The United States is home to dozens of active mines. Some extract copper, while others dig for iron. Whatever the resource, however, it usually makes up a small fraction of the rock pulled from the ground. The rest is typically ignored. Wasted.

“We’re only producing a few commodities,” said Elizabeth Holley, a professor of mining engineering at the Colorado School of Mines. “The question is: What else is in those rocks?”

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The answer: a lot.

In a study published today by the journal Science, Holley and her colleagues aimed to quantify what else is in those rocks. They found that, across 70 critical elements at 54 active mines, the potential for recovery is enormous. There is enough lithium in one year of U.S. mine waste, for example, to power 10 million electric vehicles. For manganese, it’s enough for 99 million. Those figures far surpass both U.S. import levels of those elements and current demand for them. Recovering 4 percent of lithium would completely offset current imports.

Abstract

The US has sufficient geological endowment in active metal mines to reduce the nation’s dependence on critical mineral imports. Demand is increasing for cobalt, nickel, rare earth elements, tellurium, germanium, and other materials used in energy production, semiconductors, and defense. This study uses a statistical evaluation of new geochemical datasets to quantify the critical minerals that are mined annually in US ores but go unrecovered. Ninety percent recovery of by-products from existing domestic metal mining operations could meet nearly all US critical mineral needs; one percent recovery would substantially reduce import reliance for most elements evaluated. Policies and technological advancements can enable by-product recovery, which is a resource-efficient approach to critical mineral supply that reduces waste, impact, and geopolitical risk

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