It turns out the US has tons of rare earths sitting around all over the country. They’re in the ashes from coal plants which have burned millions of tons of the stuff over the past century.
The hard part is extracting it, of course, but there are people working on that. If they could crack the code it would be quite a bonanza, especially considering the kinds of shortages that manufacturers of all sorts are facing right now.
And burning coal has only increased rare earth concentration, says Bridget Scanlon, Ph.D., a geology research professor at the University of Texas at Austin. This means coal ash contains [four to 10 times] the amount of rare earths than coal mined straight from the ground.
The way Bagdonas sees it, the U.S. faces two main hurdles to producing rare earths from coal ash. The first is a regulatory hurdle: Who is responsible for the waste after rare earths have been processed? It may be the original company that burned the coal on the hook for the final waste product. Or, the company that processes rare earths. Perhaps the government should assume responsibility. So far this question is unresolved.
While processing rare earths—whether from coal ash or hard rock—can be an environmentally nasty process, Bagdonas says, companies are quickly making advances to fully contain it within a closed-loop system that would prevent dangerous exposure. A closed-loop system would also help keep the costs down, because recycling acids or microbes could do the dirty work of cleanup.
Producing rare earths domestically will also require huge financial investments from the private sector and government, Young says. Taxpayers may not want the government bankrolling rare earth mining. Lawmakers could, however, take some of the risk out of the market by providing a floor on pricing.