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United States Mining

Albemarle to cut jobs, halt expansions and sell stake in Liontown – by Cecilia Jamasmie (Mining.com – January 17, 2024)

https://www.mining.com/

Albemarle (NYSE: ALB) said on Wednesday it would cut jobs and defer spending on projects, including a massive refinery project in South Carolina, as part of a wide-ranging plan to slash costs in light of falling lithium prices. The world’s top producer of the battery metal said it plans to spend $1.6 billion to $1.8  billion in 2024, down from about $2.1 billion it invested last year.

“The actions we are taking allow us to advance near-term growth and preserve future opportunities as we navigate the dynamics of our key end-markets,” chief executive Kent Masters said in the statement. “The long-term fundamentals for our business are strong and we remain committed to operating in a safe and sustainable manner.” 

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Wyoming goes nuclear: Cowboy State is set to see uranium mining boom as prices soar and lawmakers propose ban on Russian imports to end Putin’s stranglehold on the rare element – by Keith Griffith (Daily Mail – January 14, 2024)

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/

Uranium mining operations in Wyoming are gearing up for a potential dramatic expansion in operations, as a proposed ban on Russian imports drives up prices for the crucial nuclear reactor fuel.Uranium spot prices hit $92.50 this week, the highest since 2007 and up more than 84 percent from a year ago, according to data shared with DailyMail.com by market-tracking firm UxC, LLC.

On Tuesday, the Department of Energy announced that it would seek bids from contractors to help establish a domestic supply of a uranium fuel enriched to higher levels, for use in the next generation of nuclear reactors.

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Coal miners in North Dakota unearth a mammoth tusk buried for thousands of years – by Jack Dura (Associated Press/MSM.com – January 7, 2024)

https://www.msn.com/

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — The first person to spot it was a shovel operator working the overnight shift, eyeing a glint of white as he scooped up a giant mound of dirt and dropped it into a dump truck. Later, after the truck driver dumped the load, a dozer driver was ready to flatten the dirt but stopped for a closer look when he, too, spotted that bit of white.

Only then did the miners realize they had unearthed something special: a 7-foot-long mammoth tusk that had been buried for thousands of years.

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US and Russia in race to ban uranium trade – by Henry Lazenby (Northern Miner – December 20, 2023)

https://www.northernminer.com/

The United States Congress is preparing for critical votes on legislation impacting the country’s uranium industry, focusing on the Nuclear Fuel Security Act (NFSA) and a potential ban on Russian uranium imports. The proposed NFSA promises to direct about US$2 billion towards revitalizing the domestic uranium and nuclear fuel sectors, upon approval, as a matter of national security.

The funding may come from standard government appropriations or special emergency allocations by the White House. This governmental engagement has already been a catalyst, driving uranium prices up 71% year-on-year to a current high of US$82.30 per lb. of uranium oxide from below US$20.

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Japan’s Nippon Steel to buy U.S. Steel in a $14.9 billion deal (CNBC.com – December 18, 2023)

https://www.cnbc.com/

Japan’s Nippon Steel clinched a deal on Monday to buy U.S. Steel for $14.9 billion in cash, prevailing in an auction for the 122-year-old iconic steelmaker over rivals including Cleveland-Cliffs and ArcelorMittal.

The deal price of $55 per share represents a whopping 142% premium to Aug. 11, the last trading day before Cleveland-Cliffs unveiled a $35-per-share, cash-and-stock bid for U.S. Steel. It is a bet that U.S. Steel will benefit from the spending and tax incentives in President Joe Biden’s infrastructure bill.

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How to detox coal country – by Kate Morgan (Vox.com – December 11, 2023)

https://www.vox.com/

To clean up poisoned streams, Appalachian researchers are turning acid mine drainage into something unexpected.

The most striking thing about the water tumbling out of the ground behind a small cluster of houses in southeastern Ohio isn’t the smell — a sharp, unmistakable sulfur. It’s also not the color, a vibrant red-orange. The weirdest thing about the Truetown Discharge is the silence.

Just before dark on a warm autumn night, there should be a cacophony of crickets and cicadas in the tall grass along the water. Frogs should be singing and splashing into the shallows. Bats should be circling, owls calling, small mammals and salamanders skittering in the leaves.

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Navajo Nation faces possible new threats after decades of uranium mining – by Kate Holland and Tenzin Shakya (ABC News – December 7, 2023)

https://abcnews.go.com/

A Canadian company is working to move forward with uranium extraction.

Just miles from the site of the 1979 Church Rock Mill spill, the largest nuclear disaster in American history, uranium extraction operations could resume near the Navajo Nation. Now, Navajo leaders say the health and prosperity of their community could be in even further jeopardy.

A Canadian company is working to move forward with uranium extraction, an industry that has a lengthy history around the Navajo Nation. “The pursuit of happiness for us is to be able to live in our communities without fear from the impact of radiation and uranium,” said Teracita Keyanna, who grew up near an abandoned uranium mine in New Mexico. “It’s been really scary, just being a mom in this area.”

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Construction of northern Michigan copper mine could kick off in 2024 – by Ian Ross (Northern Ontario Business – December 5, 2023)

https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

Highland Copper hopes to hit mine production in the Keweenaw Peninsula at peak copper demand

Copper is known as the metal of electrification. Highland Copper holds ample reserves in a historic mining district in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula that could address a looming supply shortage of the metal that’s used in electric vehicles and alternative sources of power.

With two multi-billion-pound copper projects located at the base of the Keweenaw Peninsula, CEO Barry O’Shea said his Quebec and Michigan-based company could be stepping into project funding and a construction decision by 2024 to start a three-year build.

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Electric Vehicle Push Returns North Carolina to Its Lithium Mining Roots – by Alan Rappeport (New York Times – November 30, 2023)

https://www.nytimes.com/

After decades of stagnation, the Tar Heel State is the beneficiary of a lithium rush fueled by demand for car batteries.

The Kings Mountain hiking trail known as Cardio Hill overlooks a pit full of rainwater the size of a lake, but the craggy terrain situated about 30 miles west of Charlotte is now one of the most precious pieces of real estate in the United States.

Beneath that ground is a mine that has been stagnant since the 1980s and is believed to contain one of the nation’s largest deposits of lithium, a critical ingredient in the batteries needed to power electric vehicles.

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Insight: Western start-ups seek to break China’s grip on rare earths refining – by Ernest Scheyder (Reuters – December 4, 2023)

https://www.reuters.com/

ALEXANDRIA, Louisiana, Dec 4 (Reuters) – Start-up tech firms are racing to transform the way rare earths are refined for the clean energy transition, a push aimed at turbocharging the West’s expansion into the niche sector that underpins billions of electronic devices.

The existing standard to refine these strategic minerals, known as solvent extraction, is an expensive and dirty process that China has spent the past 30 years mastering. MP Materials (MP.N), Lynas Rare Earths (LYC.AX) and other Western rare earths companies have struggled at times to deploy it due to technical complexities and pollution concerns.

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The U.S. Strategic Minerals Situation Is Critical – by Christina Lu (Foreign Policy – June 30, 2023)

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Desperate to diversify away from Beijing, Washington is ramping up efforts to jump-start its struggling domestic industry.

Washington’s focus on plugging strategic vulnerabilities amid worsening U.S.-China relations has also reignited U.S. efforts to control crucial, yet often overlooked, materials: critical minerals. It’s not just rare earths, with all their applications for clean energy and fast jets: Entire forests have been felled with legislation meant to jump-start the U.S. foray into rare earths, to little avail so far.

The critical minerals race is about simpler things such as cobalt, nickel, copper, and, according to the U.S. Defense Department, about two dozen other key ingredients for everything needed to make the country safer, cleaner, and more prosperous. The problem is where to get them all.

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The Salton Sea has even more lithium than previously thought, new report finds – by Sammy Roth (Los Angeles – November 28, 2023)

https://www.latimes.com/

Want to produce a huge amount of lithium for electric vehicle batteries — and also batteries that keep our homes powered after sundown — without causing the environmental destruction that lithium extraction often entails? Then the Salton Sea may be your jam.

Companies big and small have been swarming California’s largest lake for years, trying to find a cost-effective way to pull out the lithium dissolved in scorching hot fluid deep beneath the lake’s southern end. Now a new federal analysis suggests even more of the valuable metal is buried down there than we previously understood.

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‘We didn’t know we were poisoning ourselves’: the deadly legacy of the US uranium boom – by Tracy Tullis (The Guardian – November 20, 2023)

https://www.theguardian.com/

The Diné helped dig the raw materials to build the US’s nuclear arsenal, but were never told of the danger

Allen Tsosie was just 14 when he went to work in the uranium mines in the Lukachukai mountains near Cove, Arizona. Tsosie was one of thousands of Navajos who took jobs in the mines, starting in the 1940s. They worked without masks or ventilation to disperse the lethal radon gas, and they were never told the rocks they were handling – leetso in the Diné language, or yellow dirt – were deadly.

In Cove, “you see a lot of women and children,” said Kathleen Tsosie, Allen’s daughter, because hundreds of men who worked in the mines have died.

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Exxon Mobil Plans to Produce Lithium in Arkansas – by Clifford Krauss (New York Times – November 13, 2023)

https://www.nytimes.com/

The move is the oil giant’s first foray in the production of a metal vital for electric vehicle batteries.

Exxon Mobil said on Monday that it planned to set up a facility in Arkansas to produce lithium, a critical raw material for electric vehicles, which pose one of the biggest challenges to the company’s oil business.

Coming just a month after Exxon said it would spend $60 billion to buy Pioneer Natural Resources, the announcement signals that the large oil company intends to hedge its big bets on conventional fossil fuels with at least some investments in cleaner forms of energy that are needed to combat climate change.

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WHAT IF AMERICA’S MINERAL-INTENSIVE MILITARY RUNS OUT OF MINERALS? – by Macdonald Amoah, Gregory Wischer, Juliet Akamboe and Morgan Bazilian (Modern War Institute West Point – November 10, 2023)

https://mwi.westpoint.edu/

Macdonald Amoah is a researcher at the Payne Institute for Public Policy at the Colorado School of Mines. Gregory Wischer is principal at Dei Gratia Minerals, a critical minerals consultancy. Juliet Akamboe is a critical minerals demand researcher at the Colorado School of Mines. Morgan Bazilian is director of the Payne Institute and Professor of Public Policy at the Colorado School of Mines.

Minerals have defined key periods in technological development for much of warfare’s history. The Stone Age featured mineral-tipped spears and arrows; the Bronze Age included swords and shields of bronze, a metal alloy of copper and tin; and in the Iron Age, iron replaced bronze in many weapons, making them both lighter and cheaper.

Since then, minerals have remained formative in changing human history—and warfighting. The cheap, mass production of iron was central to the First Industrial Revolution, while steel, an alloy of iron and carbon, was vital to the Second Industrial Revolution. Both periods contributed to the industrialization of war.

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