PROPOSED NEBRASKA MINE MIGHT PRODUCE MORE RARE ELEMENTS

The company working to build a mine in southeast Nebraska to extract a rare element used to make steel lighter and stronger said that it may also be able to produce some of the key ingredients needed to make the powerful magnets used in electric vehicles and other high-tech products.

NioCorp Developments released a new report this week that shows those rare earth elements are present throughout the deposit it plans to mine if it can raise roughly $1 billion to build the project about 80 miles (128.75 kilometers) south of Omaha near the town of Elk Creek.

Being able to produce those sought-after elements along with the niobium, scandium and titanium NioCorp plans to mine would make the project more attractive to investors, but the company won’t know for sure whether it can economically produce those rare earth elements until it does some additional analysis of the latest data. It will take several months to complete that review.

“If our rare-earth content is found to be high enough to economically justify extraction of individual rare earths as a byproduct of our planned niobium, scandium, and titanium production, the Elk Creek project could ultimately emerge as a U.S. producer of the magnetic rare earths,” NioCorp CEO Mark Smith said.