Cost, X=?; DOD Negotiations; DOD Chess Moves G

Cost, X=?; DOD Negotiations; DOD Chess Moves

Good Morning, People
I was rudely awake by a cat standing on my bladder wanting breakfest. It was dawn, the birds were in the feeder outside the window and the cats had mentally stalked and killed their prey. Especially the old gray sparrow with the missing toe on his right foot, going by the number of cat nose prints on the window. He like to sit on the perch just on the other side of the window, which annoys the cats greatly. I am up, I have stretched out the pain in the lower back and I am on my second cup of coffee. Correcttion third cup of coffee.

Cost, X=?: Mou, You asked some good questions and made a few points. I will try to answer one. Cost. For the record SX is not the emeny, it is the standard to beat. Right now, Chinese rapeseed SX is the most economical rare earth separation method. Just like MRT will be in ten years. So how does MRT conpare to SX costwise? Old Jack Lifton answered that one for you back in 2016. All you had to do was the math. I was bored. The grandson was sleeping and the fishs were not biting. So I worked it out. Thank goodness cell phones have calculators. The owner of the boat would not have appreciated me using the boat as scratch paper. It is a nice boat. Anyway in 2016 Jack was on one of the You tube videos talking about scandium separation SX versus MRT. His statement was that for Chinese SX to separate Scandium to 99.99 pure requried 1800 passes or cycles through the plant versus one pass through a MRT plant. So X= 1 to1800. Cost of Scandium is 10K to 2.5K per kilo if you can find any to buy. 10,000 divided by 1800 equals $5.55 or 2500 divided by 1800 equals $1.38 per Kilo using MRT. Figure that the Chinese are good at SX and MRT is 1500 to 3 for any other rare earth. Why 3? Remember that MRT takes three passes or cycles to separate REEs. First pass removes REEs as a whole from the PLS. Second pass separates lights from heavies. Third pass into each individual REE. So take the cost of any rare earth divide by 1500 and multiply by 3 would give you a ball park figure for how much it would cost for MRT to separate that rare earth.

DOD Negotiations: At this time Ucore's consortium is talking to DOD about a total supply chain. This is important enough that it warrants secure negotiations. Meaning everything out of pockets and put into a mini Faraday cage. Scanned as they enter, DOD records the meeting and generates all paperwork for review.
As many people on here have stated DOD does not need enough rare earths to jusify any US company building a separation plant. So the consortium is talking to DOD on how much DOD is going to pay the comsortium to build not one but two separation plants, possibly three separation plant inside the borders of the USA. What kind of security the plants will have and who will pay for it. How much rare earth will be produced. With DOD first in line to get any and at what price.
My best guess would be a medium contract on the small end. Say one billion to two point five billion depending on how much each member of the concortium has padded their bid.

DOD Chess Moves: Let us review, China has rare earths not oil, in the ninety sneaks magnet tech out of the US, early 2000 with state supported companies and cut throat pricing runs all other companies out of the REE separation business and basicly become the only supplier of rare earths. 2009, some one figures out, hey we run out of ore in 2022 or 2023 depending on demand, we need new feed stock. 2010, Japan catched and seizes two chinese fishing boats.
China cuts off Japan supply of rare earths and boats are returned. This causes rare earth panic and prices go through the roof. Bunch of Junior miners to spring up and find lots of new deposits. China floods the market with cheap rare earths from state supported companies. Prices fall and flat line. No junior miner can develop their deposit. China can cherry pick deposits and buy up new feed stock. With me so far? Then enter stage right Ucore. The junior miner that will become the thorn in China's plan. Ucore is different kind of junior miner. Starts off with money and looks for a great deposit and finds it in Bokan. Avoids debt like the plague that it is. Uses grants and other funds to avoid debt. Gets the state of Alaska to foot the bill for the mine on Bokan. Then the prices drop and flat line. No way Ucore develop the mine on Bokan using SX tech, so goes looking for newer, cheaper tech. After some starts and stops finds MRT and IBC. China knows about IBC, tried to steal the MRT tech on the platinum deal but could not. (Jim, before you retire Steve. You might want to debrief him on that deal, heavily) IBC separates rare earths using MRT at a much cheaper cost than China's SX. Ucore and IBC cut a deal. Steve needs money, agrees to sell IBC to Ucore figuring that Ucore like most junior miners would go out of business and he could keep his company and the money. Ucore does not go out of business and goes through the buy out option. Count cases. Trump frees DOD hand by enacting cold war rules. Ucore joins concortium for total supply chain.

Now if you are that strategic thinker in DOD would you have the consortium build separation plants to supply just DOD needs or would you build larger separation plants the could flood the rare earth market with very cheap rare earths worldwide?

You all have a good day
Dragon