Review fast tracked for Nevada vanadium mine, 1st in the US

RENO, Nev. (AP) — Invoking President Trump’s executive order streamlining environmental reviews of projects critical to U.S. security, federal land managers have launched an expedited permitting process for the first U.S. vanadium mine at a high-desert site in Nevada.

The rare metal has been used as an alloy to strengthen steel, aluminum and titanium in the construction, auto, aerospace and computer industries but must currently be imported — primarily from Austria, Canada and Russia.

The Bureau of Land Management said in announcing plans earlier this month for the mine’s expedited review that U.S. dependence on foreign vanadium “creates a strategic vulnerability for both the economy and military to adverse government action or other events that can disrupt the supply of this key mineral.”

Henry Ford is credited with the first commercial application of vanadium when he used it to toughen the steel in the frame of the Model T in the early 1900s.

Vanadium has been extracted in small amounts in the U.S. but only as a minor byproduct of other mining operations, mostly uranium mines in Utah.

China produces more than half the world's vanadium but consumes most of it domestically. China's recent move toward adopting standards for construction rebar metal rod standards as tough as those in the U.S. is a driving force in increased demand for the material valued for its high strength-to-weight ratio.

The Nevada Vanadium Co. plans to mine about 10 million pounds (4.5 million kilograms) a year, or about half of the overall U.S. demand, on 10 square miles (2,589 hectares) land owned by the Bureau of Land Management about 200 miles (321 kilometers) east of Reno.

The Canadian-based company with an office in the tiny community of Eureka near the mine site plans also plans to extract about 50,000 pounds (22,679...