Marc Levy of AP News reports on how coal mines are being used to harvest rare earth minerals.
- As the U.S. looks to diversify away from China for rare earth minerals and develop a more domestic supply chain, abandoned coal mines may be critical.
- In West Virginia and North Dakota, universities and the federal government are collaborating to pull rare earths from the groundwater coming out of coal mines.
- These projects could not only increase the domestic supply of these metals, but they could also improve water quality in these communities.
“Other solutions to obtain more of these metals are retrieving them from discarded devices and shifting sourcing to friendly nations and away from geopolitical rivals or unstable countries, analysts say. For now, there is only a handful of critical or rare earth mineral mines in the United States, although many more are being proposed.”
Read the full article here.
The views and opinions expressed are those of the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of C3.
