Leveraging its global dominance in the realm of rare earth elements, China has set in motion a strategy to gain supremacy in manufacturing the vast array of technologically advanced products that depend on these metals.
“China can exploit rare earths that they control all the way out to electric cars, wind turbines, whatever it is — and that is the grand strategy,” American Elements Chairman and CEO Michael Silver told about 200 participants in the Alaska Strategic and Critical Minerals Summit held in Fairbanks last September.
Silver, who founded American Elements two decades ago, is a firsthand witness to China’s rise to dominance as the global supplier of REEs.
In order to avoid exporting its high-technology manufacturing jobs to China, Silver told the legislators, regulators, miners and members of the media attending the summit that the United States needs to get into the REE game — from mining the critical minerals through assembling the products that benefit from the unique properties of these “magical” metals.
It is a game in which the American Elements executive believes Alaska could play a significant role.
“Alaska certainly has an opportunity to be the pre-eminent U.S. producer of rare earths in the future,” Silver told Mining News. “Good for Alaska, good for the country.”
“Alaska has accepted the challenge,” Gov. Sean Parnell told participants of the summit. “Where China has said, ‘We’re going to curtail exports,’ … Alaska is accepting the challenge of saying, ‘We’ve got them here, and we want to provide them to our nation and to the world beyond.”
The Department of Natural Resources organized the daylong summit to brainstorm ways to encourage the development of Alaska’s strategic and critical minerals.
During the summit, Parnell unveiled a five-part strategy on strategic minerals. This plan, which focuses heavily on rare earths, involves:
• undertaking a statewide assessment of our strategic mineral potential;
• providing incentives for the development of known or highly-prospective strategic mineral occurrences;
• making improvements in the structure and efficiency of Alaska’s permitting processes;
• strengthening partnerships and cooperation with other government entities, Alaska Native corporations and potential developers; and,
• attracting new investments and markets for Alaska’s mineral resources.
As part of this strategy, Parnell included $2.7 million in the Alaska’s fiscal year 2013 budget to find out just how prolific REEs are in the state.
The Alaska Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys — which began this investigation in 2011 — has identified more than 150 REE occurrences across the state. This project includes the review of existing geophysical data on REEs, as well as new geochemical analyses of samples at the state’s Geologic Materials Center in Eagle River.
“The timing is right for rare earth development,” Parnell said. “We’re on track to assess, incentivize and develop the rare earth elements we can provide the world.”
Bokan underscores potential
Alaska’s REE potential is underscored by Ucore Rare Metals Inc.’s Bokan Mountain property on Prince of Wales Island.
An inaugural NI 43-101-compliant resource calculated for Bokan in 2011 estimates that the deposit hosts an inferred mineral resource of 3.7 million metric tons grading 0.75 percent total rare earth oxides.
Though not particularly large or high-grade, 39 percent of the TREO found at Bokan are the more valuable heavy rare earth oxides.
Technology Metals Research co-founder Jack Lifton — considered to be a leading authority on the sourcing and end-use trends of rare and strategic metals — said Bokan Mountain is key to securing a domestic supply of the critical heavy REEs.
Among the heavy rare earths found at Bokan are dysprosium and terbium — two metals considered to be especially vital to high-tech and green industries.
Dysprosium has been ranked by the U.S. Department of Energy as the number one most critical strategic metal to the United States.
The mineral resource at Bokan Mountain contains an estimated 0.29 kilograms of dysprosium per metric ton. Of the remaining four rare earth metals DOE deemed critical, Bokan contains an estimated 1.08 kilograms per metric ton neodymium, 0.05 kilograms per metric ton terbium, 0.03 kilograms per ton europium and 1.88 kilograms per metric ton yttrium.
In its initial assessment, DGGS identified a trend of REE prospects stretching along the entire 135-mile length of Prince of Wales Island; many of which display characteristics similar to Bokan.
Based upon preliminary work carried out by the United States Geological Survey and subsequently reviewed by Fairbanks-based Avalon Development Corp., Contango Ore Inc. snatched up Salmon Bay and Stone Rock Bay — two of the island’s REE prospects.
The Stone Rock Bay property is located about 12 miles south of Bokan Mountain and Salmon Bay is located on the northern shores of the island.
Dora Lake, located about 20 miles north of Bokan Mountain, is another interesting REE prospect unveiled in the initial DGGS assessment. Geological investigations in 1990 discovered REE-bearing pegmatites along a two-mile trend. The geologists that conducted the survey estimate a 1-meter-thick vein dike contains an inferred resource of about 500,000 tons of material with 442 parts-per-million niobium, 71 ppm uranium, 1,775 ppm yttrium, 1.53 percent zirconium, and 2,816 ppm REE. And, like Bokan, nearly half of the REE content of this prospect is estimated to be the highly sought-after heavy variety.
The REE-trend on Prince of Wales Island is a subset of a 350-mile belt that spans Southeast Alaska. All told, more than two dozen REE prospects have been identified along the panhandle.
REEs across Alaska
Another band of REE prospects about 90 miles east of Nome is strikingly similar to the geology that hosts the REE deposits on Prince of Wales Island.
“It is the same sort of geology as far as we know right now. It is one of those unusual type granites that tend to have these types of elements in them — uranium, thorium and the rare earths,” said Kinross Gold Corp.’ Dave Szumigala, who until recently served as senior minerals geologist at the Alaska Department of Natural Resources Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys.
Not only is the geology right, but a dozen REE-bearing occurrences have been identified along the prospective trend.
Mount Prindle in Interior Alaska is a particularly exciting prospect due to the high concentrations of REEs discovered there.
The property — located about 60 miles north of Fairbanks — was staked for uranium by MAPCO Inc. in 1978. Subsequent exploration identified several small deposits with extremely high concentrations of REEs and thorium. Rock samples taken from Mount Prindle returned grades of 15 percent REE and 0.1 percent uranium oxide.
The downside to this high-grade REE prospect is it lies within the White Mountain National Recreation Area. Though it is located in a region off limits to mining, the U.S. Secretary of the Interior could allow for hardrock minerals leases in the area. In a draft resource management plan for Eastern Interior Alaska, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management is considering mineral leasing in the White Mountain Recreation Area.
Another belt of highly prospective strategic metals hunting ground stretches along the fringes of the 3,000-square-mile (8,000 square kilometers) Ruby batholith in Interior Alaska.
"The Ray Mountains and the Kokrines Hills area of the state is one of the places that stand out of rare earths," explains Avalon Development Corp. President Curt Freeman.
A field investigation carried out by DGGS in 2011 has unearthed some high concentrations of REEs in the Kokrines Hills area of the Melozitna Mining District, one of several rare earth-prospective areas in the Ruby Terrane.
Following up on this success, state geologists are investigating the REE potential of the Ray Mountains, another Ruby batholith-related prospect area that spans an enormous region from just north of the Yukon River along the Dalton Highway to about the Arctic Circle.
NURE outlines prospects
The National Uranium Resource Evaluation program — originally charged with evaluating domestic uranium potential when initiated by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission in 1973 — was expanded to test for REEs and other strategic metals. This led to the identification of a number of large REE prospective areas across Alaska.
Between 1975 through 1979, this extensive geological initiative blanketed about 80 percent of Alaska with stream sediment, soil and rock samples.
Though little work has been done to follow-up on the discoveries made under NURE, several large swaths of REE anomalies were discerned by the program. Areas of note are a 175-mile-long trend stretching along the southern slope of the Alaska Range and a region stretching about the same distance west from the Cook Inlet.
With China putting a squeeze on supply, many of the REE anomalies found across Alaska are being further scrutinized by government agencies and exploration companies seeking a domestic supply of these minerals critical to high-tech and green-energy manufacturing.
