The N-1 Test for Critical Materials: Can a Country Stand Alone?

Power-grid operators apply a simple acceptance rule known as the N-1 criterion: the loss of the single largest element must not stop the system. No comparable test is applied to national supply of critical materials. This preprint proposes the N-1 test for a critical-materials market and a three-question scale that allows governments to be compared on one basis. The questions are: how many weeks a country lives on stockpiles if the main supplier closes its border, what share of consumption is covered by a second source that works rather than one that is promised, and how much metal a country obtains from its own waste rather than from foreign mines. The outcome is a grade of three levels: alive, wheezing or falling. The preprint further argues that the strongest second source is domestic and technogenic: industrial effluents, groundwater, mine lakes and landfills already contain rare earth and critical metals and gases, and the ARBOK technology recovers them from these streams. A country that has such streams is not dependent on a foreign border for its second source.