The United States is finally starting to dig itself out of a rare earth metals hole it spent decades digging. The effort got a boost on July 29, when Energy Fuels announced that construction has begun on a commercial-scale expansion at its White Mesa Mill in Utah. The expansion of the only fully licensed and operating conventional uranium processing facility in the United States, will enable the plant to produce heavy rare earth oxides at meaningful volumes. This key event, along with other developments in the U.S. and allied nations like Australia, represent concrete steps toward breaking China’s chokehold on the materials that power everything from electric vehicle motors and humanoid robots to advanced weapons systems and data centers.
Heavy Rare Earth Metals: A Supply Chain Pinch Point
Heavy rare earths are the severe pinch point in current Western permanent magnet supply chains. These elements give high-performance magnets the coercivity and heat resistance needed for smaller, lighter, and more powerful motors. Energy Fuels already has commercial capacity for up to 1,000 tons per year of separated neodymium-praseodymium (NdPr) oxide, the lighter rare earths that form the bulk of most magnets. The new circuits will add roughly 20 tons of terbium, 120 tons of dysprosium, 140 tons of samarium, 20 tons of europium, and 140 tons of gadolinium annually, with terbium and dysprosium online by the end of 2027 and the rest by the end of 2028.
“Those heavy rare earth metals are sort of the holy grail that allow these magnets to work across all temperature ranges and don’t lose their magnetism over time,” Energy Fuels CEO Ross Bhappu told me in a recent interview. “These are vitally important components to these magnets. They’re used in tiny quantities but they’re extremely important, and that’s where China has an incredible grip on the market today.”
