US Critical Materials Corp. and Idaho National Laboratory (INL) have announced a collaborative effort to establish a pilot-scale rare earth and critical minerals processing plant. This initiative directly addresses President Donald J. Trump's March 20, 2025, Executive Order, which declared a National Emergency due to America's reliance on external sources for these strategically vital materials.

Key project highlights include a pilot plant capacity of 1 to 2 tons of ore per day, based on a validated bench-scale flow sheet. The primary objective is to demonstrate innovative mineral processing and separation technologies, ultimately establishing intellectual property and scalable domestic production capabilities for critical materials.

Idaho National Laboratory, renowned globally for its expertise in Advanced Separation Science and Engineering, is the U.S. Department of Energy's primary Separation Sciences R&D Testbed. INL scientists will provide invaluable technical expertise, ensuring the pilot plant integrates cutting-edge, environmentally responsible refining processes that are scalable for full production.

For decades, the United States has faced a precarious dependency on China for rare earth supply chains, with China controlling the vast majority of global mining, processing, and refining of these essential elements. This concentration of control poses a significant threat to national security, as rare earths are indispensable components in advanced military systems, including fighter jets, missile guidance systems, radar, and electronic warfare capabilities.

To counteract this critical vulnerability, US Critical Materials and INL have formalized their partnership through a Phase II Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA). This agreement paves the way for the construction of a pilot-scale processing plant designed to produce rare earths domestically. The facility will specifically process high-grade ore sourced from the Sheep Creek deposit in Montana. This deposit is rich in a diverse array of critical minerals and rare earth elements, including neodymium, praseodymium, niobium, strontium, samarium, scandium, and heavy rare earths such as gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, and yttrium. Notably, Sheep Creek also contains high-grade gallium, a mineral crucial for national security applications, which will be among the first to be processed at the new facility.

The collaboration's core national security objectives are clear: to significantly reduce U.S. reliance on adversarial nations for critical minerals, secure a robust domestic supply chain for rare earths essential to defense systems, and advance mineral processing technologies vital for national resilience.

Since early 2024, Phase I CRADA researchers have already confirmed the high concentrations of gallium and rare earth elements within the Sheep Creek ore body. The pilot facility will now move forward with validating proprietary processing methodologies at scale.