Highlights
- Flash Joule Heating (FJH) is scientifically legitimate and can efficiently liberate rare earths from waste streams, but only addresses feedstock liberation—not the full supply chain China controls.
- China's rare earth dominance spans six vertical stages from mining to magnet manufacturing; FJH touches only Step 1.5 and still requires conventional separation and downstream processing.
- The 2026 Texas FJH plant represents genuine progress, but claims of quickly breaking China's stranglehold are premature without domestic separation, metal-making, and manufacturing capacity.
Rare Earth Exchanges™ (REEx) evaluates claims that Flash Joule Heating (FJH) can rapidly disrupt China’s rare earth dominance. It affirms the scientific legitimacy of FJH while identifying exaggerated geopolitical interpretations. REEx positions FJH within the larger supply chain, clarifying what is proven, what is speculative, and what remains untested at scale.
Table of Contents
In the rare earth world—where myth, marketing, and metallurgy often blur—big claims arrive with either a thud or a thunderclap. The latest thunder comes from Jan Jekielek of The Epoch Times (opens in a new tab), amplifying Rice University chemist Dr. James Tour’s (opens in a new tab) assertion that two-step Flash Joule Heating (opens in a new tab) (FJH) can “break China’s rare earth stranglehold… quickly, cheaply, cleanly… using waste we already have.”
If true, it’s the rare earth equivalent of cold fusion—except working.
If exaggerated, it’s another American techno-mirage—shimmering, seductive, and doomed.
Rare Earth Exchanges has reviewed every peer-reviewed paper, technical brief, and DOE analysis involving FJH. What follows is the truth—delivered with voltage.
The Seductive Promise of Flash Joule Alchemy
The premise feels engineered for a Netflix doc: blast e-waste, fly ash, red-mud, or tailings with a sudden electrical surge—an overclocked industrial toaster—and in milliseconds temperatures rocket into the thousands. Metals volatilize, oxides fracture, and with chloride salts the rare earths become selectively separable.
Tour is no dreamer selling snake oil. His lab’s work is real, reproducible, and impressive. He is the real deal.
Plus, the peer-reviewed data show:
- Strong REE liberation from specific waste streams
- Low energy per gram
- Surprisingly simple capital equipment
- Minimal emissions compared to traditional hydrometallurgy
It is clever. It is elegant. It is potentially scalable. That part is fact.
But Can It Dismantle China’s Decades-Deep Dominance?
Here, the enthusiasm drifts into prophecy—and where REEx taps the brakes.
Let’s remind all, China’s rare earth supremacy is not one choke point. It is six, stacked vertically:
- Ore mining
- Concentrate upgrading
- Cracking & leaching
- Separation (the real moat)
- Metal making
- Magnet manufacturing
Flash Joule Heating touches only Step 1.5: feedstock liberation.
It does not substitute for solvent extraction.
It does not produce metals.
It does not forge magnets.
China’s power derives from controlling every link, not merely the chemistry of cracking. To argue FJH can “break the stranglehold” alone is like arguing a breakthrough in grain milling frees you from global bread markets.
Useful? Absolutely.
Transformative? Possibly.
Geopolitical reset? Not without the remainder of the chain.
The Texas Plant: What It Means—and What It Doesn’t
The first commercial FJH plant in Texas, slated for early 2026, is genuinely exciting. Pilot systems have demonstrated:
- 70% REE liberation from some industrial wastes
- Strong Nd and Dy extraction from permanent magnets
- Far lower acid use and carbon footprint
But scaling is a brutal, unsentimental teacher. Key unknowns remain:
- Feedstock consistency: e-waste is chaos incarnate.
- Economic throughput: lab batches scale beautifully—industrial lines rarely do.
- Downstream dependency: liberated REE chlorides still require conventional separation partners.
- Waste liability: e-waste chemistry does not behave politely.
The U.S. may gain a promising new REE source, but without domestic separation and metal-making capacity, China still owns the finish line.
Where Hope Meets Hype
The optimistic view:
FJH could become a powerful auxiliary technology—turning trash into strategic feedstock, diversifying supply, and reducing environmental burdens. In a national (and allied) portfolio that includes MP Materials, Lynas, Noveon, Energy Fuels, Iluka, and Pentagon-backed magnetization, FJH is a welcome new ingredient.
The overreach:
Suggesting FJH alone will “quickly” deliver American independence is premature to say the least. Industrial fortresses built over 30 years do not fall to a single lab breakthrough.
But America needs bold engineering moonshots. Some will crash. Some will be surprised. A few could change history.
Flash Joule Heating deserves a seat at the strategic table—just not yet the throne.
© 2025 Rare Earth Exchanges™ – Accelerating Transparency, Accuracy, and Insight Across the Rare Earth & Critical Minerals Supply Chain.
That is a very timely article and points directly to where China has achieved almost total world dominance at the moment.
The two companies outside China that have demonstrated end-to-end capability—meaning they have achieved not just rare earth separation but also production of rare earth metals or alloys needed for magnet manufacturing—are Lynas Rare Earths and Australian Strategic Materials (ASM).
(While MP Materials in the US is moving toward full magnet vertical integration with current separation now online, as of late 2025, Lynas and ASM are the only non-Chinese firms to have actually demonstrated commercial-scale production of rare earth metals and alloys essential for permanent magnets, not just separated oxides)