S2 E62: Why Rare Earth Elements Matter: Insights into Their Critical Role

Dustin Olsen (00:40)
Hey everyone, welcome back to the Rare Earth Exchanges podcast. You're joined by me, your host Dustin and my co-host Daniel. And today we have a return guest, Bob Fox from the Idaho National Laboratory. Bob, welcome back to the show. How are you doing?

Bob Fox (00:54)
Thank you, Dustin Great to be back here. And the conversation the first time was fantastic, very stimulating, and ⁓ ready for round two.

Dustin Olsen (01:03)
Absolutely. So yeah, let's dive into round two. So just before the show started, we were talking about the economic play, the vital importance of Rare Earths and how ⁓ probably a lot of people aren't deeply aware of all the different areas of life that we see these elements show up. So to kind of start this off, let's talk about why they're critical.

but maybe a bit hidden.

Bob Fox (01:27)
Why are they critical? Critical is actually a market term that looks at vulnerability. Market vulnerability. Is there a market pinch point in the supply chain? Pinch point in technology? Pinch point in economic? Pinch point? Is there something that gets in the way from the material

material

being supplied in abundance in the quality that you need for the intended activity and so If something is critical then there is a pinch point. There's a vulnerability and and so for ⁓ critical materials That are used in in technologies We resource those primarily from ores from mines

Although they can be resourced from from other locations, but when you have one single dominant supplier that is dominant worldwide in a worldwide market and that supplier is not only providing supply dominance, but then all

areas and sectors downstream from ⁓ mining, the refining, the fabrication, manufacturing.

When you have a single entity country that dominates all those, then you have a situation where that country can manipulate supply. And those materials then are, they become scarce or they become very expensive and industry cannot then put its technologies and goods and services out into the marketplace or countries cannot

themselves because they do not have the adequate resources for their defense platforms to defend the country. So critical in that term.

Daniel O'Connor (03:19)
you

Dustin Olsen (03:20)
It's fascinating. think a lot of us don't ever realize truly how integrated a lot of these things are and how a lot of these things simply just cannot exist without them. You made an entry comment too before the show started. like, we talk about the cloud. It's made of metal. Where does that metal come from? it's these things, these services, this way of life that we've become so accustomed to is

dependent on these materials, which I just don't think people realize. I don't think they understand the gravity of the situation if suddenly we're at that pinch point where we can't get them.

Daniel O'Connor (03:53)
So.

Bob Fox (03:53)
It's

not just.

our current way of life and technological level of advancement, it's where we want to go. It's where we want to go by 2030. It's where we want to be as a nation by 2050. It's where we want to go next. And if you don't have adequate supply and economically ⁓ feasible supply, your future is not as bright as you anticipated.

Daniel O'Connor (04:21)
So, Bob, I had a question about rare earth elements, and the context of critical and economics. So these are very important inputs. the pricing, a lot of people don't understand the pricing. China has the vast majority of the refining and magnet production associated with these elements.

and they have their pricing scheme. And then over in the West, United States, Australia, what have you, the pricing seems to be, there's some policies now promulgating a floor price. But could you talk a little bit about the economics of these and why it's different than gold or some standard commodity?

Bob Fox (05:00)
sure the pricing for let's call rare earth, the lanthanides plus scandium and nitrium, the pricing it's interesting because in geologic formations

When you excavate and retrieve rare earths, you get them all. Okay, and one shovel full, you get all of them.

And yet, when you get all of them, not only do you have to separate all of them individually, but because they all chemically behave like each other, they're very difficult to separate. So there's a lot of energy, time, cost consumed in individually separating them. But once you individually separate them, and you have to because impure materials

do not a good magnet make. So you have to separate them to get pure materials. Well, you're going to get a lot of lanthanum and a lot of cerium and some of the other rare earths that are not useful for magnets. They're not useful for other purposes.

you've just spent a lot of time in separating something that is uneconomic compared to the neodymium or the terbium or dysprosium that you need to make your magnet. So you're bearing the burden of not only resourcing all those other things that you really don't need, but then separating all those things that you don't need. And so there's been a lot of effort into trying to

Daniel O'Connor (06:15)
you

you

Okay. Okay.

Bob Fox (06:36)
to

valorize or find other industrial outlets, viable, suitable outlets for the other massive quantities of rare that you get when you try to pull out the neodymium, terbium, dysprosium for magnets. So, and a lot of that work was pioneered by the Critical Materials Institute, is now known as the Critical Materials Innovation Hub. But they were looking at

how to balance the economics by finding suitable outlets for cerium by way of example. Cerium primarily either used in catalyst or used as ⁓ an optics polish. The Critical Materials Institute researchers developed a cerium aluminum alloy. Okay, so cerium aluminum alloy, great alloy, very tough, strong.

Daniel O'Connor (07:04)
.

Bob Fox (07:28)
built for small motors, motor alloys.

etc. and they have offset the economic burden there by taking cerium, which was the throwaway lanthanide, and now making it a value-add product. So all of the other lanthanides that need to follow suit and we need to find suitable products and outlets so that they don't become detractors in

and overall economics, but they become adders, positive.

Daniel O'Connor (07:57)
So so it sounds like

I guess as a follow up on that, there's a lot of effort that goes into not only mining, but separating and even refining. And that may or may not be captured by the market in terms of price points, optimally, right?

Bob Fox (08:13)
Yeah, exactly and and so The market is going to look the critical material market and let's just zero in on the rare earth since we're there talking They're really going to the markets are going to

centralized around the technology metals. your neodymium, praseodymium, terbium dysprosium. And there's going to be other minor uses for the other rare earths. But

the market outside of magnets is not all that great and not all that lucrative compared to the value add or the value of the magnet market.

Daniel O'Connor (08:51)
Right.

So.

Just another question on pricing. We're seeing obviously there's pricing in China, which is where the vast majority of the rare earth elements are separated and refined. Would you say, given the ⁓ one deal with the US Department of Defense, Department of War and empty materials that there was a price for and

Linus recently had a price floor with the Japanese government. So would you say that we're headed in that direction where the entire West is going to have some kind of price for?

Bob Fox (09:26)
Yeah, I think so. If you look at the rare earth market, let's just…

start in the 1970s or 1980s and look at the cost per kilogram or even metric ton of rare materials. was going up, standard market turnover.

But then what you started to see as China began to develop more of Bainobo, they developed more of the beneficiation and separation capacity, they developed more refining capacity, they developed more manufacturing capacity, then what China did was intentionally skew the market

by developing overproduction capacity so that a lot of inexpensive materials could then be flooded onto the market. so companies like Molly Core that were based on capitalistic systems and…

world markets and world economy, they were seeing themselves constantly undercut and undercut by overproduced materials from China to the point where China basically ran everybody out of business. So…

How many times throughout history have we seen various nations utilize their resources in a way similar to that to cause for intentional fluctuations or misrepresentation of the true cost of something in the market? We see it all the time. ⁓ And so now that China has a dominant position,

Daniel O'Connor (11:08)
Right.

Bob Fox (11:14)
you have to look at what are some of the mitigations or protections.

that if you're trying to stand up a stable domestic supply chain, what are some of the things that you can do to mitigate some of those depredations that such a country is going to try to exercise to, again, crush everything and run everyone out of business? if you look at what happened in the 1970s with petroleum, the U.S. established a strategic petroleum reserve in order

to levelize ⁓ fluctuations in market and the cost of materials. So having a strategic mineral reserve, a strategic critical material reserve is basically the answer to that stand up strategic reserve. So what are some of the other things? A floor price. So if you have a country that's overproducing

Daniel O'Connor (12:05)
.

Bob Fox (12:08)
and using their overproduction to intentionally drive an artificial low price, then those mining organizations and people are doing beneficiation and separation to bring material up to a certain feedstock status

in the marketplace. They need to have the ability to continue to function, continue to operate, or otherwise you lose all that ⁓ capital investment and that capability.

So in order to maintain capability you have a floor price and anyone who's in the game in the United States they're at least guaranteed to have this amount of know of profit material or money if you're engaged and you're producing material for specification. So those are some of the thoughts behind things like floor price or strategic reserve. They're all action.

that are designed to mitigate and offset parties in the marketplace that are intentionally trying to artificially either inflate or artificially depress activity and prices in the market.

Daniel O'Connor (13:12)
Fascinating. Dustin, have some more questions, go ahead, Dustin. Let's jump into it little bit more and then I'll come back.

Dustin Olsen (13:18)
Yeah, yeah. So I have a question here and I want to talk more about the process intensification where we try to do the same work in two steps rather than five. But I was hoping you could help us understand what that actually looks like.

Bob Fox (13:33)
Yeah.

So it is a ⁓ systems engineering term, process intensification, and basically what you're doing is what you said. If industry, the normal way they did it, took five steps, then can you do it in less, in less steps? And so I'll give you by way of example. So in a standard life cycle of

of a rare earth. You dig the ore out of the ground, you send it to a mill, you make a concentrate from the mill where beneficiation occurs. The concentrate is then sent to a separations plant where you're starting to break down into individual rare earth materials, each according to their kind. And then you're leaving

that

separation plan at about 95, 90 to 95 % purity, then you're going to refinement, which is taking you to four nine, six nines or higher. And then once you're at the end of the refining operation, then you're ready to have feedstocks that go into a manufacturing process for devices. Okay, so if you look at all of those steps,

Is there a way to bypass all of that infrastructure from the rock face to the end product of the refiner? Is there a way to bypass all of that process with technology, with new technology, and put technology as close as you possibly can to the rock face and

Approximal to the rock face or at the rock face not only separate but refine to three nines four nines five nines six nines or higher Using technology and bypass all of that conventional Processing and infrastructure is there a way to do that so that as close to the mine site as possible

you're actually producing or carting off of the mine site something that is coming out four or five nights. That is the concept of process intensification. How do do that though? How do you do that? You need more powerful technology. You need technology that has the separations power to go in amongst all of the minerals or atoms

Daniel O'Connor (15:35)
.

Bob Fox (15:55)
comprise the ore and just fetch out what you need and take it from there and put it over there with all of the others each according to their kind and do that in you know an inexpensive rapid but high integrity manner so that the only thing you're taking off the mine site is ⁓ high purity material.

Daniel O'Connor (16:07)
.

Bob Fox (16:17)
So, wow, what does that technology look like? So basically what it's doing, and this is the…

the philosophy that we're following with the development of many of our separations technologies here at Idaho National Laboratory is when you have a technology that has the ability to discriminate between atoms and separate them to 99.999 % purity, those typically are analytical machines that sit in a laboratory and they do their thing.

They have the ability to discriminate at the atomic scale and sort out one atom from the other. That's great for this pristine analytical laboratory.

Daniel O'Connor (17:05)
.

Bob Fox (17:05)
But can you just

throw that, you know, analytical device in your truck, drive it to the mine site, feed it raw ore, and expect it to do the same thing? No, it chokes. You know, there are too many other contaminants in the way, too many interference, the ore is the wrong state of matter, you know. So what the problem is, is you've got an instrument in the lab that can do it.

it.

But you have to transition that instrument from how it's able to work and divide and separate so that it can do that on different states of matter with many interference in the way and do it very quickly and inexpensively. It's the separations triangle. It's what separation scientists always challenge themselves with.

⁓

You can either, so speed, resolution, and cost. Those are the three eight legs of the triangle. You get two at the expense of the third. Okay? You want it fast, you want it cheap, it's gonna be, you know, it's gonna be an ugly mess. There's gonna be all kinds of stuff still left in it. So, that's the separations challenge. And so what we're doing is we're taking devices,

that normally would be able to separate and discriminate at the atomic scale and do so in a high integrity manner in the lab and we're reworking that technology to where we can feed it almost raw material and have it separate and refine to a very high level of integrity and purity.

Daniel O'Connor (18:41)
So

if a dust just on the separation in the lab environment that I know I had you all have we developed a public technology out of the lab or Is this is this something that is already a known approach for separation or is this something new?

Bob Fox (18:48)
you

This is all brand new. This is taking many of the existing separations technologies and totally rethinking them.

Daniel O'Connor (19:06)
Mm-hmm.

Bob Fox (19:08)
Totally rethinking the fundamental basis of them and how they're conventionally applied. And also taking the approach of making hybrid technologies. By way of example, chromatography. Chromatography, ion exchange chromatography. Chromatography is a huge industry, a huge science and business unto itself.

So we're making hybrid chromatographic methodologies. We're adding in not only chromatographic separation, but electrochemistry at the same time. electrochemistry or electrophoretics, doing mobility in electric field or changing oxidation state of a species, it's being chromatographically separated.

so that you are able to have your discriminating molecules that attach and do molecular recognition on your stationary phase. You change the oxidation state of your analyte so that it selectively binds to your molecular recognition receptor. So you're making hybrid technologies. Hybrid technologies, we don't win the Nobel Prize for

uniqueness there because hybrid technologies are the next generation of separations technologies that are showing much greater power at separation. way of example you've heard of membrane separation, right? You've heard of solvent extraction, right? Well how about membrane solvent extraction, okay? You know it's not to paint the mental picture of a bunch of scientists in their lab coats, you know, writing down

Daniel O'Connor (20:30)
Yeah.

Bob Fox (20:44)
separation technologies on a piece of paper and then sticking that piece of paper in a blender and then taking the pieces out and sketching them together afterwards. It's not quite so Frankensteinian as that, but it is basically, that is the trend in separation technology, is to combine the power of two or more established separations methods into a new hybrid method that does give

you that discrimination power that you're able to move closer to the rock face.

Daniel O'Connor (21:19)
So, Bob, I'm going to say something controversial and you tell me if I'm incorrect. But we often hear this and we talk to a lot of people around the world. There's only one real standard separation, industrial scale or separation process at scale. That's used. And that's the solvent extraction, liquid-liquid involving hundreds of

like mixer settlers in China, they've developed and refined this over a couple decades. Is that true? Is that the only separation of rare earth elements at scale method today?

Bob Fox (21:55)
So it is what China has settled on for the time being to use solvent extraction. They put a lot of effort and research and development effort into solvent extraction. And it's a known performer. They know that all they have to do is just run this thing for 200 stages. And your answer comes out at the end.

Solve extraction produces a lot of secondary waste. takes a lot of time. So it's time intensive, resource intensive. It will give you a known separation factor after so many iterations. So you can achieve the goal. And it is what China has invested a lot of money on. even China is not satisfied with that. You look at all of the other research and intellectual property

that China themselves is investing and developing for other separations. Not only that, next generation of solvent extraction where solvent extraction is then made into a hybrid. They're now incorporating electrophoretics into solvent extraction. They're doing other advancements with solvent extraction. You see a lot of membrane solvent

extraction development. So even China knows and understands that you can't you know, stagnate. You still have to keep moving forward because there's always more advancement that can be made. So at the moment, what you said is true. It's not necessarily controversial. It's true. It's practical. But everyone knows that it's a moving target. You need to move forward and develop new technology.

Daniel O'Connor (23:36)
100%. And it's exciting to know that we have the research going on in this country at the level and scale that Idaho National Labs is involved with. Dustin, I have some questions about recycling, but maybe you want to have another question or two?

Bob Fox (23:53)
So, if I could add to it real quick, if you don't mind, I could add there real quick, and I'll tell you, here's an underpinning driver. Many of the separations methodologies are going to be linked or coupled with artificial intelligence, okay, that is going to drive advancement and efficiency. And so, it never stops. Technology development never stops.

Dustin Olsen (23:53)
Yeah, so before we…

Daniel O'Connor (24:16)
Understood, understood.

Bob Fox (24:17)
Sorry, Justin.

Dustin Olsen (24:18)
No, you're totally fine. I think it's just another example of how AI is going to influence the world we live in. I think before we moved on to Daniel's questions about recycling is if you could really quick, if you were to explain what separation is in like 60 seconds for a policymaker or someone who's trying to understand what it is that we're all talking about, I think that would probably help. And then we can continue on.

Bob Fox (24:40)
Right, so separation is breaking everything down, all of matter, to the atomic scale and then dividing out each individual atom.

each according to its kind. So putting all of the aluminum over here, putting all of the neodymium over there, putting all of the sodium over there. It's basically breaking things down to the bare atomic constituents and then dividing out each according to their kind and separating those, putting aside.

Dustin Olsen (25:13)
That's great. And to add just a little bit of context there, we do that through like chemicals or technologies you were saying, right?

Bob Fox (25:23)
There are a number of different physical.

methods, mechanical methods, you look at the properties of each atomic species and you look at differentiators between those atomic species that allow you to differentiate it, bring to bear a magnetic field, a photonic field, a chemical reaction that will allow you to discriminate

all atoms of that type between all atoms of another type.

Daniel O'Connor (25:55)
So on that, before we move to recycling, on separation, the chemicals that are used today and that may be used tomorrow, another thing we hear often is that many of them are produced in China, maybe India a bit, but that's another, if we look at industrial policy and separation, it's not just the

the process know how the technology, but it's also inputs like chemicals that seemingly seem, OK, yeah, we need that, but it isn't necessarily produced here. Is that true, that point that we hear?

Bob Fox (26:32)
No, that's very true. United States still does have a lot of chemical manufacturing capacity. But China does dominate not only across the metallurgy space, and it's not just critical materials, but ⁓ many different metals.

But China also dominates in manufacturing capacity, industrial scale capacity of many other things, textiles, chemicals, etc. that go into many of our technologies and products that we use today.

Daniel O'Connor (27:02)
That's helpful. That is very helpful. So Dustin, feel free to jump in. recycling is an important topic. And obviously, there's lots of research going on. There's different startup companies. There's spin-offs from universities. We just interviewed a fascinating person that has a company spun out of, I think, one of the universities in Texas.

Yet we keep hearing the same statistic that even in China or in ⁓ China, for example, there's very little recycling going on that is very difficult. It's difficult to separate these elements out of the host rock or clay, what have you, but doing it from reused either tailings or coal or from electronic waste.

is extremely difficult yet that seems to be an important aspect to all of us. Could you maybe talk a bit about that, where we're at in the life, the technology curve of innovation and how far off are we from being able to recycle if ever at scale?

Bob Fox (28:07)
Yeah, circularity is vitally important. Circularity is basically fundamental to sustainability. And any advanced industrialized society understands that circularity is absolutely ⁓ vital because resources are not infinite. Resources are finite.

If you're mining and ore or resourcing ore, resourcing a material, all of the energy that it took to…

Rub-a-lize it, dig it up from where it is, recover it from wherever it is, rub-a-lize it, beneficiate it, separate it, refine it, all of the embodied energy that you put into that, the BTUs of energy, of the minutes and minutes and hours of time, all of the chemical reagents, and all of the people lives that it touched along the way until you

get it so refined that it's suitable now to manufacture into a functional device and then all of a sudden it shows up in a functional device and while it's in that functional device it's at its highest value it's at its highest state of embodied energy it took the longest amount of time to get it there

And there's only a small amount of it per device, it's incredibly value in that state. if you have your cell phone, if you're like me, I take care of mine. so I'm actually, my cell phones are always typically older than everybody else's because I keep using it and I don't upgrade all that often.

But my cell phones don't die when…

When I upgrade, I recycle, recover this. And so our recycling techniques that we're currently using, these devices are not designed to recycle. You want to design something to recycle it. You want to design it in such a way that you go in and with minimal energy and technology, retrieve that minor component that took so much embodied energy to get there.

Daniel O'Connor (30:07)
All right.

Bob Fox (30:22)
Because it's functional in that state the magnet is still functional So you want to go and retrieve that in its high purity and functional state otherwise if you shred that thing You've just adulterated it now and taken it back to the Stone Ages No pun intended, you know and and you have to put all that embodied energy back in it to get it back to that that pinnacle and and so if you look at

industrialized society, have metals, have plastics, have functional devices like batteries, etc. We do an excellent job of recycling lead acid batteries in United States. Greater than 95 % of all lead acid batteries are recycled. We do a very poor job of recycling rare earths and critical materials in general in the United States.

Beach.

Not because we don't want to. I found out you put a recycle bucket out there, people will use it. They'll fill it up for you. We don't have the infrastructure. We don't have the recycle bins that will specifically take materials specifically for the recovery of the critical materials in those electronic devices or magnets, et cetera.

see on an industrial scale the ⁓ recyclers and they'll all be pulling hard drives apart. They'll pull motor magnets, etc. We're starting to get enough electric vehicles out there now to where the traction motors, we're starting to see more magnets show up in recycle and automotive recycle. But the actual plants that take that scrap and reprocess

refine and bring it back to that pinnacle of function state. We don't have that infrastructure here available in the United States and in many places around the world that infrastructure is simply not there.

Daniel O'Connor (32:18)
Just on that note, Bob, and that's a great answer, very enlightening answer, delineated very well. We find even in China, we've been tracking this, that they're really just starting. They're not on top of it, Bob, based on what we can tell. They're trying to pilot recycling methodologies. I think they're not there yet on recycling.

Now, I think it's important, piloting of separation and refining is key. Bob, as we know, the bottleneck is not the mining. Yes, we need more feedstock, no question. But the real bottleneck is the separation and refining, especially of heavy rare earth elements. And we track these things pretty well, and we think that that's a pretty important topic.

And that just happens to dovetail with what the lab is doing with the pilot facility, right? So I think it would be really interesting to learn a little bit more about, you know, pilots, how they should work, you know, when is someone ready to do one, you what do they cost? How can the lab help?

Bob Fox (33:24)
Yeah, so I have a national lab.

anchors and has anchored from day one and still anchors the focus area three of the critical materials innovation hub and that started out as a recycle recovery then they changed the name to circularity etc. and so it's basically it is that circular part and so we had 10 years of innovation and developing technology from bench scale

up to pilot scale and then getting industry involved and piloting recycle recovery technologies. And we were finding ourselves, you know, totally owning that space and doing very well. And then we looked at the fact that exactly what you pointed out, Daniel, and that is, yeah, recycle recovery is a challenge. are a lot of challenging problems. But we could take our show on the road and go down to

where some of the real separations challenges were occurring and that is in the beneficiation and in the separations plant. And so while still owning the recycle recovery space, we started about five, six years ago going into separations for environmental media and specifically developing technology to pull

out and serving as a technology provider in that most difficult of spaces and that is ⁓ separations, both in the mechanical physical separations, which we all know is called beneficiation, but then all in the chemical and atomic scale separations, which is a separations technology. And so we're there and there's a lot of

⁓ of very good challenges going forward. And that is a segue into the answer of your next question you asked, but I'm going have to have you repeat that.

Daniel O'Connor (35:23)
well

i i think that you know

What would be a scenario, because we're starting to see investment come into the country, from with investors within the United States and abroad. think the administration is doing a notable job of raising awareness about this topic, making investments and grants and loans, a notable job. So it's attracting attention around the world. There's a lot of capital now that's

looking to flow into this if it can find the right mathematics. so, you know, when it comes to, for example, INL and companies, private ventures and pilot projects, is there sort of a formula or I mean, how does that evolve? I mean, without giving away any trade secrets, we'd like, you know, if there's somebody listening out there, investors that want to know

When should we call the lab? When can we, know, what are some of the triggers that we look at for rare earth pilot, ⁓ refining pilots, separation refining pilots?

Bob Fox (36:24)
Right, exactly Daniel, thank you. Pilot scale. Okay, pilot scale. You have technology that you're working on in the bench scale and it's typically low technology readiness level. Two, and then when you reduce to practice, it's technically three. Then four is when you're parameterizing at a bench scale, learning what affects the process the most. And when you're at ⁓ a TRL,

5 which is often called pilot scale then you move your bench scale technology to a larger scale and You're integrating all of your systems all of the individual components are now Should be operating as ⁓ one contiguous unit You're where feedstock is coming in the front and products are going out the back. Okay, so We look at pilot scale

for a couple of reasons and and so let's first of all define What does what does the volume or size or capacity of a pilot scale need to be in order to be pilot scale? In our opinion You could be pilot scale at milliliter per minute or gallon per minute

It doesn't make a difference which capacity you're at there as long as the process is running.

at a size of scale that allows you to obtain valid process economic and techno economic data. Okay? So if you have to run your process and you need to do it at a gallon per minute in order to test the engineering, prove out the engineering, then it's a gallon per minute. Well, what if

you say well I'm not going to run it a gallon per minute I'm going to run it at 10 gallons per minute.

Do you need to run it at 10 gallons per minute when one gallon per minute is giving you all the process economic and techno economic data that is necessary? Running it at 10 gallon per minute is basically overkill and is not really what a pilot theory is about. Pilot theory is you're no longer really testing science, you're testing engineering and scalability. You're testing process economics, you're testing

Daniel O'Connor (38:44)
Right.

Bob Fox (38:46)
that the process, the science functions and the process engineering functions and this is how much it's going to cost. This is how much energy it consumes. This is how much time it takes. So when you're piloting something, you're looking at it, all of the science functions, you're looking at giving the, looking under the hood and seeing what the engineering is able to do and how much it's going to cost and does it scale. So that is piling. So we actually,

like to have industry.

early on in the technology development life cycle. We want industry available when we're looking at reduction to practice. We found that if industry is in it with a team, embedded with the team, and reduction to practice goes, they're owning that now. They have sweat equity, and in some cases they have co-inventorship, they have ownership in the technology.

reduction to practice stage, they're more likely to then practice that technology, take the technology, take the national property and practice if they're in it early on. But if they don't have the stomach for risk for that level of research, then joining us at the pilot scale is a perfect place to jump in because then they don't have to worry necessarily about the science. The science has already been

proven, they're then taking on the challenge and helping us to solve the engineering challenges. And so they're taking on the risk at that phase where they may be much more comfortable because they have the employees and the expertise to help us take on the engineering scaling and the engineering problems to go from pilot then to production, etc. each according to their risk, each according to their capabilities,

they know the best and how to solve the problem. we're happy to have industry. We'll take you at whatever level of risk you're willing to take on.

Daniel O'Connor (40:48)
Dustin, it's an incredibly valuable institution, Idaho National Laboratory. Maybe this is a good time to talk about how this is all possible, how partners in the federal government are doing amazing things to help our country and frankly, the Western world start to rebuild their supply chains in terms of

sponsors. Bob, you want to talk about that?

Bob Fox (41:12)
Yes, ⁓ thank you, Daniel.

And now a shout out for our sponsors. Our sponsors are so vitally important because, yes, we're doing wonderful things here at Idaho National Lab to develop new technologies and to overcome these challenges. That mission, that activity would not be possible unless we had the strong sponsors in the Department of Energy.

We had strong sponsors in the Department of War and so a shout out to all of the Critical Material and Energy Innovation Office staff and technology managers and managers and leaders in that regard. Many of those folks have been in Critical Materials their professional, all the professional lives. They come from all

of life, not only industry and academia, but some of the staff at CMEI come from national laboratories. they're there, they understand the mission, they understand how vitally important critical materials are to the defense and to the economic viability of our nation, and they are basically

going to battle every day making sure that the industry, academia, and national laboratories have resources that the best and the brightest are funded, that the best technologies and the best engineering efforts are put forward. So a huge shout out to the newly formed office in Department of Energy that is handling now

for all of the Department of Energy, the Critical Material Portfolio, that is the ⁓ Critical Material Energy Innovation Office. The other offices that have just recently in the last couple of years in the Department of Energy come up and started to dive off into funding a lot of critical materials effort is ARPA-E, Advanced Research

Project Energy and I can't say enough good things about them. Their RBE Miner, the RBE Ignite, some of the other efforts that they have come up with are not only groundbreaking and innovative but they're going to put this nation on a fast track to developing ⁓ new technologies and new solutions.

for industry to improve industry competitiveness, improve industry bottom line. They're also very mindful of their budgets. very mindful. They make sure that they're getting the most bang for the buck out of the research proposals. So a very good group of folks, some of which are going to be here this week here at the forum, the Critical Materials Forum that we're having.

Idaho National Lab. Also want to give a shout out to the folks in Department of War who have been doing a stellar job at going and standing up the critical infrastructure that this nation needs to get back in the game of domestically producing, resourcing, supplying itself with critical materials. So ⁓ they're doing a great job.

fantastic group of folks, patriots all.

Daniel O'Connor (44:33)
I was

just going to say, just to make sure we got everybody, ⁓ know, the Department of Commerce is contributing quite a bit. The XM Bank, Import-Export Bank, the, ⁓ within Department of War, had mentioned Office of Strategic Capital, I believe it is. Office of, I think it's Office of Strategic Capital. And even the State Department,

There's folks that we hear incredible good things like David Copley who these are real patriots who are in it for the right reason to make a big, big difference in our society. So we just want to make sure we're, it's kind of unbelievable what we've done. We track these things and we find that companies that are in Europe, for example, are pivoting towards the United States because

you know, our government is taking this very seriously and they're moving accordingly. Whereas in places like Europe, takes them, there's more countries, there's maybe more bureaucracy, it takes them longer to get going. So I'm really proud of, you know, what we've been able to do over the past year. Since Dustin and I formed Rare Earth Exchanges, enormous things have happened. You know, I like to pat ourselves on the back. Good work, Dustin, that we had some influence. I think we have.

Bob Fox (45:33)
you

Daniel O'Connor (45:45)
But it's important to try to get this information out in a way that people can understand. that's credible. Because there is, as you said, Bob, lot of misinformation. I don't think people mean wrong. they just, you have to operationalize terms. It's just not there. But please, Dustin.

Dustin Olsen (46:03)
Absolutely. And Bob, we want to thank you for being on the show yet again. A lot of insightful information and education and just the refining and separation process. Obviously, the work that you guys are doing at INL aided by your sponsors is going to really accelerate what we're capable of doing not only here in the United States, but most likely around the world. So Bob, thanks again for being on the show and

As always, we hope to have you back. These conversations are just so good. This is going to be a longer episode for us. Just, it's hard to stop sometimes. So Bob, thanks for being here.

Daniel O'Connor (46:36)
Thanks, Bob.

Bob Fox (46:37)
Thank you. There's always something great to talk about with ⁓ critical materials. And as we move into the future, you see different materials become more critical than they currently are. And so those are new topics of discussion for why is that the case? And how does the criticality of a material change? And how does it present now a new challenge for science?

as well as the market in this nation.

Dustin Olsen (47:03)
there's our next show. Thanks, Bob.