The stock is up 12.36% (+0.75) at $6.82 on the news.
From the Associated Press, October 24:
Malaysia’s government said Tuesday it will allow Lynas Rare Earth to continue to import and process rare earths until March 2026, after the Australian miner proposed a new technology to extract radioactive elements from the waste it produces.
The Lynas refinery in Malaysia, its first outside China producing minerals that are crucial to high-tech manufacturing, has been operating in central Pahang state since 2012. But the company has been embroiled in a dispute over radiation from waste accumulating at the plant.
The government had ordered Lynas to move its leaching and cracking processes — which produce the radioactive waste from Australian ore — out of the country by the year’s end. It also was not allowed to import raw materials with radioactive elements into the country....
....MUCH MORE
A couple previous thoughts on the importance of the processing refining and fabrication part of the supply chain:
And as noted in "Rare Earths: Reminder, Combined Brazilian and Vietnamese Resource Base Approximately Equals China's Proven and Probable Reserves":
Mining the stuff is relatively straightforward. The huge difference is that Brazil and Vietnam do not have the refining and fabricating infrastructure that China does....
Another 2023 post on rare earths, this one January 14:
"Huge rare earth metals discovery in Arctic Sweden"
They aren't that rare. Just hard to find in the right proportions of the different rare earth elements. And in concentrations high enough to make extraction a paying proposition.
And requiring some technical expertise to fabricate into end products. It's not as if there are neodymium magnets just laying around...
And in 2022's "Huge rare earth reserve discovered in Turkey, but experts caution that ‘grade is king’"
Not just grade. The composition of a deposit, the amounts of the 17 rare earth elements is critical. As one example, the Mountain Pass mine in the U.S. despite its relatively high grade (8% REEs) is actually not as valuable as some lower grade mines with a more profitable mix.
Additionally, exploitation of a REE resource is highly dependent on processing and supply chain factors that can not quickly be brought into being, it's one thing to have the deposit, quite another to have, for example, the end product, a neodymium magnet.
We have some experience with this stuff, if interested see after the jump....
....(we've been tracking the doings of the big dog since 2009's "With a Name Like Inner Mongolia Baotou Steel Rare-Earth Hi-Tech Co., it has to be good (600111:Shanghai)"
If interested we have hundreds of posts on rare earths.
And dozens on thorium:
Nuclear: "Bill Gates Is Beginning to Dream the Thorium Dream"
Okay, so I was early.
"Greenland bans uranium mining, blocking vast rare earths project"
Bezos, Andreessen and Gates Looking For Cobalt In Canada
Not them personally, can you imagine? Tramping around northern Saskatchewan?
Jeff: Bill, does this rock look blue to you?No, it's a company they're invested in....
Bill: I can't see it, let me get my glasses.
Marc: Guys, have I told you all the things I've wanted to tweet since I quit Twitter?
Jeff and Bill: Oh Gawd
This article is a bit hyperbolic but the fact China is getting close to firing it up is a pretty big deal.
I wish India were still pressing ahead. Fifteen years ago I would have bet on thorium reactors tripling India's GDP over a few decades but they decided to stick with coal....
