OMAHA - The company working to build a mine in southeast Nebraska to extract a rare element used to make steel lighter and stronger said that it may also be able to produce some of the key ingredients needed to make the powerful magnets used in electric vehicles and other high-tech products.
NioCorp Developments released a new report shows those rare earth elements are present throughout the deposit it plans to mine if it can raise roughly $1 billion to build the project about 80 miles (128.75 kilometers) south of Omaha near the town of Elk Creek.
NioCorp plans to mine and produce other elements such as niobium, scandium, and titanium in an effort to make their project more attractive to investors. A several month-long analysis will be needed to determine if the company can economically produce the rare earth elements, however.
“If our rare-earth content is found to be high enough to economically justify extraction of individual rare earths as a byproduct of our planned niobium, scandium, and titanium production, the Elk Creek project could ultimately emerge as a U.S. producer of the magnetic rare earths,” NioCorp CEO Mark Smith said.
Analyst David Abraham believes that NioCorp will benefit if it can expand its ability to produce, but it is all contingent upon whether it is cost-effective or not.
“There’s a lot of minerals in the ore body,” said Abraham, who runs the Technology, Rare and Electronics Materials Center. “The question is what is actually economically feasible to recover and realistic to process.”
Currently, there is only one American mine that produces rare earths which is found in California. The U.S. imports all the niobium and scandium, and all the titanium and rare earths that manufacturers rely on now.
“Without getting too far ahead of ourselves I think there is some real economic potential here and boy, it sure would be nice to make some of this stuff in the United States along with the niobium, scandium, and titanium,” NioCorp’s Chief Operations Officer Scott Honan said.
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