elegant processing that we don't typically associate with mining. And we should think of mining as elegant separations. It's a very complex problem with several metals that are very much alike chemically, so they're hard or difficult to separate. So what we've learned over time is that we can use technologies that really were developed that came out of things like genomics or proteomics. When we think of those technologies, we think, wow, that's really elegant, clean separations. But we can use proteins actually to bind to those metals very specifically and separate those out based on precipitation or other methodologies. And then we've learned how to really control the precipitation of these minerals in aqueous solutions. So we don't have to use acid or strong acids to really drive the dissolution of these metals from these crystals any longer. So there are technologies, they're in the research phase, some are in the piloting stage, but we should see those come online in the next one to two years.
Dana Taylor:
What are some of the biggest barriers to expanding these efforts across the country?
Scott McWhorter:
The largest barrier is funding, attracting funding to this industry when you don't have stable markets. The pricing markets are typically controlled by China. China has invested in that middle processing for the last 40, 50 years and that's where it's mostly done in China. And so it is government-backed, they can control and they can manipulate the pricing to really control that market. So I think from a policy standpoint, we can stabilize that market, create a stable base price for these minerals so that the investment community understands what they're investing into and the profit that they could potentially make, and that it will not go below that point. That will really spawn tremendous investment in that market domain when we can control those prices or we have some barrier or floor on those prices.
Dana Taylor:
As we mentioned, China supplies a lot of what's mined globally, with the US importing 70% of its annual needs. With trade talks between our two nations uncertain and global supply side issues always at risk, is this perhaps an opportunity to invest in domestic mining and processing?
Scott McWhorter:
I truly believe it is. The US is really set in the technology domain to have a renaissance in mining. And when I say a renaissance, it is that middle processing that we need. As I mentioned, all the resources that are out there from in my backyard, in Georgia, there's kaolin mining. We mine millions of tons of kaolin and there's tons and tons of kaolin mine tailings that are on the ground. So we're set to process that, we can get that going at the drop of a hat, permits are already there, we don't need to re-permit these. The technologies need to be scaled and tested, we need government investment, we need private investment. But those are the ways we stabilize our economy because we are a mineral-based economy now, we have shifted to that from solely a fossil-based economy. So we're really going to have to think differently and invest in mining.
Dana Taylor:
Scott, I understand there are vast stores of these minerals under the ocean floor. What's the potential for us there?
Scott McWhorter:
It's rich in minerals. The infrastructure required and the access is going to take a lot of investment. And the permitting and regulatory aspects of that are going to be difficult. I would say there's going to be lots of disturbances. So I would say that's a long-term solution, but it could be a viable option.
Dana Taylor:
I'm going to circle back to this. What's on the horizon in terms of new technology for finding, mining or processing these materials?
Scott McWhorter:
We can use AI and machine learning to really expedite that process and pinpoint where we need to go. So it lowers the burden on drilling and getting into certain areas. That could be where in the past we might've harmed more of the environment, now we can pinpoint and go in and mine in certain areas. In terms of understanding where we are in drilling, there are sensors and AI and machine learning that go into that as well as you're drilling that tell you, are you drilling in the right location? Are you moving throughout there? So data, AI, machine learning will lower that cost and speed up the process for those aspects.
Dana Taylor:
What's next for you and your team? What are you most excited about?
Scott McWhorter:
We've pulled together a large group in Georgia and there's a lot of excitement from the mining community to the end-use community because we have to have all parties to create that supply chain. So we're very interested in demonstrating how we in Georgia could create this model for the US of how to use those waste resources to stabilize the innovation market. So how we can supply these materials, these minerals for magnets, for EVs to support all of those different energy markets today that are going to be required for the next generation of markets that we see from data centers and such that are coming online.
So we're going to need all of these different materials to do that. But first it starts with a supply chain, identifying the feedstock components, the mining and all the distribution and processing in between. But then connected, you've got to have those end-use agreements. Who's going to buy those materials? And who's going to use those materials? So you really have to do that to create that market demand. And that's what we're really interested in is creating that middle processing and demonstrating those technologies, but then creating that whole end-to-end supply chain.
Dana Taylor:
Thank you, Scott. It was good to have you on The Excerpt.
Scott McWhorter:
Thank you, Dana.
Dana Taylor:
Thanks to our senior producer Shannon Rae Green and Kaely Monahan for their production assistance. Our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to [e-mail]. Thanks for listening. I'm Dana Taylor. Taylor Wilson will be back tomorrow morning with another episode of The Excerpt.