BUTTE - A geologist with decades of experience at Montana Tech in Butte is taking on the new critical role as critical materials director, a new focus of the university that’s bound to keep him very busy.
Watch: Critical materials director talks university's new focus
“I mean, frankly, I was thinking of retirement at the end of the calendar year,” said Director of Critical Materials Initiatives John Metesh.
Not so fast. As director of Critical Materials Initiatives at Tech, Metesh will be leading a national push to extract and refine more rare earth minerals within the United States. These critical materials are used in a variety of developments.
“Manufacture of items for defense, or medicine, or energy, green energy, cars, windmills, that sort of thing,” he said.
In recent years, there’s been a need to produce rare earth minerals in the U.S.
“It isn’t that they’re rare; they’re not rare in the United States. It’s just that we don’t mine and process them as much as we used to. We rely on foreign sources,” said Metesh.
Montana Tech’s new chancellor, Johnny McLean, calls it a national security issue to process critical materials in this country. Geopolitical tensions with countries like China and Russia adds to the urgency.
“Like we saw with oil and gas, being better independent from foreign sources just makes us stronger and more stable,” said Metesh.
The initiative will focus studies on pulling these rare earth minerals from mine waste and the Berkeley Pit at Butte’s Montana Resources mining operation.
“Now, it isn’t so much to encourage mining, but is to encourage reprocessing mine waste,” he said.
Montana Tech will be hosting a three-day summit on critical materials and energy beginning Oct. 8.
