Energy Fuels (TSX: EFR; NYSE: UUUU) has produced the first rare earth element (REE) carbonate concentrate on a pilot-scale at its wholly owned White Mesa mill in southeastern Utah, 508 km southeast of Salt Lake City.
According to the company, it is the first REE concentrate produced from monazite sands in any significant quantity in North America in over 20 years. (Monazite is a naturally occurring mineral containing REEs and radioactive elements such as uranium and thorium.)
“By using existing infrastructure and technologies at the mill to recover the uranium and the REEs from monazite sands, we are able to avoid the years of permitting and development, along with the tens, or even hundreds, of millions of dollars of capital that others would be faced with,” Mark Chalmers, the company’s president and chief executive, said in a statement.
The high-purity REE concentrate was refined from a one-tonne sample of monazite sands from an unidentified North American source and is ready to be sent to a separation plant and a downstream REE processing facility for final test work, the company said. In addition to the REE concentrate, uranium recovered by the mill from the monazite sample will be sold to the nuclear fuel industry.
The company is in discussions with several entities to secure adequate quantities of monazite sands and, if successful, expects to produce commercial amounts of REE concentrate by early 2021.
Energy Fuels’ White Mesa uranium mill in southeastern Utah. Credit: Energy Fuels.
The White Mesa mill is the only conventional uranium mill operating in the U.S., according to the company. It has a licensed capacity of over 8 million lb. uranium per year in the form of triuranium octoxide (U3O8), the most stable form of uranium found in nature.
The mill can also produce vanadium and has recovered about 54 million lb. vanadium over the life of the mill, making Energy Fuels the largest conventional vanadium producer in the U.S. in recent years, the company said. The mill has also previously recovered tantalum and niobium from uranium ore.
In addition to the White Mesa mill, the company owns the Nichols Ranch in-situ recovery (ISR) mine and plant in Wyoming, which has an operational capacity of 2 million lb. U3O8 per year, and the Alta Mesa ISR mine and plant in Texas, with a capacity of 1.5 million lb. U3O8 per year.
The company says it has some of the largest and highest-grade uranium assets in the U.S., including Pinyon Plain in Arizona, Sheep Mountain in Wyoming, and the Henry Mountains Complex in Utah.
At press time in Toronto, Energy Fuels was trading at $2.11 per share within a 52-week trading range of $1.10 and $3.29. The company has 126 million common shares outstanding for a $265-million market capitalization.
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