Energy Fuels announces commercial production.
Energy Fuels has announced that it will start commercial production of separated neodymium-praseodymium (NdPr) this month. NdPr is an important ingredient of high-performance magnets such as those used in wind turbines. The company’s White Mesa mill, located in Utah, is able to process the feedstock, monazite sands from Florida and Georgia, so that the separated NdPr meets the industry’s specifications. Following the refining stage, the facility will produce alloys that serve as a preliminary stage in the actual production of magnets.
The Chemours Company will initially provide the monazite sands, while Energy Fuels plans to mine them themselves eventually. The company has secured promising deposits in Brazil for this purpose (we reported). Brazil is one of the countries with the largest reserves of this group of raw materials, but mining is currently only taking place on a limited scale.
Photo: iStock/Michael Warren
