Can U.S. Mining Waste End Strategic Mineral Dependence?

America’s Strategic Minerals Supply Gap

As the world undergoes major geopolitical reorganization in response to China’s resurgence as a great power and escalating tensions with Russia since the start of the war in Ukraine, global supply chains are in disarray.

This is especially true for strategic minerals, which are essential for every aspect of modern life that requires rare elements or high-performance metals, from electronics to batteries, jet engines, and nuclear fuel.

This includes rare earth elements, as well as many other elements of the periodic table, such as tungsten, antimony, and uranium. For many of these materials, the USA is 100% dependent on imports, for example, gallium, indium, scandium, tantalum, and yttrium, all of which are required for manufacturing chips, lasers, radars, and other electronic components.

And for many others, the US is dependent on raw ore or refined metals to produce the finished product, as seen in the cases of antimony or tungsten.

Source: Silverado

This dependency on imports is compounded by the additional problem that most of the supply comes from China, a country increasingly embroiled in trade conflicts with the USA, and potentially one day in a hot conflict with it over the independence of Taiwan.

Source: Economics TD

Adding to the problem, an alternative to Chinese supplies is often a Russian one, which is even more likely to be cut off at some point. For example, the United States imports 99% of the uranium concentrate it needs to make fuel for its nuclear reactors, with a significant portion coming from Russia, Kazakhstan, and Uzbekistan.

Source: EIA

Opening new mines and new rare elements refineries is, of course, possible, but will likely take a lot of time. Luckily, a quicker alternative might be available, requiring almost no new mining operations, and which could cover almost all of the USA’s needs in strategic minerals.

A recent analysis was released in the prestigious scientific publication Science¹, where researchers at the Colorado School of Mines are exploring the idea of using mining waste as a new source for these rare minerals. It was published under the title “By-product recovery from US metal mines could reduce import reliance for critical minerals”.

Mining Waste and By-Products: An Untapped Resource

When mines operate, they typically extract a significant amount of rock from a specific mineral deposit, knowing that this geological anomaly contains a higher concentration of a particular element.

Source: Cementl

The extracted rock is then crushed and processed through various crushers, mills, and centrifuges to extract the desired mineral, typically using a significant amount of water and specialized chemicals.

This leaves a massive volume of “tailing”, left over ore that was deemed to contain too little of the mineral of interest to be worth processing further.

Source: OceanaGold

In practice, when one rare element or metal is found in a rock deposit, it comes with several other elements. For example, some of the world’s largest silver mines by production of silver are actually even larger copper mines, with silver just found in trace amounts in the copper ore.

This means that the purified metal in most mining operations leaves not only a massive volume of tailings, but these tailings are actually rich in other minerals that were not utilized at the time.

With most mines operating for decades, and sometimes a full century, that creates a massive stockpile of potentially usable resources accumulated all over the country.

In addition, these tailings are already partially crushed and above ground, making them readily available for further processing and refining, without needing to build new mines entirely.

What Can Be Found In US Mines’ Tailings?

Gathering The Data

To estimate the potential of this resource, the researchers built a database of annual production from federally permitted metal mines in the U.S.

They combined this database with data about the geochemical concentrations of critical minerals in ores, recently compiled by the U.S. Geological Survey.

This way, they were able to estimate the content of most of the available US tailings and their potential usefulness to solve deficiencies in domestic strategic mineral production.

In total, they looked at a total of 54 mines and 70 elements used in various high-tech or critical applications, as diverse as cell phones, medical devices, satellites, renewable energy, or fighter jets.

For some critical elements, even a very partial recovery of available resources would be enough, just 1% recovery would substantially reduce import reliance for most elements evaluated, for example:

• Germanium, which is crucial for electronics and infrared optics, including sensors on missiles and defense satellites, is produced from zinc and molybdenum mines.
  • Less than 1% of the germanium currently mined and processed but not recovered would be enough to cover all of the US industrial needs.
• Cobalt, which is used in electric car batteries, can be found as 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.

For example, there is enough lithium in one year of U.S. mine waste to power 10 million EVs, and for manganese, it’s enough for 99 million EVs.

“We show where each critical mineral exists and the sites at which even 1 percent recovery of a particular critical mineral could make a huge difference, in many cases dramatically reducing or even eliminating the need to import that mineral.”

Elizabeth Holley – Associate professor of mining engineering at Colorado School of Mines.

If recovery from available resources were to climb to a 90% recovery rate, existing mine tailings would be enough to supply the US with all of the strategic metals and rare elements it needs, except for platinum and palladium.
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From Theory To Practice

Developing Technological Solutions

There is, of course, a reason why this resource has not yet been used, and it might reduce how much can be done in the short term.

“The challenge lies in recovery. It’s like getting salt out of bread dough – we need to do a lot more research, development and policy to make the recovery of these critical minerals economically feasible.”

Elizabeth Holley – Associate professor of mining engineering at Colorado School of Mines.

In general, low-price production from China, Russia, and other nations has made domestic production uneconomical. A lack of experience with the methods for extraction, as well as environmental concerns, were additional reasons why it was not done until now.

The first step would be to examine specific tailing examples more closely and determine the most effective method for extracting rare elements from them.

“Now that we know which sites are low-hanging fruit, we need to conduct detailed analyses of the minerals in which these chemical elements reside and then test the technologies suitable for recovery of those elements from those specific minerals,”

Elizabeth Holley – Associate professor of mining engineering at Colorado School of Mines.

A Policy Question

This process of up-scaling tailings’ utilization also matches the new direction taken by the US administration, notably with President Donald Trump, who signed an executive order invoking wartime powers that would allow more leasing and extraction on federal lands.

“Our national and economic security are now acutely threatened by our reliance upon hostile foreign powers’ mineral production.

It is imperative for our national security that the United States take immediate action to facilitate domestic mineral production to the maximum possible extent.”

Because this is also a question of balancing economics and strategic needs, to reduce the dependency on potential adversaries, the US will need to adopt adequate policies to encourage production.

Left to its own devices, the rather conservative mining industry might be unwilling to risk spending billions in developing infrastructure that might turn up a loss when competing with unlimited, cheap Chinese and Russian imports.

“We also need policies that incentivize mine operators to incorporate additional processing infrastructure.

Although these elements are needed, their market value may not be sufficient to motivate operators to invest in new equipment and processes without the right policies in place.”

Elizabeth Holley – Associate professor of mining engineering at Colorado School of Mines.

Investing In Strategic Minerals

Perpetua Resources Corp

Perpetua is a mining company looking to redevelop in the US the Stibnite gold project in Idaho, previously the source of 90% of US antimony.

The current demand is much higher, and it is expected to cover around 35% of the modern US demand.

Because of the urgency for domestic antimony production, Perpetua received in early 2024 a letter of interest from the Export-Import Bank of the United States (EXIM) for a potential $2B in debt financing to push the project forward quickly.

This falls under EXIM’s (Export-Import Bank Of The USA) Make More in America initiative, aiming at revitalizing American manufacturing.

While antimony is the core of the project rationale, it would also produce a lot of gold, with the largest reserves among all US independent gold projects.

Thanks to high-grade ore, it would also have an All-in Sustaining Costs (AISC) of only $636/ounce, while gold prices reached all-time highs, potentially heading for $4,000 / ounce in 2026, according to Deutsche Bank. The antimony alone could yield $220/oz over the life of the mine.

Source: Perpetua

In general, the higher the gold price, the higher Perpetua’s market capitalization should be, while funding is ideally provided by the emergence of restarting domestic antimony production in the USA.

Source: Perpetua

Like all mining projects, even an accelerated timeline will require many years for the project to get going.

The company will also implement modern mining practices to solve the environmental issues that led to the closing of the mine in the first place. This includes supporting the fishing and wildlife population, reforestation, and addressing the historical impact of previous mining operations.

Currently, the company envisions permitting to start in 2025, with commercial operation starting in 2029 at the earliest.

Source: Perpetua

Perpetua is currently the most important antimony project in the USA. This explains its accelerated permitting and easy financing, usually the 2 problems on which junior mining projects often die.

It could also prove to be a very profitable gold mining operation, which would prove highly rewarding for its shareholders.

In both the case of antimony and gold production, it is likely that Perpetua profits will be tightly linked to geopolitical turmoil, making it a potentially interesting addition to a portfolio to manage volatility driven by international tensions.

Latest Perpetua (PPTA) Stock News and Developments

Study Referenced

^{1. Elizabeth A. Holley, Karlie M. Hadden, Dorit Hammerling, Rod Eggert, D. Erik Spiller, and Priscilla P. Nelson. By-product recovery from US metal mines could reduce import reliance for critical minerals. Science. 21 Aug 2025. DOI: 10.1126/science.adw8997}