#critical-minerals-strategy

#critical-minerals-strategy

It's the largest deal of this kind to date for CFS, according to COO Rick Needham. The collaboration with Realta Fusion emphasizes the importance of high-temperature superconducting magnets in advancing fusion technology.

In late 2025, the United States shocked the world by suspending global health aid, leading experts to predict 700,000 additional deaths annually, primarily among children. This prompted the US to propose unusual bilateral health agreements with developing countries, which have drawn criticism for being exploitative.

South Korea imports about 45 percent of its naphtha, a critical petrochemical feedstock, with roughly 77 percent of those imports historically arriving from the Middle East. That supply line is now, for all practical purposes, severed.

In the silent vacuum of space, five autonomous robots churn through the lunar surface, digging up a loose layer of rock and dust and leaving rows of uniform tracks in their wake. Stopping only to recharge at a central solar power station, the car-sized machines process the lunar dirt internally to extract a type of helium so rare on Earth that a palm-sized container is estimated to be worth millions.

We stand ready to take all necessary measures in close coordination with our partners, including to preserve the stability and security of the energy market, said the G7 in a statement after a teleconference.

"A more decentralized energy system, with a growing share of renewables and more market players, is structurally more resilient. Countries that invested in the energy transition are weathering this crisis with less economic damage, as they boost energy security, resilience and competitiveness."

Global helium consumption runs about 6 billion cubic feet per year. Qatar supplied a big slice until this month. With one-third of output sidelined, prices have already soared.

Korea Zinc, which it described as one of the world's largest smelters, is in talks with major US technology firms to recycle data center waste and extract rare earth. The move comes almost one year to the day after China announced immediate export controls on seven more rare earth elements critical to enterprise IT hardware manufacturing.

China controls the overwhelming majority of global rare earth processing capacity, a figure that has remained structurally stable for nearly two decades despite sustained Western policy attention. The problem has never been geology. It's always been industrial chemistry at scale.

The team, from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and Beijing Institute of Technology, recently published their findings in Nature Communications. According to their research, the process not only avoids conventional leaching chemicals and extreme heat to extract lithium from old batteries, but it also uses carbon dioxide in what the authors call a sequestration step, and turns other battery transition metals into new catalysts - with CO₂-rich water doing most of the chemical work.

However, a study by financial analyst S&P Global estimates that worldwide production of the metal will peak in 2030 at 33 million metric tons, while demand is forecast to continue growing to reach 42 million metric tons by 2040 - a 50 percent increase from current levels, creating a supply shortfall of about 10 million metric tons without meaningful expansion.

Helping, Deutsche Bank upgraded ALB to a buy rating with a $185 price target. Analysts at Baird also upgraded ALB to a buy with a price target of $210. "We are incrementally positive given the recent increase in lithium prices... and our view that demand strength stemming from stationary storage will continue to propel ALB higher," Baird analysts wrote, as noted by Seeking Alpha. Analysts at Truist also just upgraded ALB to a buy rating with a price target of $205.