Podcast Episode: Why #Greenland? not #Mountainpass, #California for #RareEarth elements?
Pip: Welcome to the podcast where we dig into mining, mineral processing, and metals — sometimes literally. Today we're following the rare earth supply chain from California to the Arctic, courtesy of Nanthakumar Victor Emmanuel, P.Eng.
Mara: That's right — we're looking at why Greenland keeps coming up in rare earth conversations, and what the real obstacles are to building a Western supply chain that actually works.
Pip: Let's start with the Mountain Pass story, and why it matters more than the map suggests.
Why Greenland? The Mountain Pass lesson and what comes next
Mara: The central question here is why Western policymakers keep looking at Greenland when the United States already has a rare earth mine in California — and what that question reveals about the gap between mining and refining.
Pip: The post quotes a researcher named Chrisey to put the technical problem in plain terms: "Two different rare earth elements may be fractions of an angstrom different in diameter — that means it's very difficult to separate using physical means. The processes that are used right now can be 100 steps," with the procedure described as very expensive and environmentally hazardous due to the chemicals used.
Mara: So the upshot is that even if you have the ore in the ground, separating and purifying individual rare earth elements is a genuinely hard chemical problem — not just a permitting or investment problem.
Pip: Mountain Pass is the case study. Molycorp tried to be a one-stop American rare earths solution, and by 2013 revenues were in free fall. The post notes that Molycorp's most profitable assets ended up transferred to Chinese-linked Neo Materials, the mine was purchased out of bankruptcy by a consortium that included a Chinese-owned firm, and Mountain Pass was sending U.S.-mined concentrate to China for processing.
Mara: The dream of domestic end-to-end production collapsed not because the ore ran out, but because the refining technology and economics didn't hold. The post cites Reuters reporting that China controls 87 percent of global rare earths refining capacity, and that Beijing deliberately keeps prices for finished products low to inhibit foreign competition from building their own processing plants.
Pip: It's a neat trap — dig all you want, just send us the concentrate.
Mara: The post lays out a three-step prescription in response: invest in research and development on refining technologies first, build refineries at existing mines with infrastructure before opening new ones, and use tariffs or other tools to take price control away from China while local operations optimize. The reserve numbers matter here too — Greenland has 1.5 million metric tons of rare earth reserves, while the U.S. sits at 1.9 million. Neither country is close to China's 44 million metric tons.
Pip: Which reframes the Greenland question entirely — it's not about the ore, it's about whether Western refining can exist at all before anyone starts a new mine.
Mara: Exactly the argument the post makes. The infrastructure and processing capability have to come before the next frontier dig, or the concentrate just travels east again.
Pip: The economics of refining are where the real supply chain battle is being fought — and that's a thread worth pulling on next.
Mara: The Mountain Pass story keeps repeating because the refining problem keeps being skipped.
Pip: Build the refinery first, then talk about Greenland. That order matters.
Mara: More on the processing side next time.
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