US Is Throwing Away the Critical Minerals It Needs, Analysis Shows (phys.org)
- Reference: 0178833050
- News link: https://news.slashdot.org/story/25/08/23/0120237/us-is-throwing-away-the-critical-minerals-it-needs-analysis-shows
- Source link: https://phys.org/news/2025-08-critical-minerals-theyre-thrown-analysis.html
> All the critical minerals the U.S. needs annually for energy, defense and technology applications are already being mined at existing U.S. facilities, according to a new analysis [2]published in the journal Science . The catch? These minerals, such as cobalt, lithium, gallium and rare earth elements like neodymium and yttrium, are [3]currently being discarded as tailings of other mineral streams like gold and zinc , said Elizabeth Holley, associate professor of mining engineering at Colorado School of Mines and lead author of the new paper.
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> To conduct the analysis, Holley and her team built a database of annual production from federally permitted metal mines in the U.S. They used a statistical resampling technique to pair these data with the geochemical concentrations of critical minerals in ores, recently compiled by the U.S. Geological Survey, Geoscience Australia and the Geologic Survey of Canada. Using this approach, Holley's team was able to estimate the quantities of critical minerals being mined and processed every year at U.S. metal mines but not being recovered. Instead, these valuable minerals are ending up as discarded tailings that must be stored and monitored to prevent environmental contamination.
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> The analysis looks at a total of 70 elements used in applications ranging from consumer electronics like cell phones to medical devices to satellites to renewable energy to fighter jets and shows that unrecovered byproducts from other U.S. mines could meet the demand for all but two -- platinum and palladium. Among the elements included in the analysis are:
> - Cobalt (Co): The lustrous bluish-gray metal, a key component in electric car batteries, is a byproduct of nickel and copper mining. Recovering less than 10% of the cobalt currently being mined and processed but not recovered would be more than enough to fuel the entire U.S. battery market.
> - Germanium (Ge): The brittle silvery-white semi-metal used for electronics and infrared optics, including sensors on missiles and defense satellites, is present in zinc and molybdenum mines. If the U.S. recovered less than 1% of the germanium currently mined and processed but not recovered from U.S. mines, it would not have to import any germanium to meet industry needs.
[1] https://slashdot.org/~alternative_right
[2] https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adw8997
[3] https://phys.org/news/2025-08-critical-minerals-theyre-thrown-analysis.html
The reason is right there at the top of the story (Score:5, Insightful)
> The challenge lies in recovery," Holley said. "It's like getting salt out of bread doughâ"we need to do a lot more research, development and policy to make the recovery of these critical minerals economically feasible."
Just because a mineral exists in tailings doesn't mean it's in any way economically reasonable to recover it. This is a geologist pointing out that research needs to be done to make these recovery processes more efficient, and he's right. But the headline is all wrong.
Re: (Score:3)
That answers my question, thanks.
Re: (Score:2)
But this article is a reminder, to treat/store this waste product, that in the future the critical parts can be recovered easily.
in the future:
- For example when China has an export ban (oohh, then expensive will become feasible)
- For example when China and the US go to war
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, It's economically much cheaper to remove the "president" and stop the future war from happening instead of letting that guy continue to build fake enmity with foreign industrial nations just because he doesn't want to go to jail, and it so happens that pushing a "us" vs "them" story in the population helps him change the topic.
Penny wise and pound foolish and all that.
Rare earth's aren't rare (Score:2)
These minerals aren't actually rare at all. They are everywhere, including in those mine tailings. Their "rarity" is just that they never appear in high concentrations, compared to iron, copper, etc..
It's all about the refining effort and side-effects. Maybe further refining of mine tailings makes sense, if the concentrations are reasonable. Maybe it doesn't. It's not a given.
I said it 6 years ago (Score:2)
[1]https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZ9pe5mA5v0
In Trump we trust... (Score:1)
Please, do not listen to scientists. They all are witches...
Remark: Yes, with time going on, I am becoming more and more cynical:-(
Not new or interesting (Score:2)
For those not in the know, "rare earths" are hilariously common. Their problem isn't their rarity. It's the toxicity of separation processes from main ores that contain them.
The main reason their extraction moved to PRC is rise of stringent environmental protections across the Western nations. The nature of separation process is such that it's exceedingly costly to do it and obey newer environmental protection regulations, if even possible at all. No such problem in PRC, and so they cornered pretty much ent
Recycling? (Score:2)
> If the U.S. recovered less than 1% of the germanium currently mined and processed but not recovered from U.S. mines, it would not have to import any germanium to meet industry needs.
Unfortunately this is not an option for the US because 'recovering' Germanium is just another way of saying 'recycling' and that is both 'woke' and equivalent to practicing communism. Plus, Trump doesn't like Germany much so there's that too.
So um (Score:2)
. . . why not just charge the mining companies a storage fee, take possession of the tailings, and process them for valuable minerals? Surely there's a reason why no one has tried that already. Right?