Mine in Mojave Desert May Hold Key to Beating China in the Race for Raw Materials

By Adam Housley
Published April 06, 2011
FoxNews.com

In the middle of California's Mojave Desert about an hour outside of the Las Vegas strip, business is booming -- literally -- as detonations reveal the lifeblood of America's technical security.

Molycorp has begun mining again at its Mountain Pass facility after about a decade of inactivity, extracting valuable and concentrated ore that holds 15 rare earth elements, used in everything from cell phones to U.S. missile systems.

In recent years, the Chinese have flooded, and thus cornered, about 97 percent of the world market of rare earth metals, and now thanks to high-tech demand and new Chinese restrictions on exports, the price of some of these rare earth elements has skyrocketed as much as 500 percent in the last year alone.

“The supply of rare earths predominantly comes from China, and China needs most of the rare earths they produce for their own consumption," Molycorp mine manager Rocky Smith said. "So all of the people of the United States and Europe and Japan, they’re going to have to find another source of these valuable rare earths, and that’s one of the main reasons this operation is so important.â€