An Unlikely Solution to Britain's Rare Earth Problem

A man like James Tour doesn't look like someone who might reshape Britain's defence industrial strategy. The Rice University chemist speaks in the unhurried cadence of a man explaining something obvious to people who haven't yet noticed. His laboratory in Houston contains what appears to be a remarkably unremarkable piece of equipment: a chamber where electronic waste meets an electrical current, temperatures spike to 3,000 degrees Celsius for a few milliseconds, and rare earth metals separate themselves like cream from milk.

"You flash and you're done," he told The Epoch Times, with the sort of confidence usually reserved for carnival barkers or genuine revolutionaries.

The question is which category he falls into.

The technology—flash Joule heating, or FJH to those who enjoy acronyms—works on principles understood since the 1840s. Pass electricity through a conductor, generate heat. Your toaster does this. So does every electric heater in Britain. What Tour's team discovered is how to weaponise this pedestrian physics against one of the West's more embarrassing strategic failures: near-total dependence on China for the metals powering everything from wind turbines to Trident missiles.

Take a printed circuit board, crush it, subject it to brief electrical violence, add chlorine gas, and watch metals vaporise at different temperatures. Capture the vapours as they condense. Repeat as needed. The process supposedly uses 87% less energy than traditional smelting, produces minimal waste, and can be modular enough to fit in facilities costing "a few tens of millions of dollars."

The Epoch Times article presenting Tour's work reads like nationalist science fiction—"This is going to prevent wars," declares an unnamed NATO general—but strip away the geopolitical theatre and something genuinely interesting remains. The Pentagon doesn't award contracts to charlatans. Metallium, the company licensing Tour's technology, has Defence Department funding and plans to process 20 tonnes of circuit boards daily by September 2026.

Which raises an uncomfortable question for Britain: if this actually works, why isn't it happening in Aldershot or Portsmouth rather than Houston?

The Problem Britain Forgot to Solve

The United Kingdom has no meaningful rare earth mining. No separation facilities. No magnet manufacturing chain worthy of the name. The last serious attempt at domestic rare earth production died sometime around when Britpop was still taken seriously as a cultural movement.

This wasn't always inevitable. Britain once led the world in industrial chemistry. The country invented modern metallurgy, pioneered nuclear technology, and built Rolls-Royce jet engines that remain the global benchmark. Somewhere between the Thatcher privatisations and the Blair modernisation project, the unglamorous business of extracting metals from rocks became something other countries did.

Those other countries turned out to be primarily one country: China.

Beijing now controls over 90% of global rare earth refining and magnet production. The seventeen elements loosely grouped as "rare earths"—with wonderful names like dysprosium, neodymium, and europium—appear in fighter jets, submarines, mobile phones, and the permanent magnets that make wind turbines and electric vehicles function. When China threatened in October 2024 to restrict rare earth exports, Western defence planners experienced the sort of collective panic normally reserved for discovering the barbarians aren't merely at the gates but have been running the supply depot for decades.

The United States at least has the Mountain Pass mine in California, shuttered and reopened more times than a provincial theatre. Britain has some promising lithium deposits in Cornwall and precisely nothing resembling a strategic rare earth capability.

Tour's flash heating technology arrived into this landscape like a rumour of water in a desert. American policymakers could frame it as domestic recycling restoring national sovereignty.

Britain doesn't have that option. We don't produce enough electronic waste to matter at scale, lack the processing infrastructure to handle what we do produce, and maintain a national aversion to the environmental costs of heavy industry roughly equivalent to our attitude toward American-style political advertising.

But Britain does possess something the United States lacks: a scattered archipelago of islands, rocks, and strategic territories where normal rules needn't always apply.

The Islands Britain Forgot It Owned

Ask the average Briton to name the Overseas Territories and you'll get the Falklands, Gibraltar if they're paying attention, and perhaps a vague gesture toward "some islands in the Caribbean?" Fourteen territories remain under British sovereignty, relics of an empire receded like a particularly persistent tide. Most barely register in national consciousness except when Argentina starts making noises or an offshore financial scandal needs investigation.

These territories control 6.8 million square kilometres of ocean—the fifth-largest exclusive economic zone on Earth. They span from the South Atlantic to the Indian Ocean to the Pacific. Some host military bases. Others serve as financial centres or environmental reserves. A few contain populations smaller than a Welsh village, distributed across islands where the nearest neighbour might be a thousand kilometres of empty sea.

What they share is distance from London's regulatory apparatus and proximity to precisely nothing.

Which makes them potentially perfect for the sort of strategic industrial development Britain cannot easily pursue at home.

Consider the Falkland Islands: 3,500 people, excellent wind resources, existing port infrastructure from oil exploration, and geology similar to Patagonia—which contains known rare earth deposits. Environmental opposition to mining would be minimal. Planning permission processes measured in months rather than decades. A small FJH processing facility powered by wind could extract rare earths from any local deposits or process waste electronics from across the South Atlantic.

More immediately, there's the waste problem. The Falklands currently ship rubbish back to Britain at stupendous cost. Electronic waste accumulates because alternatives don't exist. An FJH facility sized to fit in a shipping container could extract gold, palladium, and copper at profit whilst reducing landfill pressure and cutting waste transport costs. Any rare earths recovered would be strategic bonus material rather than the economic driver.

The chemistry works the same way on a windswept island as in a Houston laboratory.

Diego Garcia: Where Strategy Meets Chemistry

The British Indian Ocean Territory exists – or existed, past tense – primarily as a joint UK-US military base on Diego Garcia—a small island hosting satellite tracking stations, naval support facilities, and operations spanning the Indo-Pacific. What happens there stays largely classified. What doesn't stay on the island is electronic waste from military systems.

Radar components, navigation systems, satellite ground equipment, drone electronics, communications gear—all eventually reach end-of-life. All contain rare earth elements and precious metals. All require secure disposal because they're classified military systems.

Currently, much of this equipment must be destroyed or shipped to secure facilities thousands of kilometres away. An FJH processing unit on Diego Garcia would solve multiple problems simultaneously:

• The security problem: classified electronics never leave the base.
• The logistics problem: no shipping costs for bulky waste.
• The strategic problem: recover rare earths, gallium, germanium from systems requiring those materials for replacement components.
• The environmental problem: eliminate accumulation of electronic waste on a small island.

This isn't science fiction speculation.

Diego Garcia already hosts complex industrial operations. Adding a modular FJH facility would be straightforward engineering. The Pentagon would almost certainly fund it given their existing interest in Metallium's technology. Britain would benefit from recovered materials feeding UK defence supply chains.

The question isn't whether this could work but why it hasn't already happened.

The Defence Dimension Nobody Discusses

Strip away civilian applications entirely and FJH becomes considerably more interesting. Defence electronics contain rare earth concentrations orders of magnitude higher than consumer products. A Trident missile guidance system uses samarium-cobalt magnets chosen for high-temperature stability. Typhoon fighter jets employ neodymium magnets in actuators. Naval sonar relies on rare earth-based transducers. Infrared optics use germanium.

When these systems reach end-of-life, they currently represent a disposal problem. With FJH, they become a feedstock problem.

BAE Systems, Rolls-Royce, the RAF, and Royal Navy all generate classified electronic waste containing strategic materials. Processing this at secure facilities—Faslane for submarine components, RAF Waddington for electronics, BAE sites for aircraft systems—would create a closed-loop supply chain for defence-critical materials.

The volumes are small by industrial standards. Perhaps 100-500 tonnes of rare earth oxides annually across the entire defence sector. But this is precisely the sort of scale where FJH economics could work. The concentration of materials in military systems makes extraction viable. Security requirements justify premium processing costs. Supply chain integrity matters more than competing with Chinese commodity pricing.

Britain cannot achieve rare earth independence for civilian applications. Wind turbines and electric vehicles require tens of thousands of tonnes annually. No amount of recycling addresses that scale.

But defence independence at 100-500 tonnes? That's achievable.

That's what the MoD should be funding rather than pretending civilian rare earth autarky might somehow materialise through wishful thinking.

The Gallium Angle Everyone Misses

Whilst rare earths attract headlines, gallium and germanium represent more immediate vulnerabilities. China controls approximately 95% of global gallium production and similar percentages of germanium. Both elements are critical for defence applications:

• Gallium: gallium nitride semiconductors for radar, electronic warfare, 5G infrastructure, satellite communications, power electronics.
• Germanium: infrared optics for night vision and targeting systems, fibre optics, satellite solar cells.

Demand for both is measured in hundreds of tonnes annually rather than tens of thousands. Recovery rates from recycling can be high. FJH technology works particularly well for both elements.

Here's where the arithmetic changes: Britain might realistically achieve 30-50% of gallium and germanium requirements through domestic recycling. Not rare earths independence, but gallium and germanium supply security.

That's a defence industrial strategy worth pursuing.

Deploy FJH facilities at defence sites for military electronics. Add capacity for civilian electronics recycling focused specifically on gallium and germanium recovery. Partner with British semiconductor manufacturers to create a closed-loop supply chain for strategic materials.

This isn't sexy. It doesn't make for impressive press releases about rare earth independence. But it would actually work.

What the Falklands Might Be Hiding

Speculation is dangerous, but geology is suggestive. The Falkland Islands sit on continental crust similar to Patagonia, where rare earth deposits exist. Volcanic activity in the distant geological past could have concentrated rare earth minerals. Oil exploration over the past decades focused on hydrocarbons, not hard minerals.

Nobody has conducted comprehensive rare earth surveys of the Falklands because nobody had reason to bother.

That calculation might be changing. A geological survey covering the Falklands and surrounding seabed could be funded for perhaps £50-100 million. If rare earth deposits exist at viable concentrations, FJH technology would make small-scale extraction and processing economically plausible in ways traditional mining might not.

The infrastructure already exists: deep water port from oil operations, renewable energy potential from wind, skilled population accustomed to resource extraction industries, British sovereignty firmly established since 1982.

The political complications are obvious. Argentina would react approximately as well as expected—which is to say, poorly. Any resource development in the Falklands intensifies sovereignty disputes. On the other hand, Argentina has been making sovereignty claims for decades regardless of British actions. Might as well extract strategic materials whilst they're complaining anyway.

A small Falklands mining operation producing 1,000-2,000 tonnes of rare earth oxides annually wouldn't transform British supply chains. But combined with defence recycling and gallium/germanium recovery, it would provide meaningful strategic depth.

The Falklands wouldn't solve Britain's rare earth problem. They might provide 10-15% of the solution, which is better than the current 0%.

The Separation Problem Nobody Wants to Discuss

Here's where optimism collides with chemistry: extracting rare earths is only the beginning. What comes out of an FJH process is rare earth chlorides—a mix of elements requiring separation into individual purified oxides before they're useful.

This separation process is genuinely horrible.

Dozens of solvent extraction stages using strong acids. Multi-week processing times. Enormous volumes of chemical waste. Precise temperature control. It's the sort of industrial chemistry Britain decided decades ago to leave to countries with more relaxed environmental standards.

China dominates rare earth separation not through technological superiority but through willingness to accept environmental costs Western countries won't. The Baotou refining complex in Inner Mongolia has created environmental damage visible from space. Britain won't replicate that in Yorkshire, and honestly shouldn't.

Which means even if FJH extraction works perfectly—in the Falklands, at Diego Garcia, in defence facilities—you still need separation infrastructure. That probably means:

• Small-scale separation facilities in the UK for defence volumes only, built to high environmental standards and accepting premium costs.
• European partnership with France or Germany for shared separation capacity, splitting costs and environmental burden.
• Direct sale of mixed rare earth chlorides to established refiners, accepting less value but avoiding the separation problem entirely.

This is less satisfying than complete vertical integration from extraction to finished magnets. But vertical integration at Chinese environmental costs isn't happening in Britain, and pretending otherwise is fantasy.

The Strategy Britain Should Actually Pursue

Assemble the realistic pieces and a coherent approach emerges:

Phase One: Defence Independence

Deploy FJH facilities at Faslane, RAF Waddington, and BAE Systems sites for classified electronics recycling. Fund Diego Garcia secure processing facility jointly with the United States. Target gallium, germanium, and rare earths from military systems. Investment: £50-100 million.

Result: 50%+ defence critical materials from domestic recycling within three years.

Phase Two: Territories Development

Commission comprehensive geological surveys of Falklands, Ascension Island, and seabed territories. If deposits found, develop small-scale FJH processing facilities. Deploy environmental/economic FJH units to Falklands, St Helena, and other territories for waste management. Investment: £200-500 million.

Result: Strategic options for primary production, immediate waste cost reductions.

Phase Three: Industrial Partnership

Build pilot-scale rare earth separation facility in Teesside or Sunderland for defence volumes. Partner with European allies on shared civilian separation capacity. Establish a gallium/germanium civilian recycling network feeding British semiconductor manufacturers. Investigate rare earth-free technologies for future systems. Investment: £500 million-£1 billion.

Result: Defence supply chain security, 30-50% gallium/germanium independence, strategic depth through partnerships.

This wouldn't achieve comprehensive rare earth independence. It would achieve something more valuable: strategic autonomy where it matters most, realistic international cooperation where autarky makes no sense, and actual implementation rather than aspirational thinking.

Why This Probably Won't Happen

The obstacles aren't technical. FJH chemistry works. The Pentagon's investment suggests commercial viability at relevant scales. Britain possesses the territories, the defence requirements, and the industrial capacity to make this happen.

The obstacles are political and cultural.

Developing Falklands resources provokes Argentina. Building separation facilities faces environmental opposition. Defence procurement prefers established supply chains to novel approaches. Treasury balks at hundreds of millions for strategic materials infrastructure when near-term budget pressures dominate. The Foreign Office worries about neo-colonial perception of industrial development in Overseas Territories.

And beneath everything sits an assumption, rarely stated explicitly: strategic materials are something other countries provide. Britain does services, finance, advanced manufacturing perhaps. Actually extracting metals from rocks, processing chemical waste streams, building unglamorous industrial facilities in remote locations—that's not what modern Britain does.

Except modern Britain also doesn't build nuclear power stations on time or budget, can't reliably produce steel, struggles with semiconductor manufacturing, and maintains defence industries increasingly dependent on components sourced from potential adversaries.

At some point, sovereignty requires the capacity to make things and extract things and process things, not merely design them or regulate them or financialise them.

The Unromantic Case for Action

Flash Joule heating won't solve Britain's rare earth dependency. It won't restore industrial greatness or reverse decades of manufacturing decline. It certainly won't prevent wars, despite what enthusiastic NATO generals might tell American journalists.

What it offers is more prosaic: a viable technology for recovering strategic materials from waste streams at scales relevant to defence requirements. The ability to process classified military electronics securely without shipping them internationally. Potential application in territories where conventional approaches face insurmountable obstacles. A component of supply chain strategy rather than the entire solution.

That's not thrilling. It's not the sort of thing inspiring political speeches or newspaper headlines about British innovation conquering foreign dependencies.

But it would actually work. Defence facilities processing military electronics by 2027. Diego Garcia secure recycling operational by 2028. Falklands surveys complete by 2029, with development decisions by 2030. Gallium and germanium supply security by 2032. Defence rare earth independence—at defence volumes—by 2035.

Ten years. Perhaps £1-2 billion across the programme. A fraction of what Britain spends on defence procurement annually, invested in the unglamorous infrastructure making defence procurement possible.

The chemist in Houston has demonstrated the technology. The question is whether Britain possesses the strategic imagination to deploy it where conventional wisdom wouldn't dare, and the political will to fund infrastructure projects paying dividends measured in decades rather than electoral cycles.

Tour's flash heating might prevent wars or might not. But it could certainly make Britain marginally less dependent on Chinese goodwill for the metals powering missiles, submarines, and fighter jets.

In an uncertain world, marginal improvements in strategic autonomy compound. The alternative is continuing to pretend dependencies don't exist until the moment they become catastrophic.

James Tour's laboratory in Texas offers Britain a choice: between romantic narratives of comprehensive independence and prosaic strategies providing actual capability; between what sounds impressive and what might actually work.

The sensible money says Britain chooses neither, continues muddling through, and rediscovers the importance of strategic materials sovereignty approximately five minutes after it becomes urgently necessary and probably impossible.

But the optimistic case—the case where British policymakers think strategically about territories, invest pragmatically in unglamorous infrastructure, and accept partial solutions to insoluble problems—suggests Tour's technology finds its way to the Falklands, Diego Garcia, and a few secure facilities in Britain within the decade.

Not because it solves everything. Because it solves enough.