RE: Weekend reading24 Jan 2026 14:18
Thanks SG, an interesting paragraph in that Asia Times article:
"Today China controls 80% of the rare earths patents. China has 39 universities offering training programs in rare earths and seven universities offering courses in rare earths processing. Although institutions such as the University of Texas now seek to pick up the challenge," - which linked to: a University of Texas article "UT Taking Front Row Seat in Innovation in Critical Mineral Resources" : https://www.reportingtexas.com/ut-taking-front-row-seat-in-innovation-in-critical-mineral-resources/
Bodes well for our HypromagUS plant - lots of specialist talent being developed just down the road in Austin:
"UT-Austin’s focus on the topic of rare earth minerals comes at a crucial time for the state, which has emerged as a hub for large-scale semiconductor and chip manufacturing by companies like Samsung, Texas Instruments, Infineon, GlobalWafers, NXP, X-FAB and Applied Materials.
Texas is home to 411 data centers, the second most nationwide, and a new $40 billion investment from Google will fund the construction of three more."
"“The United States cannot actually succeed in the age of AI as a force to be reckoned with without having access to critical ingredients and imports that power our batteries, our devices, EVs, advanced defense equipment and chips,” said Dilawar Syed, an economic policy adviser and associate professor at the LBJ School.
The UT conferences have also focused on the promise of drawing resources from mineral waste. “We need recycling of critical minerals,” Fernandez said.
Currently, in the United States, it takes on average 15–30 years to open a new mining operation, from the idea and location to the start of the extraction.
“In the U.S. to meet demand, we would have to open at least 300 new mines in the next few years,” Tumurbat said.
By contrast, Tumurbat said, the time it takes to obtain permits to begin extracting the waste can be a span of months to a year. But many companies today have mountains of waste sitting on their balance sheets and want to offload them..
“There are billions of tons of material that have been mined historically that have incredible amounts of value, and we just need to develop technology to be able to process them,” Tumurbat said."
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