Brian Busse has hand-dug what may be the largest single mine in 80 years of American history — and the biggest lesson from three decades underground has nothing to do with luck.Brian Busse is a 30-year veteran miner, jewelry designer, and star of the Weather Channel's reality series Prospectors. He owns the Thank You Lord Mine on Colorado's Mount Antero — one of the largest aquamarine deposits ever discovered — and runs American Gem Trackers. He joins hosts Dustin Olsen and Daniel O'Connor to talk about what three decades of hand-digging taught him about rare earth elements, gold, and gemstones, why American mining culture collapsed after World War II, and what it will take to bring natural-resource development back home.In this episode:- Why rare earth elements aren't actually rare — and what "saturation" really means for finding a mineable deposit- How the Weather Channel's Prospectors doubled the U.S. rock, mineral, and jewelry industries in four years- The beryllium test results behind Busse's Thank You Lord Mine on Mount Antero- Why America imports up to $100 million a year in aquamarine alone — and could mine 20% of it at home- What it's like to hand-dig at 12,000+ feet, raise a family on the mountain, and deal with claim jumpersGuest: Brian Busse, Miner, Jewelry Designer & Founder, American Gem TrackersRare Earth Exchanges is accelerating transparency in the rare earth and critical minerals supply chain. New episodes weekly.🌐 https://rareearthexchanges.com🎧 Also on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple PodcastsDisclaimer: Educational and informational content only. Nothing here is financial, investment, legal, or tax advice.
Brazilian Rare Earths (ASX: BRE) says its Monte Alto deposit just posted grades more than twice MP Materials' and almost three times Lynas's — making it one of the highest-grade rare earth deposits ever measured.Founder, Managing Director & CEO Bernardo da Veiga returns to the show (his first appearance was Episode 17, back in the exploration days) to walk through BRE's new scoping study: a deliberately split strategy that keeps mining simple and low-impact at Monte Alto while routing concentrate 200km to a downstream separation plant inside the Camaçari petrochemical complex, backed by a 10-year offtake and partnership with French rare earth separator Carester.In this episode:- Why Monte Alto's grade is nearly 3x Lynas's published grade — and what that means for cost- The geology: chevkinite, apatite-britholite, and billions of years of uranium radiation that did the leaching for them- Why processing happens 200km away at Camaçari, not at the mine site- The upside the scoping study didn't price in: ~1 million lbs/year of uranium byproduct- Concentrate sales targeted as early as 2030, full downstream by 2031- Why Bernardo thinks business people — not geologists — should run mining companiesGuest: Bernardo da Veiga, Founder, Managing Director & CEO, Brazilian Rare Earths LimitedRare Earth Exchanges is accelerating transparency in the rare earth and critical minerals supply chain. New episodes weekly.🌐 https://rareearthexchanges.com🎧 Also on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple PodcastsDisclaimer: Educational and informational content only. Nothing here is financial, investment, legal, or tax advice.
Europe imports nickel from Indonesia, refines it, uses it - and then throws half of it into a landfill without it ever doing a single day of work. Marco Bersani's company gets paid to take that metal back out of the water.Marco Bersani is CEO and Co-Founder of Circular Materials, an Italian company recovering critical metals from industrial wastewater using SWaP (Supercritical Water Precipitation), a metal-agnostic process that precipitates better than 99.9% of dissolved metals into a fine powder. The European Commission named it a Strategic Project under the Critical Raw Materials Act. Hosts Dustin Olsen and Daniel O'Connor dig into the grade of the resource, why nobody else has gone after it, the dual-revenue model that makes metal prices almost irrelevant, and the plan to bring three or four sites to the United States.In this episode:- Why industrial wastewater carries 1-10% metal content (10,000-100,000 ppm) when miners dream of a fraction of a percent- How Circular Materials gets paid hundreds of euros to take 100 kg of dissolved nickel, instead of buying feedstock like every other recycler- Europe loses an estimated 12,000-15,000 tonnes of mixed critical metals a year this way, and the US market looks three to four times larger- Recovery rates today: roughly 70% for non-gold precious metals, and well below 5% for non-precious metals- Copper, nickel and chromium are the triad, plus a large position in the very small ruthenium market- Why the major wastewater engineering firms reclaim water but not metal, and why customers asked for this as a service rather than a licensed technology- What it actually took to earn EU Strategic Project status under the Critical Raw Materials ActGuest: Marco Bersani, CEO & Co-Founder, Circular Materials s.r.l.Rare Earth Exchanges is accelerating transparency in the rare earth and critical minerals supply chain. New episodes weekly.🌐 https://rareearthexchanges.com🎧 Also on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple PodcastsDisclaimer: Educational and informational content only. Nothing here is financial, investment, legal, or tax advice.
In 1973, the oil embargo hit the West like a car crash — sudden, loud, impossible to miss. China's control of critical minerals is the opposite: it's cancer. It grew for thirty years, and most of the West only noticed once it started to hurt.Tomasz Nadrowski is a portfolio manager at Amvest Terraden, where he runs an equity strategy that starts with geopolitics, and the author of "Mineral War: China's Quest for Weapons of Mineral Destruction." He argues this is not a trade dispute and not a competition. It is a war in the strict Clausewitz sense: it became one the moment the West finally reacted. Dustin and Daniel dig into how the monopoly got built, why the West handed it over, and the one Chinese advantage he believes the West can actually beat.In this episode:- Why monopoly in commodities is normal — and weaponization is the line China crossed- The push factor nobody talks about: Western capital markets refused to fund the midstream for forty years, and the G7 flagged the risk back in 2003- Lynas's Kuantan capex came in roughly a third higher for one reason — you can no longer buy Chinese equipment- Cost of capital is the one Chinese advantage the West can beat; cheap labor, cheap land, a managed currency and subsidies are not winnable- What a German carmaker's procurement chief told him in Frankfurt: "we will always buy from the cheapest source"- Why downstream OEMs out-lobby the mining industry, and how that already killed critical-minerals policy twice- It is not just magnets: inverters, capacitors, coating hardware, refining equipment, legacy chips, track-laying machines- The 14th Five-Year Plan's innovation centers, and why what gets invented in China now stays in China- DNA sequencing costs 500 to 1,000 dollars in the West; China subsidizes it to 50- Externalizing the US tax code so American capital can fund Australian and Canadian projects, and harmonizing tariffs by HS code instead of blunt country-wide actions- Why China's decision to apply its restrictions worldwide, rather than only to the US, may have been its biggest strategic errorGuest: Tomasz Nadrowski, CFA, Portfolio Manager, Amvest TerradenRare Earth Exchanges is accelerating transparency in the rare earth and critical minerals supply chain. New episodes weekly.🌐 https://rareearthexchanges.com🎧 Also on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple PodcastsDisclaimer: Educational and informational content only. Nothing here is financial, investment, legal, or tax advice.
For years the rule in rare earths was simple: nobody cracks allanite. American Rare Earths says it just did — at Halleck Creek, Wyoming, the largest known rare earth deposit in North America.Melissa Sanderson, director at American Rare Earths and co-chair of the Critical Minerals Institute, returns to Rare Earth Exchanges to catch Dustin Olsen and Daniel O'Connor up on a fast six months: a pilot plant with the Saskatchewan Research Council, a planned NASDAQ listing by year-end, a $456M EXIM Bank letter of interest, a $7.1M Wyoming state grant, and new heavy-rare-earth finds. Then the harder truth — the technical problems are largely solved, and the one risk that remains is capital.In this episode:Why hard-rock allanite was considered impossible — and what Wyoming's Red Mountain Pluton changedThe $456M EXIM letter of interest and the $7.1M Wyoming grant behind the push to productionWhy samarium and yttrium make Halleck Creek's deposit exceptionalWhy capital — not geology or permitting — is now the number-one riskThe hidden costs (insurance, supply cuts, China's November deadline) buyers still aren't countingGuest: Melissa Sanderson, Director, American Rare Earths; Co-Chair, Critical Minerals InstituteRare Earth Exchanges is accelerating transparency in the rare earth and critical minerals supply chain. New episodes weekly.🌐 https://rareearthexchanges.com🎧 Also on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple PodcastsDisclaimer: Educational and informational content only. Nothing here is financial, investment, legal, or tax advice.