From another site:

http://www.marketoracle.co.uk/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=16492
Some pertinent comments:

TER: Are there some specific companies involved in this scramble that interest you?

JK: I've actually created an index of about 14 companies in that space. One in which I have a personal investment is Quest Uranium Corporation (TSX-V:QUC). They've done sufficient drilling at their Strange Lake deposit in northern Quebec this past summer to outline a very significant deposit. It's world-class in size, reasonable grade, and has a full distribution of all the rare earths metals, from lights to heavies. I suspect perhaps even a consortium of end users will end up acquiring this project and developing it almost like a private rare earths warehouse.

TER: Any others?

JK: Rare Element Resources Ltd. (TSX.V:RES) has the Bear Lodge deposit in Wyoming and Ucore Uranium (UCU:TSX.V) has the Bokan deposit near Ketchikan in Alaska. They're not huge in the sense that the Strange Lake deposit is. Bear Lodge is a fairly good grade light rare earths deposit and the Bokan project is more dominated by the heavy rare earths. The USGS actually spent a bunch of money documenting the nature of the Bokan deposit in the late '80s when we were still concerned about where the Soviet Union was going with its policies.

Both Bear Lodge and Bokan are very interesting because the U.S. government is now investigating its own security of supply for the rare earths through the RESTART bill. The military in particular—which spends a good portion of its $600 billion annual budget on hardware—has awakened to the fact that some functionality of its critical hardware depends on rare earths inputs that now come only from China. Some consortium of defense contractors could end up taking over these projects and developing them as small-scale mines. They'd use government funded R&D to figure out process technology for getting these elements out of the mineral assemblages within which they are embedded, and probably share that technology with the private sector so other deposits can be developed to ensure the commercial market also has a supply as well from other rare earth deposits outside of China.

TER: Except for Rare Element Resources, the companies you mentioned are obviously involved in uranium as well as rare earths. What's your outlook for uranium?

JK: Quest and Ucore both started as uranium exploration juniors. Because rare earth deposits can occur in geological settings conducive for uranium deposits, it is natural for open-minded geologists to recognize the rare earth potential of certain projects. Both companies have now shifted their focus to rare earths. I think the uranium sector will make a comeback in 2010. Uranium prices went way up in the past five years because it is very difficult to get new uranium supply on stream and we had a temporary spot market shortage. We now see uranium in the $40 to $50 range and it might increase $10 to $20 or so longer-term.

The hope is that the Obama administration warms up to the idea that nuclear energy is an excellent carbon-free source of electricity. The Chinese have lots of uranium-based nuclear power reactors on the drawing board, but they are also looking at thorium, another candidate for nuclear energy but without the weapons-making capability. I don't see demand for uranium going through the roof the way it can for the rare earths. The difference between uranium and the rare earths sectors is uranium essentially has two uses. One is to make nuclear weapons, and we really don't want demand to go up there. The other is for nuclear power, and that demand can be quantified quite well in advance.
In contrast, the rare earths have a wild demand dynamic because ongoing R&D keeps coming up with ways to work with these elements' interesting properties. All kinds of technologies already exist that can't even be commercialized because there's not a sufficient supply of these rare earths in existence.

As the additional rare earth deposits get into production, the logical economic objection is that all this new supply will glut the market. But not in this case. As the supply becomes available, end users will have the confidence to commercialize applications with functionality superior to prior applications, so I would expect the supply to actually be readily absorbed.

Not only that, you also will see a scramble to make more efficient use of these rare earths, particularly if China stops subsidizing the cost structure of rare earth production and allows the price to rise. There's something called Jevons paradox that drives the scarcity people crazy; namely, in response to scarce supply of a raw material, you engage in R&D to increase the efficiency of its usage and as a result total demand for it actually goes up. This would not apply to uranium because of its limited uses, but it would certainly apply to rare earths and other technology metals.

I think we are on the frontier of a material science boom coming on the heels of three decades dominated by information and biotechnology booms. An awful lot of money, both from the private sector and government, will go toward seeing if we can push elements to do far more than has ever been done before. One area is, of course, efficiency and durability. But another area is emerging as the new Holy Grail. If you can produce energy at a lower per-unit cost than the current norm, and the "fuel" for doing so is readily available, you will give the world a massive boost in its overall wealth or standard of living. The United States has excelled in that regard in the past and could excel again and buy itself another 20 to 30 years of leadership in the world.