http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2019/04/radioactive-waste-standoff-could-slash-high-tech-s-supply-rare-earth-elements

About 30% of the 1.5 million tons of residue stored on Lynas's facility in Malaysia is slightly radioactive and covered with a black lining.

The 100-hectare Lynas Advanced Materials Plant (LAMP) produces 10% of the world’s output of rare earth oxides (REOs), minerals needed in technologies including mobile phones, hard drives, fiber optic cables, surgical lasers, and cruise missiles. Lynas, an Australian company, imports concentrated ores from mines on Mount Weld in Australia and refines them here in Malaysia, where costs are lower; it sells REOs—which include cerium compounds, used in catalytic converters, and neodymium, critical to permanent magnets—to Japan, the United States, and other countries. The plant produced almost 18,000 tons of REOs in 2018.