[Senate Hearing 117-466]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]



                                                        S. Hrg. 117-466

                  OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES FACING
                   DOMESTIC CRITICAL MINERAL MINING,
                 PROCESSING, REFINING, AND REPROCESSING

======================================================================= 



                                HEARING

                               BEFORE THE

                              COMMITTEE ON
                      ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES
                          UNITED STATES SENATE

                    ONE HUNDRED SEVENTEENTH CONGRESS

                             SECOND SESSION
                               __________

                             MARCH 31, 2022
                               __________ 
                               
                               
                               
                               

                               
                [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] 






                       Printed for the use of the
               Committee on Energy and Natural Resources 
               

        Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.govinfo.gov 
        

                                 ______

                   U.S. GOVERNMENT PUBLISHING OFFICE 

47-895                     WASHINGTON : 2024 


        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
        
               COMMITTEE ON ENERGY AND NATURAL RESOURCES

                JOE MANCHIN III, West Virginia, Chairman
RON WYDEN, Oregon                    JOHN BARRASSO, Wyoming
MARIA CANTWELL, Washington           JAMES E. RISCH, Idaho
BERNARD SANDERS, Vermont             MIKE LEE, Utah
MARTIN HEINRICH, New Mexico          STEVE DAINES, Montana
MAZIE K. HIRONO, Hawaii              LISA MURKOWSKI, Alaska
ANGUS S. KING, JR., Maine            JOHN HOEVEN, North Dakota
CATHERINE CORTEZ MASTO, Nevada       JAMES LANKFORD, Oklahoma
MARK KELLY, Arizona                  BILL CASSIDY, Louisiana
JOHN W. HICKENLOOPER, Colorado       CINDY HYDE-SMITH, Mississippi
                                     ROGER MARSHALL, Kansas

                      Renae Black, Staff Director
                      Sam E. Fowler, Chief Counsel
                Peter Stahley, Professional Staff Member
                Zahava Urecki, Professional Staff Member
             Richard M. Russell, Republican Staff Director
              Matthew H. Leggett, Republican Chief Counsel
                     Kate Farr, Republican Counsel 
                     
                     
                     
                     
                     
                     
                     
                     
                     
                     
                     
                     
                     
                                         
                     
                            C O N T E N T S

                              ----------                              

                           OPENING STATEMENTS

                                                                   Page
Manchin III, Hon. Joe, Chairman and a U.S. Senator from West 
  Virginia.......................................................     1
Barrasso, Hon. John, Ranking Member and a U.S. Senator from 
  Wyoming........................................................     4

                               WITNESSES

Fortier, Dr. Steve, Director, USGS National Minerals Information 
  Center, U.S. Department of the Interior........................     9
Wulf, Abgail, Vice President, Critical Minerals Strategy and 
  Director of the Center for Critical Minerals Strategy, Securing 
  America's Future Energy........................................    18
Melbye, Scott, President, Uranium Producers of America...........    27
Padilla, Julie, Chief Regulatory Officer, Twin Metals Minnesota..    35
Ziemkiewicz, Dr. Paul, Director, West Virginia Water Research 
  Institute, West Virginia University............................    42

          ALPHABETICAL LISTING AND APPENDIX MATERIAL SUBMITTED

American Exploration and Mining Association:
    Statement for the Record.....................................   139
Backcountry Hunters and Anglers et al.:
    Statement for the Record.....................................   146
Barrasso, Hon. John:
    Opening Statement............................................     4
    Chart comparing minerals used in electric and conventional 
      vehicles...................................................     5
    Chart depicting minerals used in various energy technologies.     7
    Chart depicting steps necessary to permit a mine on federal 
      land in Nevada.............................................    58
Daines, Hon. Steve:
    Permitting timeline for the Rock Creek Mine..................    69
    Front pages from ten environmental reports...................    71
Fortier, Dr. Steve:
    Opening Statement............................................     9
    Written Testimony............................................    11
    Responses to Questions for the Record........................   101
Havasupai Tribal Council:
    Letter for the Record addressed to Senator Manchin, dated 
      March 25, 2022.............................................   149
    Letter for the Record addressed to Secretary Granholm, dated 
      March 25, 2022.............................................   151
    Letter for the Record addressed to Secretary Granholm, dated 
      October 4, 2021............................................   154
Heinrich, Hon. Martin:
    Photograph of the Animas River...............................    62
International Organization of Bridge, Structural, Ornamental, and 
  Reinforcing Iron Workers et al.:
    Letter for the Record........................................   161
International Union of Operating Engineers:
    Letter for the Record dated January 8, 2022..................   156
    Letter for the Record dated January 18, 2022.................   159
Laborers International Union of North America:
    Statement for the Record.....................................   163
    Comments for the Record dated January 19, 2022...............   168
Manchin III, Hon. Joe:
    Opening Statement............................................     1
Melbye, Scott:
    Opening Statement............................................    27
    Written Testimony............................................    29
    Responses to Questions for the Record........................   121
(The) Metals Company:
    Letter for the Record........................................   170
Minnesota Building and Construction Trades Council:
    Letter for the Record........................................   174
Minnesota Pipe Trades Association:
    Letter for the Record........................................   176
National Mining Association:
    Letter for the Record........................................   178
North Central States Regional Council of Carpenters:
    Letter for the Record........................................   185
Padilla, Julie:
    Opening Statement............................................    35
    Written Testimony............................................    37
    Responses to Questions for the Record........................   128
Risch, Hon. James E.:
    Statement for the Record.....................................   187
Western Governors' Association:
    Letter for the Record........................................   189
    Policy Resolution 2022-01....................................   190
    Policy Resolution 2018-09....................................   196
Wulf, Abigail:
    Opening Statement............................................    18
    Written Testimony............................................    20
    Responses to Questions for the Record........................   117
Ziemkiewicz, Dr. Paul:
    Opening Statement............................................    42
    Written Testimony............................................    44
    Responses to Questions for the Record........................   135 

 
                 OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES FACING 
                  DOMESTIC CRITICAL MINERAL MINING, 
               PROCESSING, REFINING, AND REPROCESSING

                              ----------                              

                        THURSDAY, MARCH 31, 2022

                                            U.S. Senate,
                  Committee on Energy and Natural Resources,
                                                  Washington, DC.
    The Committee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:08 a.m. in 
Room SD-366, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. Joe Manchin 
III, Chairman of the Committee, presiding.

               OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JOE MANCHIN III, 
                   U.S. SENATOR FROM WEST VIRGINIA

    The Chairman. The meeting will come to order.
    We are here today to talk about the opportunities and 
challenges related to the production of critical minerals, 
whether through traditional mining, processing, and refining or 
innovative secondary recovery and reprocessing techniques. 
Welcome to our witnesses and thank you for being here for this 
discussion. I think it is going to be very, very informative. 
Next week, we will continue this conversation about critical 
mineral supply chains and discuss the demand side and how 
industry will obtain and recycle these vital materials. These 
conversations are so important right now as the horrifying 
events in Ukraine show how problematic our reliance on foreign 
suppliers who may not share our interests and values can be.
    In the immediate term, our concern is, of course, Russia. 
But I am also extremely concerned with China as the gatekeeper 
of the critical minerals that we need for everyday life that we 
have really taken for granted. In addition to the minerals 
crucial to energy and defense applications, it makes no sense 
to remain beholden to bad actors when we have abundant 
resources and manufacturing know-how here in the United States. 
And make no mistake, we are beholden, particularly when it 
comes to many of the minerals that go into clean energy 
technologies. That is why I sounded the alarm about going down 
the path of EVs alone, and advocated for equal treatment for 
hydrogen. China mines 60 percent of global rare earth elements 
crucial to high-tech applications and magnets needed for 
electric motors. Even more shocking, China processes almost 90 
percent of the rare earths, regardless of where they are mined 
in the world. The only large-scale producers of cobalt are in 
the Democratic Republic of Congo, where Chinese interests 
control many of the mines. And then, 65 percent of the 
processing is done in China. Lithium is mined extensively by 
Australia, an ally that produces over 50 percent of global 
supply. However, China processes over 58 percent of global 
lithium and uses that material to feed their lithium battery 
manufacturing.
    It is clear that we have a problem, and the United States 
Geological Survey (USGS) concurs. The USGS has identified 50 
minerals as critical, meaning that the supply is crucial to our 
national and/or economic security and is at risk of a supply 
disruption. I believe so strongly that we need to address 
vulnerabilities rather than increase them. Now, that is not to 
say that we have failed to take any action to address these 
risks. This Committee got the Energy Act of 2020 across the 
finish line at the end of the 116th Congress, which contains 
several important provisions related to critical minerals. Then 
Chairwoman Murkowski and myself led the effort to include the 
American Minerals Security Act, which created the critical 
mineral listing process and provided the first comprehensive 
update to critical minerals and materials policies since 1980. 
The Energy Act also included my bill to accelerate the research 
and development needed to recover rare earth elements and other 
critical minerals from coal and coal byproducts. The bipartisan 
Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act built on those efforts 
with serious investments to the tune of $3 billion to build 
domestic battery material processing facilities and fund 
battery processing demonstration projects. We also expanded the 
Department of Energy's Innovative Energy Loan Guarantee Program 
so that critical mineral projects are now eligible. Lesser 
known but equally vital provisions made improvements to the 
permitting process, accelerated the Geological Survey's mapping 
efforts to support mineral development, and funded a program to 
create a commercial demonstration of rare earth processing 
facilities fed by mineral waste.
    While we have made such good progress, there is so much 
more to be done. Right now, we are not mining, processing, 
manufacturing, or recycling these materials domestically, and 
these issues are not solved overnight. Many actions we need to 
take have long planning, permitting, and construction 
timelines. So the work needs to start and start now, and the 
Administration needs to help make responsible mining and 
refining possible here rather than making it more difficult and 
challenging. New mines will be needed both here in the United 
States and all over the world, but we must not become so 
desperate for these minerals that we throw our bedrock 
environmental and labor laws out the window or rely on 
countries that do not adhere to the same standards. Mining 
companies today find it harder and harder to obtain and 
maintain their social licenses to operate.
    As I have said before, I believe that reasonable updates to 
the Mining Law of 1872 would go a long way toward addressing 
those concerns. It only takes one or two accidents to put a 
stain on the entire industry, and when you lose buy-in from the 
local communities, the entire nation can be affected. So it is 
extremely important. I also believe that there is another area 
that we should lean on--a North American energy alliance, and 
work with our Canadian neighbors to source what doesn't make 
sense to source domestically. And there is no reason the United 
States cannot utilize our manufacturing base and leverage our 
relationships with friendly nations like Australia and Canada 
to ensure that their critical minerals are sent here for 
processing instead of China. However, in order to accomplish 
this, we first need to establish our own domestic separation, 
processing, and refining capabilities and make sure that we are 
not exporting our own critical minerals for processing 
somewhere else. So while we have made some strides in the laws 
I have mentioned, that was just the first step. I want to know 
where other challenges exist and the opportunities to tackle 
them. Finally, we should be getting creative and exploring 
innovative solutions to the problem using new approaches to 
extract critical minerals like rare earths from old mine 
tailings, waste materials, and even acid mine drainage can be 
an opportunity to address an environmental problem and the 
critical mineral challenges at the same time.
    To that end, I am very pleased to have Dr. Ziemkiewicz, am 
I close, Dr. Z?
    Senator Barrasso. No, no, he's shaking his head, no.
    [Laughter.]
    The Chairman. I am so happy to have Dr. Z. with us today.
    [Laughter.]
    The Chairman. He is going to share the good work he is 
doing as the Director of the West Virginia Water Resources 
Institute at West Virginia University, and that is not too far 
from here. And I am going to tell you, if you get a chance to 
go, and I don't know if you are interested, but you ought to 
see what they are doing. You ought to see what they are 
extracting and how they are doing it. And they are going to 
commercial now, right? Yes. As many of you know, our coal 
communities bear the scars that have mined the coal to power 
the country to be the greatness that we are. This legacy 
includes acid mine drainage that pollutes streams across West 
Virginia as a result of abandoned and bond-forfeited mines, but 
while this harmful pollution is a blight on our communities, 
Paul and his team have done incredible work in partnership with 
the National Energy Technology Lab and West Virginia Department 
of Environmental Protection. They are demonstrating that we can 
clean up these problem areas while extracting the rare earth 
elements that we need in the process. This work has the 
potential to be a game changer, not just for my state, but for 
the entire country. And I am told that it could even assist 
many of our western states with acid mine drainage from 
hardrock mines.
    Dr. Z., I am thrilled to have you with us today and look 
forward to hearing about the progress that you all have been 
making.
    In closing, the critical mineral issue is vital, urgent, 
and important to our national economic security and I truly 
believe that this is a bipartisan issue that we can work 
together to address, and we have taken some steps in that 
direction. Senators Murkowski, Risch, Cassidy, and I recently 
sent a letter asking the President to utilize the Defense 
Production Act to accelerate our production of critical 
minerals for lithium-ion batteries. It sounds like there might 
be an announcement being made today to take steps in that 
direction, and I welcome that news and look forward to seeing 
the details. Additionally, Senator Barrasso and I have 
introduced the Mining Schools Act of 2022 to ensure that we 
have the next generation of STEM graduates to tackle these 
problems. Demand is increasing for minerals vital to clean 
energy and national security technologies, as well as for every 
day tools and comforts that we take for granted. We must take 
action domestically or we will be putting our own security at 
risk by allowing China this power over our supply chains.
    Now, I appreciate all of you today for being here--the 
witnesses--and we are going to learn an awful lot. I am going 
to turn to Senator Barrasso for his opening remarks now.

            OPENING STATEMENT OF HON. JOHN BARRASSO 
                   U.S. SENATOR FROM WYOMING

    Senator Barrasso. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, 
and I appreciate your partnership and your dedication to the 
work that is being done today and for holding this very 
important, critical hearing on an issue so important to our 
nation and our nation's future.
    Upon taking office, President Biden returned the United 
States to the Paris Climate Agreement, one that I see as deeply 
flawed and unfair. The President pledged to reduce our nation's 
greenhouse gas emissions by 50 to 52 percent below the levels 
from where they were in 2005 and get all of this done in the 
next eight years, by the year 2030. To achieve these 
objectives, the President says he wants to make our nation's 
power sector carbon free by 2035. He also aims to ensure that 
so-called zero emission vehicles make up 50 percent--half of 
all new vehicle sales--just eight years from now. In short, 
President Biden wants to dramatically increase the number of 
wind turbines, solar panels, and electric vehicles in the 
country, and this means a massive increase in the demand for 
critical minerals.
    Last year, the International Energy Agency published a 
report on critical minerals. It included two noteworthy charts. 
The first chart shows how electric vehicles require far more 
minerals than vehicles with internal combustion engines. So a 
conventional car needs this much, electric car--take a look at 
that. And this is the list of all of the different critical 
minerals that are there and how many kilograms are needed per 
vehicle on each of the critical minerals--ones that we do not 
have access to, do not have here, and here we have the 
conventional vehicle versus an electric car.
    [The chart referred to follows:]
    
    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] 
    
    Senator Barrasso. The second chart that I want to show from 
the International Energy Agency report on critical minerals 
shows how wind turbines and solar panels require far more 
minerals than nuclear, than natural gas, and the coal-fired 
power plants. So here you have the critical minerals needed for 
natural gas, coal, nuclear, solar, onshore wind, and offshore 
wind. And look at that jump for the offshore wind and onshore 
wind compared to natural gas and coal. It is a remarkable 
difference in the need for critical minerals to go and move our 
economy from where we are in energy to where the Biden 
Administration promises to be in eight years.
    [The chart referred to follows:]
    
    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] 
    
    Senator Barrasso. So new demand for minerals cannot only 
come from the United States, it will come from the entire 
world. The World Bank recently looked at the demand for copper. 
Copper is a big part of those signs. It found that to meet the 
world's demand for copper in the next 25 years, the world will 
have to mine the same amount of copper that the world has mined 
in the last 5,000 years. Mr. Chairman, these figures are 
astonishing. Despite his climate pledges, President Biden has 
done nothing meaningful to boost American mineral production. 
In fact, this Administration--the Biden Administration--has 
only made it more difficult to access minerals here at home in 
America. In March of last year, the U.S. Forest Service 
rescinded an environmental impact statement for a land swap 
necessary for a major copper mine in Arizona. In August of last 
year, the Bureau of Land Management proposed withdrawing ten 
million acres in Wyoming from mineral exploration. The list 
goes on. In January of this year, Interior Secretary Haaland 
canceled leases for a new nickel and copper mine in Minnesota, 
and last month, the Department of the Interior said it would 
withdraw a right-of-way for a road necessary for a new copper 
mine in Alaska. The Department of the Interior also proposed 
designated critical habitat for a flower that complicates the 
permitting of a new lithium mine in Nevada.
    Mr. Chairman, President Biden's war on American energy is 
not confined to oil and natural gas and coal. His policies, the 
policies of this Administration, are killing the development of 
resources needed for the alternatives that the President says 
he wants. Now currently, it takes an average of 10 years to 
permit a new mine in the United States, and he wants all of 
this in place in eight years. It just doesn't add up. We have 
one of the lengthiest permitting processes in the world. Now, 
Canada and Australia, which do have robust environmental and 
safety standards, permit new mines within two or three years. 
There is no reason we should not be able to replicate their 
success here in America. The Administration is talking about 
using the Defense Production Act for minerals. Unless the 
President streamlines permitting, we should not expect to see 
any meaningful increase in American mineral production.
    Currently, the United States is 100 percent dependent--100 
percent dependent--on imports of 17 key minerals. We are over 
50 percent dependent on imports of another 30 minerals. If 
President Biden does not reverse course and stand up to the 
mining opponents in his own party, it is only going to get 
worse, and it will mean that we will continue to fund our 
adversaries, as we are doing today with Russia.
    We have seen this all too very clearly since Russia's 
invasion of Ukraine. While President Biden finally banned 
imports of Russian oil, natural gas, and coal, we continue to 
import Russian uranium. President Biden can and should ban 
imports of Russian uranium. He should also help boost American 
uranium production. As with other critical minerals, we have 
the resources here in the United States, we just need the 
political will to use them.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    The Chairman. Thank you, Senator.
    I would like to turn to the panel of witnesses that we have 
with us, and I thank each and every one of you.
    Dr. Steve Fortier, Director of the USGS National Minerals 
Information Center with the U.S. Department of the Interior.
    Ms. Abigail Wulf, Vice President of Critical Minerals 
Strategy and Director of the Center for Critical Minerals 
Strategy with Securing America's Future Energy.
    We have Mr. Scott Melbye. Is that correct? Okay. President 
of Uranium Producers of America.
    Ms. Julie Padilla, and she is Chief Regulatory Officer at 
Twin Metals Minnesota.
    Dr. Paul Ziemkiewicz--ah ha, nailed that one, didn't I, 
Paul?
    [Laughter.]
    The Chairman. Director of the West Virginia Water Research 
Institute, West Virginia University.
    We will start with Dr. Fortier.

OPENING STATEMENT OF DR. STEVE FORTIER, DIRECTOR, USGS
  NATIONAL MINERALS INFORMATION CENTER, U.S. DEPARTMENT 
  OF THE INTERIOR

    Dr. Fortier. Good morning, Chairman Manchin, Ranking Member 
Barrasso, and members of the Committee. Thank you for the 
opportunity to discuss the U.S. Geological Survey efforts 
related to critical minerals. The USGS quantifies the geologic 
potential for undeveloped mineral deposits and in mine waste 
across the nation and globe, and provides data on global 
supply, demand, and consumption of mineral commodities 
essential to the nation's economic and national security 
interests. USGS mineral resource science looks across 
applications and economic sectors, analyzes near-term supply 
chain disruption potential, and evaluates long-term strategies 
for securing supply chains.
    Monitoring supply chains for individual minerals across 
manufacturing sectors allows us to understand supply risk in 
the short-term and anticipate potential disruptions in the 
future. USGS data show that domestic and global demand for 
mineral commodities continues to increase. An increasingly 
broad range of mineral commodities is used in consumer and 
national security applications, especially those involving 
advanced technologies. While the United States remains a major 
mineral producer, with an estimated total value of non-fuel 
mineral production of $90.4 billion in 2021, reliance on 
imports for essential mineral raw materials, as documented by 
the USGS, has increased markedly over the past several decades. 
In 2021, the nation was 100 percent import-reliant for 17 
mineral commodities and at least 50 percent import-reliant for 
an additional 30 mineral commodities. Thirty-one minerals 
listed by the USGS in 2021 as having greater than 50 percent 
net import reliance are on the current critical minerals list. 
China is a major import source for 18 of those critical 
minerals.
    The Energy Act of 2020 defined critical minerals as those 
which are essential to the economic or national security of the 
United States, have a supply chain that is vulnerable to 
disruption, and serve an essential function in the 
manufacturing of a product, the absence of which would have 
significant consequences for the economic or national security 
interests of the United States. Based on the Energy Act of 2020 
definition, minerals and materials such as fuel minerals, 
water, and common varieties of industrial minerals, such as 
sand and gravel, are excluded from the definition of a critical 
mineral. In 2021, the USGS published a report entitled, 
``Methodology and Technical Input for the Review and Revision 
of the U.S. Critical Minerals List,'' to comply with a 
requirement of the Energy Act of 2020. After posting a draft 
revision to the critical minerals list in the Federal Register 
and consideration of public comments on the methodology in the 
draft list, the final revised list was published on February 
24, 2022. The 2022 list of critical minerals contains 50 
individual mineral commodities. It differs from the 2018 list 
of critical minerals by individually listing the rare earth 
elements and platinum-group elements by specific element forms 
rather than its two groups. Nickel and zinc were added to the 
list, and helium, potash, rhenium, strontium, and uranium were 
removed from the list, the latter to comply with the language 
in the Energy Act of 2020.
    There are multiple mechanisms to reduce the supply risk for 
mineral commodities, including (1) reducing demand through 
manufacturing improvements or substitution with other 
materials, (2) increasing supplies obtained from reliable 
trading partners, and (3) increasing domestic secondary 
production, such as recycling and reprocessing mine waste or 
domestic primary production--that is, mining. Both domestic 
primary production and secondary production will be supported 
by an updated and more detailed understanding of potential 
resources as envisioned by the USGS Earth Mapping Resources 
Initiative (Earth MRI). The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law 
funding to support Earth MRI is a historic investment in 
modernizing the nation's mapping of resources, both those still 
in the ground and those in mine wastes. Earth MRI is a 
partnership of the USGS, the State Geological Surveys, and 
other federal, state, tribal, and private sector organizations 
to modernize the nation's surface and subsurface mapping. The 
Bipartisan Infrastructure Law provided $320 million over five 
years to the USGS to support Earth MRI's national mapping and 
interpretation to mineral resources data as well as $24 million 
for the preservation of geophysical, geochemical, and 
geological data and samples. Data collected through Earth MRI 
will support development of a national mine waste inventory, 
assessments quantifying the nation's domestic mineral 
resources, as called for in the Energy Act of 2020, and 
identification of locations suitable for sustainable 
development as called for in the June 6, 2021 report developed 
and pursuant to Executive Order 14017, ``America's Supply 
Chains.''
    Thank you again for the opportunity to speak with the 
Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee about the USGS 
work on critical minerals and for your continued interest in 
this important topic.
    [The prepared statement of Dr. Fortier follows:]
     
    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] 
    

    
    Senator Barrasso [presiding]. Thank you, Dr. Fortier.
    Ms. Wulf.

     OPENING STATEMENT OF ABIGAIL WULF, VICE PRESIDENT, 
       CRITICAL MINERALS STRATEGY AND DIRECTOR OF THE 
       CENTER FOR CRITICAL MINERALS STRATEGY, SECURING 
       AMERICA'S FUTURE ENERGY

    Ms. Wulf. Thank you for having me here this morning. 
Chairman Manchin, Ranking Member Barrasso, and distinguished 
members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to 
speak today.
    Given the distinguished mining experts on the panel, I plan 
to focus my opening remarks a little further downstream in the 
mineral supply chain. We would not be here talking about 
critical minerals, in fact, they would not be considered 
critical at all, if it were not for the stuff that they go 
into, and this stuff happens to be critically important for the 
U.S. economy and national security. This stuff includes 
batteries, semiconductors and electric vehicles, renewable 
energy, and advanced weapon systems, all of which are made of 
and powered by minerals and mined materials. We are only going 
to need more of these things as the world increasingly 
transitions to an electric, connected, and autonomous future. 
And make no mistake, the future is electric, not because of 
government financial support or environmental consciousness, 
which are certainly major factors today, but because our lives 
are becoming more digital and autonomous, which inherently 
means more electric.
    Also, EVs are becoming more economically viable on their 
own terms, paving the way for mass adoption for average 
consumers. In fact, major U.S. automakers have already pledged 
to boost their share of EVs anywhere from 50 to 100 percent of 
new auto production over the next 20 years. All of those 
millions of new EVs will run on batteries, and all of those 
batteries will require processed minerals in seismically vaster 
quantities than are being produced today. Our industries 
compete in a global marketplace, and our key sectors, led by 
our auto sector, will rely on these critical materials to 
effectively compete and lead the electrified world. But as 
things stand, without some significant course corrections on 
America's critical minerals enterprise, the leading automobile 
power will not be the United States. It will be China, not 
because of superior design or technology, but because of their 
massive head start and established market power, if not utter 
dominance in all aspects of the supply chain that powers these 
vehicles.
    But simply mining alone does not begin to address the 
fundamentals of America's mineral supply chain challenge. Where 
we are most lacking, and where China is most dominant, is in 
that crucial but largely hidden processing phase and midstream 
component production. One simply cannot dig up a rock and stick 
it in a Tesla. You have to crush it, smelt it, and refine it 
into precursor material that is then sold to somebody else to 
turn it into battery guts--namely cathodes, anodes, and 
electrolytes. Today, the United States has less than four 
percent of all minerals processing capacity and makes zero 
percent of the world's cathodes and anodes. By contrast, China 
is the world's largest processor of copper, nickel, cobalt, 
lithium, and rare earth elements, and they control 60 percent 
of anode production and 40 percent of global cathode 
production. Consider that in 2019 about 70 percent of the 
world's cobalt supply was mined in the DRC (Democratic Republic 
of Congo), but more than 70 percent of that cobalt was refined 
in or controlled by China. The first metric is an act of 
nature. The second is an act of policy.
    We cannot risk the U.S. auto sector being hollowed out. It 
contributes more than a trillion dollars to our economy and it 
indirectly makes up more than five percent of our GDP. Made in 
America cannot just mean assembling, essentially snapping 
together vehicle parts whose most important components come 
from somewhere else, especially when that is an unreliable 
foreign source. Laying claim to the automobile supply chain of 
the future will take bigger, bolder investments in mineral 
processing and battery component production. The $6 billion in 
the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law is a good start, but there is 
much more that should be done, as outlined in my submitted 
testimony. This includes the all-important human capital 
factor, as America simply does not have enough metallurgists 
and other mineral experts for the scale of the effort this 
challenge requires.
    Finally, it will take a commitment to supply chain 
transparency, including potentially a new EV labeling 
requirement that shows where different components and materials 
come from and at what human and environmental cost. This will 
require working with like-minded allies and partners in both 
interests and values, including and especially our North 
American allies, to level the playing field and create a new 
race to the top with high environmental and labor standards for 
the raw materials that will power our tech-driven economies.
    Thank you for your time today, and I look forward to your 
questions.
    [The prepared statement of Ms. Wulf follows:]
    
    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] 
    

    
    Senator Barrasso. Thank you so very much for the testimony, 
Ms. Wulf.
    Mr. Melbye.

        OPENING STATEMENT OF SCOTT MELBYE, PRESIDENT,  
               URANIUM PRODUCERS OF AMERICA 

    Mr. Melbye. Thank you, Chairman Manchin and Ranking Member 
Barrasso and Committee members. I am the Executive Vice 
President of Uranium Energy Corp., with operations in the 
States of Wyoming and Texas, and I am also the President of the 
Uranium Producers of America. As a second-generation American 
uranium miner with 37 years of experience in the nuclear fuel 
industry, I am proud to lead the trade association representing 
the domestic uranium mining and conversion industry. It is an 
honor to testify regarding America's dangerous reliance on 
strategic competitors for critical minerals like uranium.
    Nuclear power is an indispensable part of the American 
economy, powering one in five U.S. homes and supplying over 50 
percent of our carbon-free power. As we integrate more and more 
intermittent sources of energy, like wind and solar onto the 
grid, nuclear power represents a crucial carbon-free baseload 
capacity that ensures that the lights always stay on. 
Unfortunately, almost none of the fuel needed to power 
America's nuclear fleet today comes from domestic producers. 
Employing predatory market practices, state-owned entities in 
Russia, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan now supply nearly half of 
the uranium consumed by U.S. nuclear utilities. We estimate 
that more than $1 billion per year in nuclear fuel purchases 
are flowing from the United States to ROSATOM, the Russian 
state atomic energy company, which is an extension of the 
Kremlin, and clearly part of the Russian military complex. It 
is simply unconscionable to allow U.S.-dollar uranium purchases 
to continue funding the Putin war machine.
    Members of the Committee, I would like to offer a roadmap 
for ending U.S. reliance on Russia for nuclear fuel. First, ban 
imports of Russian uranium. The UPA strongly supports 
bipartisan legislation introduced by Ranking Member Barrasso 
and Representatives Pete Stauber and Vicente Gonzalez in the 
House to impose a ban on Russian uranium imports. The U.S. has 
ample uranium resources and the capacity to produce them at the 
highest environmental, safety, and health standards in the 
world. Together, with free-world uranium suppliers in Canada, 
Australia, and Western Europe, UPA's member companies stand 
ready to work with U.S. utilities, Congress, and the 
Administration to ensure that every existing and planned 
domestic reactor will be able to maintain operations.
    Second, establish the strategic uranium reserve. The 
reserve is the result of multiple federal investigations and 
studies, which determined that America's reliance on uranium 
imports threatens national security. Congress funded the 
reserve at $75 million for the Fiscal Year 2021, yet 15 months 
later, the DOE has not yet stood up the program. DOE must stop 
delaying and move forward on this program immediately. In the 
meantime, Congress must continue its support of the reserve and 
provide the full funding initially requested by DOE--$150 
million per year.
    Third, create a domestic source of high-assay low-enriched 
uranium, or HALEU. This fuel is critical for the advanced 
reactor projects that have been such a high priority for this 
Committee. The only current commercial source of HALEU is 
Russia. Without swift action to develop alternatives, the next 
generation of nuclear power will be entirely dependent on 
Russia for fuel. The crucial immediate step is the down-
blending of existing inventories through which DOE could create 
a stopgap source of HALEU while domestic capabilities for long-
term supply can be established.
    Fourth, uranium must be maintained on the federal critical 
minerals list. Uranium's non-fuel uses are critical to national 
security. According to the USGS, these include radiation 
shields, counterweights, armor piercing kinetic energy 
penetrators, as well as life-saving medical isotope production. 
Our rare earth and critical mineral dependence on China is 
strikingly similar to what could happen with uranium if we do 
not act with urgency. My important message to you today is that 
the domestic uranium industry can meet this challenge. Given a 
level global playing field, the domestic uranium industry has 
the capacity to produce significant quantities of competitive 
and geopolitically secure uranium. While almost all of our 
capacity is idle today, the domestic industry can produce over 
20 million pounds of annual production, enough to fuel close to 
half of our U.S. reactors. A robust, domestic supply chain for 
nuclear fuel has never been more necessary. We stand ready to 
meet America's energy and national security needs, and I look 
forward to your questions.
    [The prepared statement of Mr. Melbye follows:]
    
    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] 
    

    
    Senator Barrasso. Well, thanks so much, Mr. Melbye.
    Ms. Padilla.

          OPENING STATEMENT OF JULIE PADILLA, CHIEF  
          REGULATORY OFFICER, TWIN METALS MINNESOTA

    Ms. Padilla. Good morning, Chairman Manchin, Ranking Member 
Barrasso, and members of the Committee. Thank you for this 
opportunity to testify. My name is Julie Padilla and I serve as 
the Chief Regulatory Officer for Twin Metals Minnesota. I am 
here today to testify that if this country wants to produce its 
own nickel, it has to mine in Minnesota. If we want our own 
cobalt, platinum, and palladium, we have to get it in 
Minnesota. Northeastern Minnesota, where Twin Metals has 
proposed to operate, sits on top of the largest undeveloped 
deposit of these minerals in the world. The area contains a 
stunning 95 percent of the U.S. nickel resources, 88 percent of 
our cobalt, 75 percent of our platinum group metals, and a 
third of the country's copper. A domestic source for critical 
minerals means Minnesota.
    I know this Committee has a deep understanding of why these 
minerals are fundamental for fighting climate change with 
technologies like electric vehicles, for our national security, 
for bringing supply chains home, and for creating American 
jobs. That is why we at Twin Metals are passionate about 
advancing a modern, environmentally safe, underground critical 
minerals project. And while the President himself has said we 
should do more of this here at home, the Departments of 
Agriculture and the Interior have instead taken actions to 
prohibit critical mineral mining in Minnesota. In October of 
last year, the Department of Agriculture requested to ban 
mining on a quarter million acres of federal land in Minnesota, 
taking virtually all of our country's nickel, cobalt, platinum, 
and palladium off the table. This proposed ban fails to 
recognize the 130-year history of mining in the same watershed, 
including operating non-ferrous mines just over the border in 
Canada, and this decision was made without reviewing the mine 
plan our company put forward.
    Let me be clear on that--we have never asked for anything 
but a fair process, a thorough review of our mine plan. To 
proceed with a mining ban means the government is not going to 
consider the best information in front of it to determine 
whether mining can be done safely in this region. In addition, 
our mineral leases have been the subject of a political back-
and-forth, most recently canceled again in January, which 
further delays our project and discussions we have had with 
domestic manufacturers who are interested in the direct 
purchase of our nickel and cobalt. The United States simply is 
no longer considered to have a stable regulatory climate. The 
precedent set by these actions shows that a company can invest 
hundreds of millions of dollars in this country, create good-
paying, reliable jobs, earn the support of its local 
communities, and spend a decade developing a project, only for 
it to be arbitrarily canceled.
    It is not just mining at risk here. Political battles are 
being created for projects ranging from recycling facilities to 
natural gas pipelines to solar arrays and wind farms. Project 
opponents are sowing distrust in the very regulatory system 
that these projects depend on for fairness and certainty. And 
these decisions have real-world impacts. Instead of expanding 
our team as planned, this month we had to lay off a third of 
our workforce and end millions of dollars in local contractor 
work while we seek to have these decisions reversed. As the 
project is stalled, so are jobs for local labor unions and the 
region's economic development. Our ability as a country to 
fight climate change and produce electric vehicles is in the 
hands of foreign powers, including Russia and China. Unless the 
United States fosters a reliable, fair, and timely process for 
environmental review of domestic mining projects, as it has in 
the past, we will be required to get these resources from 
foreign sources.
    We already have a system for determining whether projects 
like ours can operate safely and protect the environment. NEPA 
is exhaustive. It is science-based, and it is prescribed in 
law, and Twin Metals should be undergoing that process right 
now. Instead, I am unfortunately here today because we, like so 
many others, are fighting arbitrary actions aimed at 
circumventing that process in order to pick winners and losers 
based on politics rather than reviewing the science and facts. 
The United States has an opportunity to access its domestic 
mineral resources in an environmentally safe way and under the 
highest of labor and environmental standards. We can mine here 
better than anywhere else in the world, but the United States 
will not be able to do that under the current regulatory 
process that is unpredictable, subject to political 
manipulation with changing rules in each Administration, and in 
conflict with the priorities of our nation.
    It is past time for Congress to take action. I ask that you 
rescind the proposed mineral withdrawal and bring stability, 
fairness, and predictability back to the regulatory process for 
mining in this country. Thank you, and I look forward to 
answering your questions.
    [The prepared statement of Ms. Padilla follows:]
     
    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] 
    

    
    The Chairman [presiding]. Thank you.
    Finally, We are going to have Dr. Z. for his opening 
remarks.

   OPENING STATEMENT OF DR. PAUL ZIEMKIEWICZ, DIRECTOR, 
     WEST VIRGINIA WATER RESEARCH INSTITUTE, WEST VIRGINIA 
     UNIVERSITY

    Dr. Ziemkiewicz. Well, thank you, Chairman Manchin and 
Ranking Member Barrasso and members of the Committee for the 
opportunity to discuss today the work that we have been doing 
to recover critical minerals and rare earth elements from acid 
mine drainage. I am the Director of the Water Research 
Institute of West Virginia University. I have been there for 34 
years, and most of what I have been doing is making acid mine 
drainage a predictable, recoverable, treatable, and preventable 
pollutant. It is the biggest single pollutant in the northern 
Appalachian and central Appalachian streams. Thousands of miles 
are impacted by acid mine drainage. Most of our work has been 
taking place in the prediction and developing industry scale 
processes for making it not be a problem, even though it 
potentially could be.
    At the same time, when the opportunity came up from the 
Department of Energy to look at coal waste products for 
recovery of rare earth elements, we thought this would be a 
good idea because acid mine drainage is essentially free acid, 
and acid is what is needed to leech rare earth elements out of 
host rock. So if you have a conventional hardrock mine for rare 
earth elements, you have to get a mining permit, you have to 
dig it up, grind up the rock, and subject it to strong acids 
and bases in order to put the rare earth elements in solution. 
We already start there. And furthermore, you cannot treat acid 
mine drainage to Clean Water Act standards without recovering 
all of the metals, including the rare earth elements. So we 
developed a process. It is in the development stage right now 
to the extent that we are building a thousand-gallon-a-minute 
plant with the West Virginia DEP near Mount Storm, West 
Virginia. That plant is part of the Office of Special 
Reclamation at DEP, and that takes over bond forfeiture sites 
and treats those discharges.
    We see this as--and so does DEP see this as--an opportunity 
to recover value in the treatment of acid mine drainage rather 
than simply spending money for an environmentally useful 
purpose, but there is actually a return on that investment. We 
can actually cost out, for example, how much lime it would take 
to neutralize all the acid coming into this plant and calculate 
the value of the rare earths that would be recovered, and it is 
about three times more. So this would more than cover the main 
operations and management cost of these big treatment plants. 
We see a lot of opportunities, not only in the coal world, but 
also hardrock world. We have a relationship with Montana 
Resources at Butte, Montana. We have characterized the acid 
mine drainage coming into the Horseshoe Bend plant there. It is 
an excellent resource, and the interesting thing is the makeup 
of the rare earth elements coming into these hardrock mines and 
coal mines are almost identical. And when I say identical, they 
are not only the same distribution of elements, but it is 
heavily skewed toward the heavy rare earth elements.
    If you open a conventional hardrock mine like the one we 
have in Mountain Pass, California, it is a bastnasite deposit, 
and it is almost all light rare earths. We are 45 to 50 percent 
heavy rare earths. The Chinese, for example, are desperate to 
get their hands on heavy rare earth elements. We can start with 
that and that is the basis for the feasibility study that we 
just finished up for the DOE that would build a central 
concentrator in West Virginia for rare earth element recovery 
from hardrock and acid mine drainage-based resources. And we 
found that the economics are very favorable. This would start 
out mainly because of the heavy rare earth distribution, and 
also the cobalt, nickel, and manganese that we have in acid 
mine drainage. All of these contribute to a self-sustaining--
organically self-sustaining--facility that could then start 
bringing in feedstock from other sources, not just hardrock 
mines, but also other sources and waste sources, phosphate 
mines, bauxite tailings. We are looking at all of these right 
now as potential feedstocks coming into this central plant.
    I will finish by saying that we looked at almost all of the 
international applications under--it is a fiduciary process 
that is required to attract investment money for a new mine--
NC43. You have probably--anyway, almost all of those are 
producing, and it is assumed that we are making money just by 
making mixed rare earth oxides. Our concentrator would take 
that as a feedstock and then start separating those into 
individual elements and then reducing them to metal, which is 
then ready for industrial uses and manufacturing uses in the 
country. So not only would we basically assume that role, but 
we could fill that role and fund it and get it starting off the 
ground with the resources that we know we have and then start 
bringing in other resources as time goes on.
    Thank you.
    [The prepared statement of Dr. Ziemkiewicz follows:]
    
    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] 
    

    
    The Chairman. Thank you, and thank all of you.
    We are going to start with our questions now. Dr. Z., I am 
going to continue right where you stopped. In West Virginia, we 
have seen all the leachate and what it does to our streams. We 
have seen that Cheat River is probably the one that got hit the 
hardest and how much money have we spent trying to get Cheat 
River back into a productive stream? It has been unbelievable. 
But with that, as you are going to be processing this and 
extracting these rare earth minerals, are you all basically 
treating the water before it goes back too? Is that all part of 
the process?
    Dr. Ziemkiewicz. Yes, it is.
    The Chairman. So the water that--you are basically 
capturing it coming off of these mines, okay? I know that 
Senator Heinrich and everyone from the West as far as on 
hardrock mining--we have had a lot of discussions. This is 
something that could be unbelievable because these mines have 
already been there. They have already been polluting. They have 
been causing a lot of problems all over the country. Have we 
done inventory and identified how much potential is there and 
how it is possible for us? First of all, I do not think we 
would have to--the permitting process shouldn't be hard for us 
to go back in and clean up what you got. It is not a new mine 
permit. It is not all the bonding that goes into it because a 
lot of the bonds have been forfeited, and we are taking away 
the obligations they have had and made it almost impossible--
that bankrupted a lot of companies.
    So I understand the whole business chain to this thing. The 
bottom line is, this is the quickest way. What type of 
production are you talking about that we can meet the needs of 
America? Because we have got an insatiable appetite right now 
for rare earth minerals. Could this be ten percent? Fifty 
percent?
    Dr. Ziemkiewicz. We have identified in some of the surveys 
that we have done for DOE something like one and a half tons 
per day to three tons per day.
    The Chairman. Off of what? Off of.
    Dr. Ziemkiewicz. Hardrock and coal in the United States.
    The Chairman. Both?
    Dr. Ziemkiewicz. Yes, so that comes to about, yes, so just 
in terms of rare earth elements.
    The Chairman. I got it.
    Dr. Ziemkiewicz. So if you are adding--there is almost an 
identical amount of cobalt and nickel. So for every ton of rare 
earth we produce, we produce a ton of cobalt, another ton of 
nickel, and then maybe 20 times that amount in manganese. These 
could be manganese mines, if you really wanted to look at it 
that way.
    The Chairman. So what does that come out to as far as our 
consumption?
    Dr. Ziemkiewicz. Oh, that is about five to ten percent. 
Yes. So it is not going to handle probably all of the rare 
earth needs, but it would get the industry started, and then it 
would provide that------
    The Chairman. Is this the quickest way for us to get in the 
business?
    Dr. Ziemkiewicz. Pardon?
    The Chairman. This is the quickest way for us to get in the 
business?
    Dr. Ziemkiewicz. Absolutely, because these are all 
permitted sites. So they are all under Clean Water Act. They 
are all under SMCRA permits.
    The Chairman. How much money have you seen us direct toward 
this?
    Dr. Ziemkiewicz. Well, so far, my institute has gotten 
something like $11 million from the Federal Government and 
another $4 million from industry as cost share.
    The Chairman. To prove the concept?
    Dr. Ziemkiewicz. Yes.
    The Chairman. But you have proven that now. You are going 
from basically concept to commercial.
    Dr. Ziemkiewicz. Correct. And so we will be producing mixed 
rare earth oxides of about 99 percent purity. We have already 
done this in the lab. We will be doing that out at our pilot 
plant near Mount Storm by mid-summer this year.
    The Chairman. Unbelievable. We need to take a field trip, 
guys.
    Next of all, I repeatedly said that we need to strengthen 
our supply chains at home by increasing domestic production of 
all energy minerals, which we have been talking about here. I 
know it doesn't make sense to mine every single thing here, and 
we can use what we already have. My thing, Dr. Fortier, if I 
may say this, it matches up with the whole idea that a few of 
us have been talking about, which is the North American Energy 
Alliance and basically, we should be looking at North America 
as one of the energy juggernauts of the world if we have a 
seamless alliance between us and Canada, especially, and 
hopefully to get Mexico in the fray.
    How do you evaluate the supply risk of these allies as 
opposed to somewhere like Russia or China, what we are into 
right now?
    Dr. Fortier. Thank you for that question, Senator Manchin. 
That is a very important issue. We take into account the 
ability and willingness of trade partners to supply in our 
critical minerals screening methodology. And clearly, trade 
with reliable trade partners makes it a lot safer and more 
secure. We have actually published work on looking at net 
import alliance through a North American trade block filter and 
it markedly reduces our import reliance for commodities 
basically across the board. We published a study in 2018 on 
this. We are now in the process of updating that with our 
Canadian counterparts in the Geological Society of Canada.
    The Chairman. If I could, and Ms. Wulf, you might want to 
chime in on this. Have we evaluated, basically, the amount of 
critical minerals that we have in the North American continent 
that could be accessed if we had this alliance?
    Ms. Wulf. I am sure the U.S. Geological Survey, and Dr. 
Fortier, yes, has calculated that amount. And I think that 
working together with allies like Canada could be incredibly 
strategic, especially in the short term for the United States. 
They are building up all this infrastructure there. We could 
pool resources. They also have a very heavy focus on this 
midstream production that I mentioned in my remarks on battery 
component production and on material----
    The Chairman. We have total reliance right now. I didn't 
know it was this critical that we have, with titanium and 
palladium and also uranium from Russia. Have you looked at the 
deposits we have in North America? Can we offset that?
    Dr. Fortier. We do resource assessments of mineral 
commodities across the board. We have looked at the Russia 
issue and provided data and input to the Administration, to 
Congress, and to other executive branch agencies. Because of 
the sensitive nature of some of those discussions, we would 
prefer to comment on that in a different setting.
    The Chairman. We will definitely talk to you about that.
    Dr. Fortier. Yes.
    The Chairman. We could go to closed session and have you 
come in and explain to us where the critical elements are and 
what the risk is that we are running right now if we do not 
jump into the game.
    Dr. Fortier. Be happy to do that, Senator.
    The Chairman. With that, I will turn to Senator Barrasso 
for his questions.
    Senator Barrasso. Well, thanks so much, Mr. Chair.
    Mr. Melbye, in 2018, the Department of the Interior 
included uranium on its list of critical minerals. You 
mentioned in your testimony critical minerals and uranium. Last 
month, the Department of the Interior reversed course and 
decided to exclude uranium from its list of critical minerals. 
The Department made the decision even though the same legal 
definition of critical minerals applied. I also note that 
between 2018 and 2021, the Departments of Energy and Commerce 
identified uranium as a critical and an essential mineral. So 
in your view, what happened?
    Mr. Melbye. Senator, it is bewildering. I think uranium 
meets the definition of critical mineral, perhaps, as well as 
can be. I mean, you have national security implications. You 
have energy security implications. We have fuel and non-fuel 
uses, which obviously caused us to put uranium on this list in 
2018, I think, at the urging of the Department of Defense, and 
for it to be removed at a time when I think everyone in the 
world is looking at nuclear energy and uranium as a strategic 
commodity, I think we are just headed in the wrong direction 
there because it does impact the permitting and licensing in 
the infrastructure bill--I think it gave expedited permitting 
and licensing to critical minerals. So it may mean the 
difference between mines being brought into production in 
months or a couple of years or several years or 10 years down 
the road. So it really does have an impact on our national 
security and energy security.
    Senator Barrasso. Along those lines, let me follow up 
because a few years ago, Westinghouse entered into an agreement 
to fuel Ukraine's nuclear reactors. Now, these are Russian-
built reactors that are now using American fuel. So as we look 
to wean Europe off of Russian energy, are there additional 
opportunities for us in the United States and our companies to 
provide fuel for Russian-built reactors around the world?
    Mr. Melbye. Well, it is a very timely question. I just 
returned from Prague last night where I was attending the U.S. 
nuclear trade mission to the Czech Republic, along with U.S. 
companies like Westinghouse, NuScale, and TerraPower, and we 
had the privilege of being observers in a ministerial meeting 
two days ago where the energy ministers from countries all the 
way from the Baltics through Central Europe, all the way down 
into Bulgaria and Greece, were meeting to discuss the 
challenges that they are facing and cooperation that they can 
engage in together and with the United States to help them make 
their energy transition. They really face a dilemma because 
they are largely dependent on coal-fired electricity in those 
countries. The European Union is pushing them to transition 
away from that, but at the same time, it puts their reliance on 
natural gas from Russia.
    So those Russian reactors that are operating, not just in 
Ukraine, but in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia, other 
countries, Westinghouse took the step with Ukraine, even before 
the invasion, to come up with fuel designs that Westinghouse 
can make the fuel for Russian reactors. And that opens these 
countries up to supplies from the West to stop their reliance 
on Russia. But perhaps----
    Senator Barrasso. I am going to need to move on with it. 
Can you sum that up because I----
    Mr. Melbye. Yes, well the most compelling argument was made 
by the Deputy Energy Minister of Ukraine, Deputy Secretary 
Demchenkov, who--nobody is impacted more than they are with 
what is going on right now. He pleaded to the European 
countries and the United States to stop the imports of Russian 
uranium immediately, not three months or three years from now, 
but immediately, given its impact on the war in Ukraine.
    Senator Barrasso. Thank you.
    Ms. Padilla, I would like to move to you on--there is a 
chart that we are starting to hold up here. This depicts all of 
the steps necessary to permit a mine on federal land in Nevada. 
This is what you need. These are the steps to permitting a mine 
on federal land in Nevada. It includes both federal and state 
and local requirements. It is like a Gordian knot.
    [The chart referred to follows:]
     
    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] 
    

    
    Senator Barrasso. The orange boxes, they show the federal 
permitting process. Green is the state requirements. Blue are 
the local requirements. The orange boxes appear throughout the 
entire process. On average, it takes 10 years to permit a mine 
in the United States. Contrast the average time it takes to 
permit a mine in Canada and Australia--both of which have high 
environmental standards, high safety standards--which is two to 
three years.
    Now, is it fair to say this overly complex and long 
permitting process is actually the single largest roadblock to 
additional mineral production in the United States?
    Ms. Padilla. Thank you, Senator. That is a terrific 
question. I would start by adding that there are no spots on 
this chart that show the many times you have to go back to the 
beginning and start over, at least for projects like ours and 
the many places where arbitrary decisions can come into play 
that shift the dynamic of this chart.
    This is a challenge for every project in this country. It 
highlights how and where we can get stuck to create that 10-
year timeline or longer. I definitely agree that we need better 
coordination both between the state and federal agencies, as 
well as guardrails around the permitting and NEPA process to 
ensure that they are done fairly and with regulatory certainty 
within a period of time.
    Senator Barrasso. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Maybe we could give this to Senator King for his birthday 
present for today?
    [Laughter.]
    The Chairman. You know, today is Senator King's birthday. 
Happy Birthday, Senator. We are not going to sing because 
nobody out here can do it.
    Senator King. Today is also Patrick Leahy's birthday, and I 
made a calculation this morning that the two of us together go 
back to the Lincoln Administration.
    [Laughter.]
    Senator King. That is a fact.
    Senator Heinrich. That is very appropriate because our 
mining law was written when Ulysses S. Grant was President.
    [Laughter.]
    The Chairman. No, the hardrock mining law.
    Senator Heinrich. Exactly, and I will get to that. Thank 
you, Chairman.
    The Chairman. Senator Heinrich.
    Senator Heinrich. You know, as I sit here listening to the 
need to streamline our mining laws, I cannot help but think of 
the tens of thousands of abandoned hardrock mines that still 
are strewn across watersheds in states like mine, and I want to 
show you the flip side of this, which is just a few years back, 
when an accident occurred on the Animas River, and the Animas 
drains into the San Juan River. It is the source of irrigation 
and drinking water and recreation for thousands of folks. This 
photo, that is the current President of the Navajo Nation 
there.
    [The photo referred to follows:]
    
    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] 
    
    Senator Heinrich. Their irrigators were particularly 
impacted. When you get it wrong--I would just ask you, would 
you want to drink that water? Would you want to irrigate with 
that water? There's an enormous amount of heavy metals that get 
released.
    The Chairman. A blowout.
    Senator Heinrich. Yes, that was a blowout.
    So as I said, the mining law we are talking about was 
developed and written in 1872. There were only 37 states in the 
Union at that time. Most of us on this Committee actually 
represent states that were still territories. I do. In fact, my 
State is 40 years younger than the mining law.
    So as we sit here talking about how to open new mines, mine 
pollution is still leaking into streams and rivers across the 
West. It kills fish and it renders water unfit for drinking and 
irrigation. Most of us in the West are highly water-dependent, 
and we just do not have the quantities of water that people in 
the East take for granted.
    With regard to uranium, and we were a major uranium 
producer, uranium mining milling sites still leech radioactive 
waste into our groundwater in New Mexico, and in fact, some of 
my constituents from Laguna Pueblo live just down the road from 
what was the world's largest open-pit uranium mine. It is still 
barely reclaimed. Water samples taken by the EPA from a nearby 
stream just last year show uranium levels 16 times higher than 
the safe level. We simply cannot continue to use a permissive 
law written 150 years ago to govern how companies develop 
minerals on public land. So if we want a modern mining permit 
process, I think it is fair to say we also need a modern mining 
law. We need a royalty to capture fair value for the taxpayers, 
as these are public resources. We need a reclamation fee. We 
need a process to protect the places that just are not 
appropriate for development, whether that is the headwaters of 
the Pecos or the watershed around the boundary waters. And 
above all, what we really need is dedicated funding to clean up 
abandoned mines so that accidents like this--and this is not an 
anomaly in my state--we have had multiple accidents on the 
Animas, which also impacted Colorado. I remember the first time 
I ever talked to Governor Hickenlooper was as a result of this 
spill. We have had it happen on the Pecos. The Red River is 
still recovering from the impacts to the Red River.
    So, as the Chairman can attest, and he alluded to this a 
few minutes ago, all these things are already in place for coal 
development, for oil and gas development. Hardrock mines are 
the only industrial use allowed on our public lands that have 
none of these public safeguards in place. So mining has been 
good to me. My father did exploration for Anaconda Copper. My 
grandfather mined at Battle Mountain for gold. And I agree that 
we need new sources of minerals that are necessary for all of 
these technologies, but I do not think we will get them with 
the same old mining law because local communities will not give 
them the social license until they know that their water is 
safe. So I would just make the case that if you want a better 
mining permit process, let's also write a better mining law.
    Now, with that, I wanted to ask you, Ms. Padilla, is the 
Twin Metals mine in the same watershed as the Boundary Waters 
Canoe Area Wilderness?
    Ms. Padilla. The project is located, Senator, within the 
Rainy River Watershed.
    Senator Heinrich. Yes, which is the same watershed. Is it 
above or below the Boundary Waters?
    Ms. Padilla. It is south of Boundary Waters.
    Senator Heinrich. Which puts it above it in the watershed, 
correct?
    Ms. Padilla. We--the mine projects, the hydrology is really 
interesting in the area. So we are about 20 river miles away 
from the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, and our 
hydrology connects to about one percent of the lakes within the 
Boundary Waters.
    Senator Heinrich. When the Minneapolis Star Tribune asked 
you if there was zero risk to the Boundary Waters as a result, 
what they reported, and please correct it if it is incorrect, 
is that you said that is not a fair question.
    Is that accurate? And if it is accurate, why would it not 
be a fair question?
    Ms. Padilla. Yes, it was a much more nuanced response than 
what was printed in the paper, Senator. It is a good question. 
I mean, these are industrial activities. Every human activity 
involves risk. And so I think when we ask simple questions and 
expect a simple answer, that is a problem. When I get into a 
car, I choose whether to put on a seatbelt. I choose whether to 
take that risk, and there are laws in place to determine 
whether I should do that or not. So when we are talking about, 
you know, whether an industrial project has any risk of 
impacting anything, certainly we have that risk, but what----
    Senator Heinrich. Let me--this will all wrap this up.
    Ms. Padilla. Yes.
    Senator Heinrich. Mr. Chair, because I have taken a lot of 
time here, but Dr. Z., I know you are an expert on acid mine 
drainage. This kind of underground mining in a wet environment 
above a place like the Boundary Waters in a watershed, is that 
risky, and is that different than dry mining?
    Dr. Ziemkiewicz. Well, by definition it will be wet enough 
to generate acid mine drainage. So unless you put a plastic 
cover over all of the potentially acid-producing rock on the 
site, it will produce some acid, yes.
    Senator Heinrich. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    The Chairman. Thank you.
    I would like to take a personal privilege here of 
introducing Senator Glenn Jeffries from West Virginia. He is a 
State Senator who I have worked with very closely, he does a 
great job, and he has been very supportive of these programs. 
He is pushing in the state, too, and thanks, Glenn, for being 
here. Appreciate you, buddy.
    Okay, and now we have Senator Lee.
    Senator Lee. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thanks to all of you 
for being here.
    Mr. Melbye, I would like to start with you, if that is 
okay. I am worried about our domestic reliance on imported 
uranium, specifically and especially Russian imported uranium. 
I think this poses a significant strategic risk to the United 
States. I also worry that the recent decision by the Biden 
Administration to remove uranium from its critical minerals 
list is something that could have very real, harmful, lasting 
consequences.
    Mr. Melbye, what kind of consequences do you think we ought 
to anticipate as a result of that short-sighted decision by the 
U.S. Geological Survey?
    Mr. Melbye. Yes, well, you know, uranium is the source of 
fuel for our largest source of carbon-free energy, over 55 
percent of our carbon-free energy, 20 percent of our 
electricity. It is also the fuel for our naval reactors and our 
100-plus reactors and more than 80 aircraft carriers and 
submarines. So I think we have become a little lackadaisical 
about the supply of uranium. I think on the commercial side of 
nuclear energy, I think it was more of a commercial preference 
to just diversify and purchase uranium from Russia and 
Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan. It wasn't an imperative. We have over a 
billion pounds of known and likely resources in the United 
States. We have the highest environmental standards--health, 
safety, and environment. The injustices that occurred in New 
Mexico in the 1950s as part of the weapons program and the 
government's obligation, they need to address those because 
they were injustices and they bear no resemblance to the mining 
industry that we have today.
    We have 21st century standards of technologies, health, 
safety, environment. So we have to pay attention to our uranium 
industry. Countries like Russia and China are taking--they are 
playing the long game. They are acquiring resources all around 
the world--places like Namibia in Africa, and you know, we are 
fortunate we have abundant resources here in the United States 
and Canada. So we should make the best use of that and we have 
the ability to do that.
    Senator Lee. We have the ability, and notwithstanding that 
ability, we have chosen to put ourselves in a position in which 
we are taking upwards of 46 percent of uranium consumed in 
America from Russia and its close affiliates. Does that strike 
you, and should it strike me, as us putting ourselves in a 
position very analogous to that of Germany relying on a supply 
of Russian natural gas?
    Mr. Melbye. Yes, I mean, Germany put themselves in their 
position with the energy policies that they took and it has 
caused them to be over-reliant on Russian gas, but you know, we 
have done the same thing here in nuclear energy with uranium 
from Russia, but we do not have to. It was a commercial 
preference, not a supply imperative. So it will be easy for us. 
It won't be painless, and it won't be without some cost, but we 
need to stand up western industries as quickly as we can to get 
ourselves off of Russian uranium.
    Senator Lee. Dr. Fortier, in determining whether a mineral 
should be listed as critical, the USGS creates an ability-to-
supply index. It is known as the ASI. The data supplied for the 
USGS's ability-to-supply index comes from the Frasier 
Institute's Policy Perception Index, and that is an index that 
assesses political stability, security, and other factors. 
Here's the rub. The Frasier Institute concludes--to say it 
concludes absurdly is a vast understatement--but it listed 
Russia right above Utah in terms of its investment 
attractiveness. You know, if you look closely, however, you 
will see that this ranking was made only on the basis of 
somewhere between five and nine voluntary responses to their 
survey.
    Dr. Fortier, do you think that between five and nine 
unreported responses to a survey provide a sufficient 
qualitative basis for determining the likelihood for critical 
mineral supply disruption?
    Dr. Fortier. Thanks for that question, Senator Lee.
    Certainly, there are data limitations in any kind of 
modeling effort. We use whatever data we have available to us 
and whatever best data are available to us, but we really do 
not control how those data are produced. We have to use what is 
available.
    Senator Lee. Right. What is available here strikes me as 
problematic, and there are external manifestations of this. 
According to the five to nine responses that the Frasier 
Institute received, Russia scored above 60 percent in terms of 
political stability of the sort encouraging investment. Again, 
that was above my home State of Utah, but it wasn't just Utah. 
It was also Montana and Washington and Minnesota and Colorado 
and other states, many of which are represented here on this 
Committee. Would you agree with this assessment that Utah and 
the other states I have mentioned are less politically stable 
than Russia?
    Dr. Fortier. Senator, I think it is important to 
distinguish what we have done and what we have not done. We are 
not disputing the facts about uranium supply and demand.
    Senator Lee. I am not suggesting you are disputing them. I 
am disputing your characterization that my state is somehow 
less politically stable than Russia.
    Dr. Fortier. And that is certainly not a position we are 
taking. We removed uranium from the critical minerals list 
because the definition of a critical mineral in the Energy Act 
of 2020 changed. That's why. It has nothing to do with whether 
uranium meets the criteria that are otherwise stated in that 
definition, but the definition, which had language inserted 
specifically excluding fuel minerals from consideration, is 
what we are responding to.
    Senator Lee. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I see my time is 
expired.
    The Chairman. I feel like you might be around for the 
second round.
    [Laughter.]
    The Chairman. Senator Heinrich.
    Senator Heinrich. Yes, I just wanted to quickly point out 
that the industry and the mine that I referenced operated long 
after the government's nuclear program and operated in the 
private sector supplying the energy industry.
    The Chairman. Thank you, Senator.
    Senator King. The birthday boy.
    Senator King. Yes, thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    One of my favorite sayings of Mark Twain is that, ``History 
doesn't always repeat itself, but it usually rhymes.'' And in 
this case, I am thinking back to the predecessor in my Senate 
seat, Edmund Muskie of Maine, who wrote the Clean Water Act. 
And the Clean Water Act passed in 1970 after immense effort by 
Senator Muskie, unanimously. Can you imagine? The Clean Water 
Act passed the U.S. Senate unanimously. And it seems to me that 
what we are talking about today is a solvable problem. We need 
these minerals. We need to cut off our dependency on other 
countries that are unreliable or even hostile. To me, that is 
just common sense. We also need to protect our watersheds and 
our rivers and our natural resources and our communities.
    This is an engineering problem. And I have worked in energy 
permitting. I have been an advocate for development over my 
life, in fact, next year marks the 40th year since I went into 
the alternative energy business. What I said when I was 
Governor of Maine is, I want the strongest, most far-reaching 
environmental laws in the country and the most timely and 
predictable permitting process. I do not think the permitting 
process itself should be used as a weapon to stop a project. 
But I agree, I find myself in the unusual position of agreeing 
with Senator Barrasso. By the way, I think that is one of the 
most effective uses of visual data that I have ever seen, and 
it really does make an important point. We have to have one-
stop permitting. We have to have coordination between the State 
and the Federal Government. This does not mean lowering the 
standards. It doesn't mean skipping steps. It doesn't mean 
avoiding difficult issues.
    But, Ms. Wulf, am I on the right track here? I mean, it 
just seems to me this is in the nature of a scientific and an 
engineering problem, and we should be able to solve it so that 
we can permit necessary projects for national security within a 
reasonable period of time.
    Ms. Wulf. I couldn't agree with you more, Senator King. And 
thank you for your work and your interest on this issue. I was 
so, like, wow, when you held up that chart earlier, but I 
really do think that our regulatory regime is really one of our 
greatest strengths as well. We want to make sure that the 
energy transition is responsible and clean, and we do think 
that doing that within the United States and among like-minded 
nations will help to achieve that. As you mention, the 
technology is rapidly advancing and we are able to do things 
much more cleanly than we have in the past. But what we also 
need to recognize is that we need much more robust and 
meaningful community participation on the front-end as well to 
help make sure that we can communicate to people.
    That is partly what I am trying to do here today is that we 
really do need these things. It should be a bipartisan issue. 
And so, as humans, you know, nothing that we do is zero-impact. 
So how can we make sure that we can have as responsible of an 
impact as possible? And I think that, you know, it is not 
cutting corners. Streamlining the permitting process is 
required but, you know, maintaining these high standards that 
we have in the United States and trying to figure out just how 
virtuous are we, and are there any loopholes, and can we 
improve, is important.
    Senator King. Well, I think that you used the phrase 
``nothing we do is zero-impact,'' and I think you used that 
phrase as well, and that is important. One thing I have learned 
in energy over 40 years is, there's no free lunch. Everything 
has a cost and an impact, and if you want wind power, you are 
going to have to look at them on top of the ridges, and if you 
want solar, a lot of farm fields are going to disappear, and 
you are going to have to have the minerals, and either the 
choice is we import them from possibly hostile countries or we 
develop them ourselves. I think the Chairman is absolutely 
right, within North America, from friendly countries, we can 
develop a supply chain. We do not have to be entirely dependent 
on indigenous resources.
    But we have to recognize--the environmental community has 
to recognize--if they want electrification, they have to 
understand that the materials necessary to make that a 
possibility are going to have--there are going to be impacts. 
And the question is, how do we minimize them, protect against 
them, and develop a rational permitting system, where the 
system itself doesn't become an impediment to the development 
of--the word is critical--resources.
    Ms. Wulf. I agree. I think that they need to be thought of 
as clean-energy land uses.
    Senator King. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    The Chairman. Thank you, Senator.
    Now we have Senator--is Senator Daines here? Senator Daines 
is here.
    Senator Daines. I am behind the stack of paper, Mr. 
Chairman.
    The Chairman. Oh, you should have seen it before.
    Senator Daines. Well, we all have our horror stories. I am 
going to unpack this one from Montana. First of all, behind me 
is the permitting timeline for the Rock Creek Mine located in 
the northwestern part of Montana in Sanders County.
    [The timeline referred to follows:]
    
    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] 
    
    Senator King. Is that like creek?
    Senator Daines. It is creek [pronounced ``crick''] in 
Montana. There, Chairman King, there.
    So this started in 1987. This is a lather, rinse, repeat 
cycle. You can see what happens here. We go through the 
permitting process, the draft EIS, the permits get finished, 
then we have the legal challenge. This started in 1987. By the 
way, this 2022 here. They finished it again. Legally 
challenged. This is 35 years, and this is so far the 
environmental reports that have been generated.
    [Front pages of ten environmental reports follow:]
    
    [GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] 
    

    
    Senator Daines. In 1987, when this process started, Ronald 
Reagan was President. In fact, that was the year he stood 
before the Brandenburg gate and said ``Mr. Gorbachev, tear down 
this wall.'' I would kindly submit, please, to the courts, 
please tear down this wall and allow us to move forward with a 
mine after some 35 years of court battles and regulatory 
battles, doing it the right way, in a state, by the way, in a 
corner of my state that has one of the highest poverty levels 
in Montana. In fact, I met with a couple up there several years 
ago. We were talking about the loss of their natural resources, 
the loss of their timber industry, and they sadly said, 
``Senator, what we have here in this beautiful part of Montana 
is poverty with a view.''
    So there is a lot at stake here about the economic 
activity, the tax revenues to save these counties that are 
losing their population because there is no work, there is no 
tax base, not to mention, we have got an ability here to 
generate more made-in-America minerals. Let me put that in 
perspective. This permitting process has been ongoing for seven 
presidents. We have had nine presidential elections since the 
mine was originally proposed. This is unacceptable. I wish we 
could bring the folks from the county here that could plead 
before this body of Democrats and Republicans, and ask when is 
this nightmare, frankly, going to end. I will tell you who is 
making a lot of money, it is the lawyers who are making the 
most money on this, and probably some consultants. With every 
new permit comes more frivolous litigation from anti-mining 
groups. Their philosophy is to leave it in the ground.
    On one hand, we have the Biden Administration trying to 
block permitting of new oil and gas leases on federal lands. At 
the same time, you have these woke green groups trying to block 
domestic mining of the materials and the metals that are needed 
for renewable energy development. So what are we left with? 
Under President Biden and these far-left environmental groups 
and woke judges, we cannot produce traditional energy on 
federal lands, and we also cannot mine the materials needed to 
produce renewable energy. And I am not opposed to renewables. 
Let's think of renewables as additive to our portfolio as this 
transition occurs, not replacing. And if there is one case 
study to be made, it is look at what happened to Europe, and 
the position they have put themselves in. We cannot let America 
get to that point.
    Increasing domestic mining, like the Rock Creek Mine, will 
help bolster energy security. It is going to help our local 
communities. It is going to help people. The Forest Service 
predicted that this mine would result in 600 Montana jobs. It 
would be a stable economic driver in the county for more than 
30 years. It is virtually a generation. This is an area that 
desperately needs these jobs and revenue. We are dangerously 
dependent on China for the minerals and the metals that run our 
economy and our national defense. In fact, of the 50 critical 
minerals, 31 are imported from China. This never-ending cycle 
of permitting and litigation must stop if we ever plan to 
reduce our dependence on China and foreign adversaries for 
minerals and metals. Over the years, we have seen China 
increasing mining and the United States becoming more dependent 
on imports. In 1995, the United States was 100 percent import-
reliant on eight minerals. In 2021, that just increased to 17. 
It is a disturbing trend for the sake of our kids and our 
grandkids and the security of this nation that is being fueled 
by lengthy permitting and constant litigation from green 
groups.
    Mr. Melbye, can you discuss the impacts of litigation on 
developing new mines and how this puts the U.S. at a 
disadvantage to countries like China and Russia?
    Mr. Melbye. Yes, Senator. Again, anyone who has been in 
mining in the United States has an experience like you have 
shown, very explicitly with the stack of documents. Again, I 
just want to remind everyone that the United States has the 
most robust, thorough permitting and licensing process--modern 
mining in 2022. Understandably, and we accept being put through 
strong regulatory steps to bring a mine into production, but we 
just want it predictable, and we want it transparent, and if 
you meet all the steps, you should be granted the license to 
mine.
    I mean, our most successful track record, I think, was 
permitting a mine in the State of Wyoming in just over six 
years, and that was a huge success. But we didn't face, you 
know, much opposition to the mine in the form of legal 
challenges. But we find that a lot of those challenges, too, 
ignore the local communities, whether it is northern Minnesota 
or it is South Texas or it is the Powder River Basin of 
Wyoming, these are people's real lives here. They are not some 
esoteric argument about mining or not mining. If we do not do 
it here, it is going to be undertaken in places like the Congo 
or in Africa or South America where they do not share our 
values for the environment and for tribal peoples. We have 
protections for all of those things in our current regulatory 
structure in the United States and we just need to enforce 
those and streamline them as much as we can.
    Senator Daines. Thank you. I am over my time, but everybody 
I have spoken to involving these operations, they want to 
comply with the regulations. They want to do it the right way. 
The modern mining practices do it the right way. We are better 
off doing it here in America in terms of global stewardship 
than outside of our borders. And by the way, the difference 
here between perhaps Montana and other countries is--welcome to 
the Ninth Circuit Court, but thank you.
    The Chairman. Thank you, Senator.
    Senator Wyden.
    Senator Wyden. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. There's 
lots going on here.
    The Chairman. You have missed a good show so far.
    Senator Wyden. Many of the technologies that are going to 
move us to the next generation of clean energy products rely on 
critical minerals, so it is essential to start building the 
supply here at home and reduce our country's dependence on 
foreign-produced minerals, and in turn, wean ourselves off of 
foreign energy, and reducing that dependence on foreign 
minerals and energy is as much a national security issue as it 
is an environmental question.
    So toward this end, I recently introduced S. 3783, my 
American Energy Development and Growth Enhancement Act, which 
would expand access to critical minerals here in the United 
States and create what I think are clearly good-paying, red, 
white, and blue jobs. The bill does not deal with mining 
leases, but would provide opportunities to expand the 
processing and manufacturing of critical minerals and aid the 
cleanup of existing mining sites. And folks, we can do this. We 
can tap these extraordinary domestic resources without throwing 
the environmental values we feel strongly about in the trash 
can.
    So what I would like to do is just get you, Ms. Wulf, on 
the record on this point. You mentioned we all understand the 
need for critical minerals and dealing with supply chains here 
in our country. That is what the EDGE Act does. What are your 
thoughts on this, and what would increased access to domestic 
critical mineral supplies and support for processing to 
companies that care about innovation--as you do, as I do, I 
think our colleagues all do--that produce cutting-edge battery 
and clean energy technologies?
    Ms. Wulf. Thank you so much, Senator Wyden, and thank you 
so much for your work on the bill, which we very much support.
    So as you say, this race for the future is not just a race 
to control the raw materials, it is really a race to control 
the innovation, expertise, and intellectual property that comes 
along with the downstream industries that flow from our ability 
to have secure access to those material resources. It doesn't 
really matter where you dig something up at this point because 
it all has to get sent to China to be processed anyway. But 
additionally, if we only focus on building up processing 
facilities, we need to be thinking about what are we 
processing, and also, once we have processed the material, who 
are we selling that stuff to?
    There is no silver bullet right now. We have to be focusing 
on the entirety of the supply chain to make sure that these 
renewable energy industries and high-technology innovation 
industries, and our auto sector are not hollowed out. Right 
now, even if we have processing, we are not making the battery 
components--those anodes and cathodes--as I mentioned in my 
remarks. You would have to send that processed material to 
China to be processed, to be made into those battery 
components. So it is this vital midstream, Senator Wyden, and 
thank you for the question.
    Senator Wyden. Well, thank you. I appreciate the support 
for our EDGE Act. And I would just say, colleagues, I think, 
and Senator Manchin and I talk about this issue--all of us do--
I think that this effort with respect to domestic focus on 
minerals is a good complement to the Clean Energy for America 
Act. You know, the Clean Energy for America Act, colleagues, we 
basically took the tax code as it relates to energy and threw 
it in the trash can. And what we said going forward is, we are 
going to have a technology-neutral approach and then we are 
going to say, for the first time, the more you reduce carbon 
emissions, the bigger your tax savings.
    So we are all in here in terms of trying to tap these kinds 
of opportunities. That is what a technology-neutral approach is 
all about. That is what the effort in terms of freeing ourself 
from this dependence on foreign sources of minerals is all 
about. I support the kind of ideas that are being offered 
today, in this Committee, and this is priority business. And if 
anything, what the conflict in Ukraine has highlighted is the 
urgency of this, you know, shaking free of this dependence on 
foreign supplies, in particular, is critical, and in so many 
instances, I am running back to the Finance Committee. We see 
people going the other way. Mexico is walking back, right now, 
its commitments to renewable energy. So we have a lot of work 
to do. I look forward to working with all of you and our 
colleagues here in the Energy Committee on both sides of the 
aisle.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    The Chairman. Thank you, Senator.
    Now we have Senator Lankford.
    Senator Lankford. Senator Manchin, thank you. The 
witnesses, thank you very much for being here. This is an 
incredibly important conversation. It is interesting as we go 
back and forth across the dais here that there is this 
perception that Republicans are all trying to get rid of all 
permitting and just rape the land and strip it, and Democrats 
are trying to be able to protect everything. I do not think 
that is really where anyone is on this, on either side of it--
reasonable permitting process. We all live in these areas.
    Senator Heinrich, you were talking about some of the 
challenges there. Picher, Oklahoma, is considered the most 
toxic place in America. It was a lead mine for 100 years. It is 
still the largest Superfund site, and literally, we have had to 
evacuate everyone from the entire town. It is a ghost town now. 
All buildings are there. Everyone has pulled up as we try to 
deal with it. The way we used to do mining was terrible. It was 
expedient. It destroyed the environment around it. No one wants 
to go back to that. Nobody. But we have to figure out how to be 
able to do this. When I talk to mining companies, I am 
interested to hear with some of your insight today, and with 
Senator Daines' comment, it is always about why would you do 
mining? Why would you even try it now? When you go through the 
whole long process, but at the end of it, someone can sue you 
and it just delays everything out and it ends up never being 
answered.
    If there is a small group that does not want any mining at 
all there, regardless of what the national need is, how do you 
get around that and how do you deal with it? And so there are 
major issues that we have to address that are hard questions. 
How do we make sure that we actually do this environmentally 
friendly? But how do we make sure we actually get projects 
done? And we have the private sector, otherwise, every project 
is going to have to be a federal project, and we all know what 
that is going to mean with 12,000-plus mines that are actually 
happening in America right now, and a lot of them are doing it 
extremely well. So we have to be able to figure out how to be 
able to balance this out.
    Dr. Fortier, I want to ask you about the mapping. You 
talked about the Earth mapping--the Earth MRI. I love the name 
of it, by the way. There was a time period when this was all 
moving, and we had actually mapped more of Afghanistan than we 
had of the United States. I would assume we are caught up on 
that. Where are we? When will this project be done?
    Dr. Fortier. Yes, thank you, Senator.
    The Earth MRI project is, I think, a fundamentally 
important initiative, and we are very appreciative of the----
    Senator Lankford. So when will it be done?
    Dr. Fortier. I do not think I can give you an end date, but 
what I can say without fear of contradiction is that the money 
that has been injected by the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law 
will vastly accelerate that process.
    Senator Lankford. Is that 20 years? Is that five years? 
When will that be done?
    Dr. Fortier. I do not know the answer to that. I can 
perhaps get one of our people that run that project to give you 
a better idea what the timeline is.
    Senator Lankford. Great.
    Dr. Fortier. But I would not hazard a guess. It is a big 
initiative.
    Senator Lankford. It is a big initiative----
    Dr. Fortier. And it is accelerating with the influx of 
funding.
    Senator Lankford. So I have a question that has been 
brought to me before, and that is about processing minerals. We 
really talk a lot about the mining, but the processing part is 
another whole step, and that is very significant. Obviously, 
there are environmental challenges around the processing, as 
well as around the mining. Both can be handled well. There is a 
question that has been brought to me before of, can we do the 
processing on a brownfield site? So there are unique 
challenges, obviously, working in a brownfield site, and 
already with environmental challenges there, but are there ways 
to be able to move the processing to a location that is a 
brownfield site already and to say while we are working on the 
other environmental issues that are here already, we also have 
something else that we are trying to be able to manage as well?
    Is that faster or slower to do that? And I am not going to 
ask either of you to commit to it, but initial impression, Ms. 
Padilla, your initial impression on that.
    Ms. Padilla. Thank you, Senator.
    I think we need to look at all of these options because 
siting facilities like that is difficult.
    Senator Lankford. Right.
    Ms. Padilla. So processing facilities by themselves, if you 
are utilizing a site that has already been heavily 
industrialized, you are likely going to have an easier time 
through permitting.
    Senator Lankford. Right.
    Mr. Melbye, what do you think?
    Mr. Melbye. Yes, and one of the advantages of the uranium 
fuel cycle is the energy density of uranium. We do not have a 
proliferation of a lot of mines and a lot of processing 
facilities, but clearly, it is easier to expand on a site that 
already has the community acceptance and everything going 
forward. So yes, it is an easier path forward, but we still 
have to go through the steps.
    Senator Lankford. Right. There are still lots of steps to 
go through. We are just trying to be able to find--we have to 
get practical solutions in this process of how do we actually 
do some of these things. And I think what I am throwing out is, 
is this even an option, something that we should consider to be 
able to walk through this?
    I am going to stick to Joe Manchin's term of Dr. Z., and be 
able to go from there.
    Yes, so my question to you is, in Oklahoma and multiple 
other states that are doing oil and gas development, they have 
produced water that is coming out. The produced water that is 
coming out in multiple layers--they have found lithium in it. 
Have you done experimentation and research on the issue about 
produced water coming out of oil and gas wells and actually 
producing lithium? Are any of you tracking that as research?
    Dr. Ziemkiewicz. Yes, yes, Senator. We have a project with 
the Department of Energy where we are looking at the produced 
water coming out of the Marcellus and Utica unconventional 
formations. We have looked at lithium, and we generally find 
the concentrations between 80 and 120 milligrams per liter. 
There are a lot of other things in the matrix, but I just 
talked the other day to a developer of a lithium brine 
development project in California, and we were comparing notes 
on the water quality, and it is not that much different in 
terms of being a sodium chloride dominated water. Being able to 
extract the lithium from that, we did not find at current 
prices--and we did this study a couple years ago--that it was 
cost effective. When I talked to the brine developer in 
California, he told me that they like 200 to 400 milligrams per 
liter, which is about twice what we are getting.
    So to answer your question briefly.
    Senator Lankford. Thank you very much. Mr. Chairman, 
thanks.
    The Chairman. Thank you.
    Senator Cantwell.
    Senator Cantwell. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, and thank you 
and Ranking Member Barrasso for holding this hearing. I think 
it is fair to say the Committee has been ahead of the curve in 
recognizing the importance of critical minerals to our economy, 
to national security, and to our energy future. The Committee 
has done some good work stemming from Senator Murkowski and I 
collaborating early on an energy package, all the way to the 
most recent infrastructure bill. But clearly, we need to do 
more faster, and we need to do more innovation. One of the 
issues that we are working on is the innovation bill. My 
colleague--House Energy and Commerce colleague--Cathy McMorris 
Rodgers, has made it clear she would like to see a critical 
minerals element in the package.
    So I think when you think about critical minerals, it is 
important for our R&D, for various technologies in clean energy 
specifically--lots of the products and services in clean energy 
will require these critical minerals. So I hope that we can 
leverage our expertise at our DOE labs and work toward these 
issues. Becoming less reliant on global critical minerals will 
really, I think, require some out-of-the-box thinking. Chairman 
Manchin has highlighted the possibility of extracting critical 
minerals from coal ash. One example from my state, on a tour of 
the Pacific Northwest Laboratory Marine Science Lab in Sequim, 
I was told there was promising research in developing new 
approaches to extract critical minerals from sea water. So I 
think that included elements such as uranium, lithium, and 
cobalt--so something I hope that our labs can take a look at.
    So I wanted to ask you, Ms. Wulf, the traditional critical 
mineral, you know--extraction--I do not believe that is going 
to be enough to get us to end our dependence on China's imports 
and rapidly scale-up renewables and EVs. Can you share some 
thoughts on innovative ways that we should be looking at 
critical minerals here at home?
    Ms. Wulf. Absolutely, Senator Cantwell, and thank you very 
much for the question because I think that is an important one. 
In the United States, one of our greatest strengths is our 
innovation, and what we have right now is a relatively older 
industry, really bashing heads with brand-new, cutting-edge 
technology. It is sort of an interesting culture clash, I 
think. We do not want to just be trying to catch up with China 
in this regard. We need to find out a way to leapfrog them, and 
I think that, again, our innovation base is the way to do that. 
In particular, I think that we need to work with our national 
labs and to partner with industry to figure out more innovative 
ways to make mineral processing faster, cheaper, and cleaner 
outside of China--so within the United States and among like-
minded nations.
    Right now, you know, their processes are very traditional. 
We have some very forward-thinking mineral processors here in 
the United States. One, Urbix, in Arizona, is doing clean 
graphite processing in a light industrial zone in Mesa, 
Arizona, which is fairly fascinating. They are not associated 
with one single mine, so following that China angle, I think 
that is something that we should be investing in and doing more 
of here.
    Senator Cantwell. Okay, and I noticed the President has 
made it an Executive Order here, so the resources could be 
flowing as well. So what particular areas or minerals do you 
think we should focus on in the innovation side that would be 
most helpful?
    Ms. Wulf. In the innovation side--and thank you again for 
the question--so at SAFE, we are particularly interested in the 
battery metals, but also, you know, we want to make sure as 
technologies rapidly change and the flavors of batteries 
rapidly change, that we have the holistic frameworks in place 
so that we are not just focusing on a couple of key minerals at 
one time that could, you know, in the next 10 years, not really 
be the dominant flavors, or, you know--chemistries, to be more 
formal--in the future. So having those frameworks in place will 
be really important, but in the near-term, 10 to 15 years for 
light duty vehicles, we need those lithium-ion battery 
chemistry minerals.
    Senator Cantwell. Well, I think this is one of the reasons 
why just supply chain money in general, again, wearing a 
different hat for the commerce side of USICA, is about 
identifying in critical areas of U.S. industry what are the 
supply chain needs. And so to me, getting that identified so 
that, as you say, we are not, you know, just doing a one-off 
today, but looking at the complexity of the whole system.
    So thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    The Chairman. We now have Senator Murkowski.
    Senator Murkowski. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    I really appreciate this hearing this morning. As has been 
mentioned, just most directly by Senator Cantwell, this 
Committee has been looking at this issue and this vulnerability 
for a long, long time now, and it is good. It feels like 
everybody else is kind of waking up to our reality that we have 
been raising the alarm or pounding the drum, and it seems like 
it just kind of echoes in this room and doesn't go beyond here. 
So it is important that we are aware and are focusing on it, 
and hopefully in a strong and a significant way.
    We talk about this transition, whether it is to electric 
vehicles, but if things are trending in the way that we see 
them trending now, the costs that we will see, as we try to 
develop new technologies, as we try to build out, for instance, 
the electric vehicle fleet, where we are looking at projections 
now that the cost of an average EV could rise by a thousand 
dollars just because of the nickel prices. Batteries could cost 
25 percent more because of the increase in lithium carbonate 
prices. So people are getting the message. They say I want to 
go to an electric vehicle, and then they look at it and say, 
you know, how am I going to do this? Why are they doing this? 
Who is to blame?
    Well, you used a terminology, Ms. Wulf, that I really 
appreciated. You said we can talk about acts of nature, that is 
where the resources are. We think that God has blessed us with 
a lot of that in Alaska, but the active policy is what is 
inhibiting our ability to really do more and be more of a 
producer in this area. We have laid strong fundamentals through 
this Committee with everything, beginning from the Energy Act 
of 2020, which Dr. Fortier, you have mentioned, the American 
Minerals Security Act that Senator Manchin and I worked on, the 
REACT Act, the Bipartisan Infrastructure bill that puts funding 
to the authorization. We are doing all of this right, and I 
think that that is important, but then we have these 
inconsistencies with policy that just make no sense.
    In February, on the very same day that the President touted 
his progress on critical minerals--the very same day--
Department of the Interior pauses and suspends the right-of-way 
for the Ambler Access project. This is not even for a mine, 
mind you. This is a 200-mile-plus, controlled access industrial 
road to provide access to this mineral district. It is about a 
75-mile mineral belt, considered one of the world's largest 
undeveloped copper and zinc mineral belts. Well, if you cannot 
get there, the resource is going to continue to sit there. I 
think we recognize that. From that stack of paperwork that 
Senator Daines cited, to that lengthy schematic about how long 
it takes to process a mine, we cannot even get to the beginning 
of starting a 10-year process because we cannot get to it. So 
it is these inconsistencies and the conflict between where the 
resource is, that act of nature and the act of policy. Well, we 
can control the policy side, and I think this is where we need 
to help move this forward.
    I want to ask a question to you, Dr. Fortier, about 
graphite. We have not produced it in the U.S. at any 
significant scale since the 1950s. We are now 100 percent 
dependent on imports for natural graphite--70 percent of those 
imports come from China. But we also know that both natural 
graphite, which Alaska has--we have a significant project, 
Graphite One, but synthetic graphite, which states like West 
Virginia and Wyoming can produce, are both needed for the 
production of anodes for lithium-ion batteries. Ms. Wulf, maybe 
this is better directed to you, but in terms of rechargeable 
batteries and energy storage, are there applications that 
require all-natural graphite or all-synthetic graphite, or is 
it always a mix, because I have been told, no, no, no, do not 
worry about the natural graphite, we'll be able to produce 
synthetic, so we do not need it. Walk me through that.
    Ms. Wulf. Thank you very much for the question, Senator 
Murkowski, and thank you very much to you and Senator Cantwell 
for your dedicated work on this issue for a very long time.
    On battery chemistries, I might admit, I just know a bit to 
be dangerous, so I am happy to get back to you on that 
question. But I believe the answer is it can be both.
    Senator Murkowski. But, perhaps more broadly, wouldn't you 
agree that if we are going to talk about really improving our 
mineral security, especially for battery minerals, we have to 
have domestic production of graphite--natural graphite and 
synthetic graphite?
    Ms. Wulf. I certainly agree that domestic production will 
have to be a part of our equation when we are talking about 
national and economic security. I like to think of this issue 
in the short-term and long-term terms. In the short term, yes, 
we see that we have a lot of these hurdles and we want to make 
sure that we do things correctly here because, again, I think 
we see that as our strength. I think that we can work with our 
allies in the short-term to get the things that we need to 
process it here, to build the battery components and other 
things here to get that downstream IP. But then also, I think 
that it does make sense to also have enough of a material here 
to insulate ourselves from any supply shocks that we might 
have.
    Senator Murkowski. So Mr. Chairman, we haven't talked as 
much about the processing side of this as I think is required 
for this. We are talking about where it is coming from. USGS is 
working on the mapping. We appreciate that, but when you think 
about the one processing facility that we are talking about 
here in Mountain Pass, DOD has just given a grant to help build 
that out. It kind of disturbs me to know that there is a 
Chinese interest there. I mean, it is not big, but eight 
percent or thereabouts is something that--I thought we were a 
little worried about that. I worry. I worry about the fact that 
we might have the resources here. We might be able to get 
around the lengthy permitting process and still be in a 
situation where we have to send it to China and then ask 
politely for them to send it back to us.
    So I would hope that we would have additional time here in 
this Committee to talk about that aspect of how we get the 
stuff. We cannot take the rock and put it in the Tesla. I like 
the way you translated it for ``minerals for dummies'' here.
    Ms. Wulf. Thank you.
    Senator Kelly [presiding]. Senator Hickenlooper.
    Senator Hickenlooper. Let me just say that I, as a 
recovering geologist, enjoy this panel more than any, and as a 
volcanologist, almost all the critical minerals and rare earth 
elements, in some way, go back to a volcanic past.
    Let me start with Dr. Fortier, and anybody connected with 
the U.S. Geological Survey, you get my immediate acceptance, 
not to say you cannot lose it, but immediate acceptance. I want 
to talk a little bit about the great horse manure crisis of 
1894, where the Times of London reported that if the rate of 
growth continued, every street in London would be buried under 
nine feet of horse manure within 50 years. And Kingsmill Bond 
of the Rocky Mountain Institute, our proud Colorado think-tank, 
observed this analogy between then and today's critical mineral 
projections, and I think there is a temptation to believe that 
we will meet the energy needs of 2050 with the technologies of 
today. That is probably not going to happen. In reality, the 
radical improvements that are going to occur in technology and 
efficiency have been, I think you say, the hallmark of every 
technological revolution ever.
    So what are some of the lessons, quickly, because I have 
got a couple more questions. What are the lessons we can learn 
to avoid repeating modeling mistakes from the 19th century here 
in the 21st century, and how is USGS poised to help that 
happen?
    Dr. Fortier. Thank you for that question, Senator. It is a 
very good one.
    Clearly, predicting the future is hazardous, at best. We 
recognize that critical mineral and mineral criticality evolves 
over time and in fact, that is acknowledged in the Energy Act 
of 2020, which instructs us to review and revise the list no 
less than every three years. That is an acknowledgment that 
over time what we now consider critical is likely to change. I 
think we have to try to stay ahead of these challenges and do 
the best we are able to see forward and anticipate impending 
disruptions to the supply chain.
    Senator Hickenlooper. Great. I couldn't agree more.
    I have other questions I am going to send to you, written.
    Now I want to just talk to Ms. Wulf and Ms. Padilla, and I 
am going to spare you all my normal static presentation on 
volcanic vesiculation--magmatic vesiculation. But I do think 
that we are in the midst of a great transition, with the energy 
transition at the forefront of this, and with each efficiency 
and technology improvement, I think mining and minerals are 
going to continue to play a pivotal role in this transition. 
Mining critical minerals, clean energy technologies, all moving 
hand-in-hand, evolving together. That is how civilizations 
always progressed.
    How do you see the process for integrating innovative 
technologies into existing mining practices to maintain the 
standards that you all recognize in terms of clean and 
sustainable? So how would you guys look at that?
    Ms. Padilla. Thank you, Senator.
    I think this is a time and an opportunity for us to 
incorporate--really model--mining practices as we move forward. 
We are doing that at Twin Metals in a number of different ways 
through fully electrifying our mining fleet, utilizing olivine 
in our tailings for carbon sequestration, no waste rock on the 
surface and, frankly, no potential for acid mine drainage at 
this mine. We have integrated underground dry stack tailings. 
No dam, no tailings pond, no potential for a dam failure. All 
of those things combined mean that we can both protect the 
Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness and provide regional 
economic stability for the area. And I think those innovations 
will continue.
    Senator Hickenlooper. Ms. Wulf.
    Ms. Wulf. Thank you, Senator, and I will just say I would 
have loved to hear the more technical spiel. I studied 
pegmatites, a type of igneous rock enriched in rare earth 
elements and lithium.
    [Laughter.]
    Ms. Wulf. So hello from a fellow geologist.
    But in terms of technological advances, if I can borrow a 
term from my colleague who is sitting behind me here, I think 
what we need is more robust federal investments in 
environmental R&D to partner with industry and to help make 
their processes cleaner and better. There are, you know, 
mechanisms of automation that I have heard about, where instead 
of digging a big open pit, if there is a vein, like a 
pegmatite, you can have this little autonomous robot that goes 
through and just mines that vein. So things like that--thinking 
big, again, and working public-private partnerships between the 
government and industry to make these things possible, I think, 
is very important.
    Senator Hickenlooper. And I saw almost every head nodding 
as you were speaking. I am not sure they were talking about 
agreeing with your principle, which I hope and I think is what 
it was, but there is something beautiful just about the word 
pegmatite, by itself.
    So anyway, I yield back to the Chair. Thank you.
    The Chairman [presiding]. Thank you, Senator.
    Now we have Senator Marshall.
    Senator Marshall. Okay, thank you, Chairman.
    My first question is for Dr. Fortier. Talk about potash, 
just for a second. Obviously, it was removed from the critical 
minerals list. We are facing a famine. The world is facing a 
famine. This year, some have said, much more so next year. My 
farmers are struggling already to get all the different 
fertilizer. Prices are through the roof. I think your notes, 
your graph mentioned that 93 percent of the potash is 
imported--Canada, a significant portion of that, Russia and 
Belarus. Why was it removed from the critical mineral list, and 
how do we stand on that?
    Dr. Fortier. Thank you for that question, Senator.
    You are correct. We have high import reliance for potash. 
The bulk of our imports do come from Canada, and U.S. 
consumption last year was something on the order of half of 
what Canadian annual production was. And the annual production 
capacity in Canada is three times U.S. annual consumption. So 
there really is no reason in principle that we could not source 
all of our potash from Canada. They have some of the largest 
potash----
    Senator Marshall. Okay, so do you still stand by that 
decision? You do not think that other countries are going to be 
coming and taking Canadian potash if they cannot get it from 
Belarus and Russia?
    Dr. Fortier. Certainly, they will.
    Senator Marshall. I will move on to my next question. I 
will stay with you, Dr. Fortier, if you don't mind. Kansas has 
many legacy mining pits, believe it or not. And we have done a 
wonderful job restoring them. Some great bass fishing. Have you 
ever considered looking at the tailings in Kansas sites for 
sources of critical minerals?
    Dr. Fortier. Yes, there is an active initiative, and we are 
directed to further investigate potential for critical minerals 
from waste streams and do a national inventory of critical 
minerals in historic mine waste and tailings. That is, I think, 
a very positive development and has a lot of potential.
    Senator Marshall. Great.
    Mr. Melbye, I will go to you next. Talk about nuclear 
fuels, and specifically, enriched nuclear fuels. One of my big 
concerns of the Iran treaty is, as I understand it, they will 
take their super-enriched uranium and sell it--give it to 
Russia. Already, we are at their mercy a little bit. How can we 
de-link ourselves from the Russian state-owned atomic energy 
company? What is the--give us solutions. Talk about solutions, 
please.
    Mr. Melbye. Yes. Listen, the move to rely on about 20 to 25 
percent of our enrichment needs in the United States was more 
of a commercial preference, and not to beat up the utilities, 
it was a genuine step to diversify their fuel supplies into an 
international fuel cycle. But we have seen, through the Iran 
sanctions, issues with Rosatom's involvement in Iran. We are 
seeing it now with Ukraine and the invasion there, that a 
reliance on Russia just is problematic in so many ways. The 
high-assay low-enriched uranium is even a more specific 
challenge because we can enrich to the normal levels----
    Senator Marshall. So I understand the problem. You are 
preaching to the choir. What is the solution?
    Mr. Melbye. We need to stand up our domestic fuel cycle, 
and that means uranium conversion and enrichment industries. I 
think some of the initiatives that have been done----
    Senator Marshall. What is keeping us from doing that?
    Mr. Melbye. It is just the will to move forward, and I 
think we----
    Senator Marshall. It isn't regulatory? It isn't the cost of 
doing business in the United States?
    Mr. Melbye. I mean, we have talked about how the chart that 
was presented earlier is a stumbling block for us to develop, 
but I mean, if we have a national will to have a domestic fuel 
cycle that we can support our own needs--energy independence is 
something that is a challenge for a lot of countries, but for 
us, we have the resources. We have the technology.
    Senator Marshall. We have proven we can do it.
    Mr. Melbye. Yes.
    Senator Marshall. Yes. Ms. Wulf, I want to move to you. 
This is a very broad question and you may not like it. To mine 
critical minerals in the United States has an environmental 
impact. And if we would say that environmental impact is x, 
similar mining in China, the environmental impact to the way 
they mine, is it 2x, 5x, 10x, a range? Just take a shot in the 
dark. I won't quote you.
    [Laughter.]
    Ms. Wulf. Thank you for the heads-up, Senator, and thank 
you for the question.
    I don't think I can hazard a guess at the exact difference, 
but I would say again that our regulatory environment, our 
transparency in our system, and our ability for our citizens to 
seek recourse, you know, should anything go awry, I think is 
something that is a pillar in the United States and something 
that is a benefit and a strength here. So that is not really 
something that they have within the Chinese Communist Party. So 
yes.
    Senator Marshall. Would you agree there is a significant 
amount of environmental impact differences by the way we mine 
versus the way China mines?
    Ms. Wulf. I would, and I would give rare earth elements as 
an example. You know, their largest mine, Bayan Obo, which is 
first and foremost an iron mine, actually, it is not a rare 
earths mine. They are mined as byproducts and co-products from 
that mine. There is a great picture from the Guardian that 
shows there is a radioactive byproduct when you process rare 
earth elements because they often occur simultaneously with 
thorium and uranium. And so, in the United States, we have a 
very strict process for dealing with that radioactive waste, 
which I think we would all agree is great, because we do not 
want radioactive waste in our environment. Whereas in China, 
they do just put that into a free-flowing lake right next to 
the mine.
    Senator Marshall. Oh, beautiful. Thank you.
    Ms. Wulf. Thank you.
    The Chairman. Senator Cortez Masto.
    Senator Cortez Masto. Thank you, Mr. Chair and Ranking 
Member, I appreciate the conversation today, and to the 
panelists.
    Let me just say this--Nevada, and many of you know this, it 
is home to the only active lithium production site in North 
America, and is known to have considerable lithium deposits 
with several proposed projects currently under review by the 
Interior Department. But Nevada is also home to many innovative 
companies contributing to the growth of domestic critical 
mineral and battery supply chain, including MP Materials, 
headquartered in Las Vegas; Dragonfly Energy, a lithium-ion 
battery manufacturer in Reno, Nevada; Redwood Materials, 
recycling end-of-life lithium-ion batteries in Carson City, 
Nevada; and of course, Tesla. With additional production 
facilities coming online, as well as Nevada being home to 
several electric battery and supply chain companies, Nevada is 
a nexus for our clean energy and our critical mineral future. 
And so I want to talk about that because I appreciate Senator 
Barrasso stealing my thunder and bringing from the Nevada 
Mining Association the permitting--the length that shows how 
long it takes to permit, on the wall. This is just, to me, a 
reason why we need to streamline our permitting.
    I want to talk a little bit about that. So Ms. Wulf, what 
specific action should this Committee take to increase domestic 
production of critical minerals while ensuring timeliness of 
the mine permitting process and the long-term viability of the 
domestic mining industry?
    Ms. Wulf. Thank you very much for the question, Senator, 
and thank you very much for your work on this important issue. 
I agree that Nevada is really positioning itself very well for 
the future economy.
    I would think that there are many things that we could do. 
First and foremost, what comes to mind is working with the U.S. 
Geological Survey here to increase the wonderful work that they 
do in our geologic mapping. It is very difficult to make good 
land use planning decisions if we do not know what we have. If 
we are not going to mine in one place, what does that mean? 
Where could we get it from somewhere else or not, you know, for 
our national economic security? So having a better idea of 
where our resources are will help with that. I think that 
looking to our neighbors to the north, seeing what they are 
doing a bit better than we are when it comes to getting these 
things permitted. They do have way fewer people than we do and 
it does get a little tricky when you are talking about land 
disturbance when you have as many people as we do. But for the 
NEPA process we have an environmental impact assessment that 
has to be done--an EIA--but in Canada it is an ESIA--an 
environmental and social impact assessment. And I do feel like 
more mining companies are beginning to understand that to make 
sure that they are not slapped with lawsuits one after the 
next, that they have to have more meaningful and robust 
engagement with communities. And so, you know, is there a way 
that we can, you know, legislate that, or is it something that, 
you know, speaking with companies and just saying, you know, it 
behooves you to be a better neighbor. So what can you be doing 
to go above and beyond to be a better neighbor in your 
communities?
    Senator Cortez Masto. So do you believe that it is, in this 
day and age with the technology that is available to mining 
companies, there is a way to not only mine, but mine 
responsibly, so you are still protecting the environment, you 
are not negating any of the NEPA or the concerns about 
environmental protection from the water, the air, and the 
land--there is the ability to do both responsibly--mine, and 
like you say, take into consideration the stakeholders and the 
needs for the land as well? Do you agree with that?
    Ms. Wulf. I do believe so, and that doesn't mean that there 
is not room for improvement. I think that there is always room 
for improvement. But I do think that there is a way that we can 
do this responsibly, and also maybe asking mining companies to 
have an adaptive management plan, which I think has been 
successful at some existing sites where communities can go to--
whether it is a third-party group or something and say the 
issue that is incorrect, work with the mining company to 
resolve the issue. I think there was something up at the Eagle 
Mine with like a road salt or something and water becoming 
contaminated with salt. And so they were able to quickly remedy 
that with an adaptive plan.
    Senator Cortez Masto. Thank you.
    Mr. Melbye, you are shaking your head. Would you mind 
weighing in?
    Mr. Melbye. Yes, absolutely. I think Ms. Wulf has really 
brought up a good point, which is that the regulation is one 
thing, but mining companies are embracing ESG principles 
because it is the right thing to do. And not only does it give 
you the social license to operate in the areas that you want to 
develop, but it is also demanded from the investment community. 
Companies like Black Rock and others and big investment funds 
that are providing the capital for operations demand it. In our 
operations, we have embraced the ESG movement completely, 
looking at ways to generate electricity, sources of electricity 
for our mining projects in South Texas from wind power and 
nuclear power, which gives us carbon-free electricity to run 
our mines.
    This is really--it is a massive trend in the mining 
industry. You cannot go to a mining conference where there are 
not three or four sessions focused on this. So it really--you 
are seeing a transformation of mining to the latest global 
standards--highest global standards in uranium and other metals 
mining.
    Senator Cortez Masto. Thank you.
    Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    The Chairman. Thank you.
    Senator Hirono.
    Senator Hirono. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
    Mr. Melbye and Ms. Padilla, neither of your testimonies 
made mention of indigenous communities and the impact of mining 
on the indigenous communities. Over half a million Native 
Americans live within ten kilometers of the 160,000 abandoned 
hardrock mines that dot our western landscape. Mine waste 
pollution has been tied to negative health impact on native 
populations, such as kidney disease and hypertension for those 
living near abandoned uranium mines, and also threatens the 
local wildlife that supports subsistence lifestyles and 
cultural traditions. How do your organizations factor in the 
comments from local indigenous communities as you go through 
the process of obtaining a mining permit?
    Mr. Melbye. Senator Hirono, absolutely, I mean, gaining 
social license to operate definitely means the local 
stakeholders, and in many parts of the western United States, 
that means engaging our tribal communities and gaining their 
consent and becoming partners with them, not adversaries. And 
again, the injustices that were committed back, you know, in 
the 50s and 60s, is not the mining industry that exists today. 
And I think the NEPA and the regulatory process that we go 
through has extensive steps for consultation with communities, 
but I think innovative mining companies are taking it a step 
further and providing employment and training for aboriginal 
communities and bringing them in as part of the success of the 
project going forward. So it is very important in anything we 
do.
    Senator Hirono. So I take it that it is in the very early 
stages of the process that you would want to have the input 
from the indigenous peoples. Would you agree with that, Ms. 
Padilla?
    Ms. Padilla. Yes, Senator, I really appreciate the question 
and the opportunity to discuss this. This is a critical piece 
of our plan. Our tribal engagement started many, many years 
ago, and we continue to do regular outreach. The tribes in our 
area are not just a stakeholder, they are a government, they 
are a sovereign entity that has the opportunity to contribute 
to both the process and the ultimate outcome of our mine. And 
we want to incorporate them at every step of the way, including 
those that are closest to us.
    Senator Hirono. Ms. Wulf, you mentioned that Canada uses an 
ESIA process where they determine the social impacts. So do you 
think we should adopt that kind of a process where the social 
impact is really codified--the requirement is codified in these 
instances of obtaining mining permits?
    Ms. Wulf. I do think it is something that the United States 
should consider. It seems to be very successful in Canada, and 
I think that, as we have all talked about, the social license 
is really the most critical piece here. And so, if an ESIA will 
help to achieve that, I think that is correct.
    Senator Hirono. Do you think it would, Ms. Padilla and Mr. 
Melbye?
    Ms. Padilla. I think, structurally, the regulatory process 
is set up differently in both Canada and Australia, and where 
they are utilizing that tool it is often put together early on 
in the process. I think it would be very useful as long as it 
doesn't add additional delays and additional inefficiencies in 
our current regulatory process.
    Senator Hirono. What happens if you don't take account of 
the social impact is, at the other end is when you are going to 
need to face lawsuits et cetera. So it seems to be something 
that we should definitely look at.
    I would like to ask whether all of the panel agrees that we 
should do more to increase critical mineral recycling. Do all 
the panelists agree that we can do more to recycle critical 
waste--critical minerals? No?
    Ms. Padilla. Yes.
    Ms. Wulf. Yes.
    Senator Hirono. Dr. Z., you are not nodding your head. Are 
you an outlier here?
    Dr. Ziemkiewicz. That was a grimace. I apologize. I don't 
have a poker face, but there has been a Critical Minerals 
Institute at Ames, Iowa under U.S. DOE funding for possibly 10 
years now. And I am not sure that a whole lot of breakthrough 
technologies have resulted from that. In other words, what I 
keep getting back is that it is extremely difficult and labor-
intensive to actually separate the rare earth elements--or 
particularly critical minerals--out of a recycled consumer 
product. You have basically little flakes of things in big 
masses of plastic and metal. So recycling is very problematic 
and labor-intensive.
    Senator Hirono. And would you agree, Ms. Wulf?
    Ms. Wulf. I think that there are many challenges to 
recycling right now, but there are places like Redwood 
Materials in Senator Cortez Masto's district that are doing 
this effectively and successfully. I think that from a national 
security standpoint, too, that recycling needs to be very much 
considered. At the end of the day, these are finite natural 
resources that are infinitely recyclable. And so yes, we do 
need more R&D to make sure that they are economic and in line 
with, you know, compared to virgin resources, but I think that 
we are getting there, and we are going to reach a critical mass 
of these things in the next 10 to 15 years. So we need to make 
sure that we are not caught flat-footed then, just because it 
is not economic to do it now.
    Senator Hirono. Right.
    Mr. Chairman, are you doing a hearing next week on 
recycling critical minerals?
    The Chairman. Thursday--next Thursday.
    Senator Hirono. Thank you. I am very interested because our 
country wastes a lot of stuff--not just in this area, but in 
just about any area you can think of, we throw stuff away. 
Thank you.
    The Chairman. Thank you. I want to thank all of you--all of 
the witnesses. You all have done a great--oh, I am sorry, Mr. 
Cassidy, oh, Senator Cassidy snuck in on me.
    Senator Cassidy. Yes, you skipped me for Hirono, you know 
what I am saying----
    [Laughter.]
    Senator Cassidy. I thank you all. I actually have questions 
on recycling if I get to it, but if we are having a hearing 
next week, I will hold those for the second.
    Dr. Fortier, in 2019, it was reported by USGS that the deep 
sea could contain more cobalt, nickel, and rare earth minerals 
than all land-based reserves combined, and it has forecasted 
that deep sea mining could account for 15 percent of global 
supply by 2050. Now, the Administration clearly has plans to 
expand battery-powered vehicles, so that is going to be a big 
draw upon this. And we have $6 billion in the Bipartisan 
Infrastructure bill to help with battery manufacturing. So what 
are your thoughts on what we need to do to source raw materials 
from the ocean in a way which does not disturb that ocean in an 
environmentally and sensitive way?
    Dr. Fortier. I am not sure I can comment on the policy 
aspects of that, but certainly, deep-sea mining offers a lot of 
potential for resource development. I think from the USGS 
perspective, the way we view that is that those are still 
resources. They are not yet reserves. Reserves has an economic 
connotation, and you need to be able to produce those 
economically at current pricing and technology.
    Senator Cassidy. Can we?
    Dr. Fortier. I think the technology is advancing but nobody 
is doing that commercially yet. Nobody has yet demonstrated.
    Senator Cassidy. I am told that maybe the Brits and maybe 
the Swedes are initiating a process to begin sea-floor 
harvesting, if you will.
    Dr. Fortier. There has been a lot of activity in this 
sphere, and I think people are getting closer to that, but 
nobody that I am aware of, is doing that commercially yet.
    Senator Cassidy. Okay. Now, typically before we do 
something commercially, we do something as a pilot program. You 
begin to establish, you know, you do not want to be the first, 
but your first has to be done before you can do it more 
economically. Is that what I have understood about the Brits 
and others? Are they the ones that are beginning to do the 
first, to develop the technology?
    Dr. Fortier. I think there are a lot of countries that are 
developing this technology. They are not the only one.
    Senator Cassidy. Then let me ask, because in Louisiana we 
have remote-operated vehicles that help us with our oil and gas 
drilling in the Outer Continental Shelf. I don't know the 
depths, but I am assuming that an ROV could similarly be 
employed in this. Is the technology such a reach from what we 
are already doing as regards ROVs and et cetera?
    Dr. Fortier. I am not an expert in that area, Senator, but 
we have had briefings from companies that are engaged in oil 
and gas exploration and production, and they seem to believe 
that they have technology that can contribute to 
commercialization of deep-sea resources.
    Senator Cassidy. I will go now to my recycling question, 
because this is more of a market, and I am not sure who will 
address this. I was told by some folks back home that they are 
taking old bauxite that had been used for aluminum, and they 
are getting critical minerals. And just when they were about to 
stand it up, the Chinese flooded the market with--you know, 
normally they keep their price up, and boom, here comes a 
competitor. They flooded it, drove them out of business--and 
they raised their prices once more. So the question is, do we 
have one? It seems as if we should have a mechanism for almost 
price support for that sort of predatory activity. Any thoughts 
on that, Ms. Wulf?
    Ms. Wulf. Yes, and thank you, Senator Cassidy, for the 
question, because it is something that is at the forefront of 
our mind at SAFE, because if we are going to invest millions to 
billions of dollars in these critical resources and our 
downstream capabilities as well, we want to make sure that we 
can effectively respond to any anti-competitive market behavior 
that we might be confronted with. One avenue that we have 
looked into for rare earth, specifically, is a processing 
cooperative which would attempt to insulate downstream 
companies and upstream companies from these price fluctuations, 
but in recognizing that this is a major challenge in all 
aspects of the supply chain, not just in rare earths 
processing.
    Senator Cassidy. And Dr. Ziemkiewicz.
    Dr. Ziemkiewicz. We actually looked at some bauxite 
tailings from a refinery just up river. A company sent us some, 
and we found that the rare earth content was something like 
half a percent.
    Senator Cassidy. Is that good or bad?
    Dr. Ziemkiewicz. That is fantastic. That is equivalent to a 
really good ore deposit, but no one has been able to find a 
good way to extract that.
    Senator Cassidy. Now, I was told they had, but, in fact, I 
am told that they are about to open. And the day they opened, 
boom, the Chinese flooded.
    Dr. Ziemkiewicz. I don't know about that, but this is what 
I got from my mineral processing colleagues--that the 
technology for extraction and refining is still a ways off.
    Senator Cassidy. Okay.
    Sir, Mr. Melbye, did you have something on that?
    Mr. Melbye. Just a comment that that predatory pricing by 
state-owned companies is a very real thing, and the Chinese and 
Russians employ that in a lot of commodities where they want to 
keep us kind of down and advance their interests. So it is a 
very real threat.
    Senator Cassidy. So not only do we have to develop the 
technology to take this half percent to make it economically 
viable, but we also need a way to stop the predatory--address 
the predatory pricing activities of the people who control 
those resources internationally. The one is no good without the 
other. Okay, well, that is a message to us.
    Thank you, and I yield.
    The Chairman. Now, you want a second round?
    [Laughter.]
    The Chairman. I want to thank all the witnesses. I think 
you can tell the interest that we had today and everyone being 
here and participating shows the great interest that we have, 
and also, they acknowledge that we have a true need here in 
America. And so we are at a crossroads right now with which way 
we go and how we use the technology for a better climate, but 
also making sure we meet the needs of the American public and 
not hold ourselves hostage to foreign supply chains. That has 
been my greatest concern, and we all have to be in the same 
boat--the environmentalists, the industrialists, everybody in 
the same boat here. If they are not, we are screwed. That is 
the bottom line.
    I have said this--we have got to be able to get permitting. 
You saw all the concern we had on permitting. Well, I have 
known it for years, you know, that that is been a stumbling 
block in America right now that keeps us from barely unlocking 
the energy that we have and the ability that we have to 
outcompete anyone and outproduce anyone in the world.
    So with that, Dr. Z., you know what you all are doing and I 
spoke to my colleagues here. Everyone is interested in it. That 
is the quick, easy way into that to start meeting the demands 
that we have. If we are going to build this up, we have to be 
able to do that, but also getting into where we can really get 
into the mining and processing. I truly believe that if the 
United States of America does not lead the charge on a North 
American energy alliance by using the resources that we have 
here in the North American continent that helps us be energy 
independent, but also an energy supplier for the free world so 
they do not have to depend on other parts of the world that can 
use it and weaponize it against them, which they have done and 
they will do it. I have said this also, what we have seen 
Russia do by weaponizing energy, I guarantee, China will do the 
same thing weaponizing critical minerals that we need. I do not 
think that is far-fetched for any of us to believe that will 
happen.
    With that, again, thank you all. You made an effort to be 
here and we appreciate it very much.
    Members are going to have until close of business tomorrow 
to submit additional questions for the record.
    With that, the committee stands adjourned.
    [Whereupon, at 12:18 p.m., the hearing was adjourned.]

                      APPENDIX MATERIAL SUBMITTED

                              ----------                              

[GRAPHIC(S) NOT AVAILABLE IN TIFF FORMAT] 




                                   [all]