The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
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Pebble Limited Partnership presses for withdrawal of preemptive veto As the Environmental Protection Agency closed public input on its 2022 proposed determination, Pebble Limited Partnership calls on the agency to withdraw its preemptive veto of the Pebble copper mine project, ultimately finalizing the permit process undertaken by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. About a year ago, the EPA made known its intention to reinitiate the process of making a Clean Water Act Section...
Gains ownership of historic Keno Hill Silver Mine in Canada's Yukon With the Sept. 7 purchase of Alexco Resource Corp., Hecla Mining Company is poised to become Canada's largest silver producer by unlocking the enormous high-grade potential of its new Keno Hill Silver District project in the Yukon. The 242-square-kilometer (93 square miles) Keno Hill property covers one of the highest-grade silver districts in the world. Between 1913 and 1989, more than 200 million ounces of...
At a time when American automakers are looking for potential domestic supplies of the graphite that makes up nearly half of all the materials that go into the lithium-ion batteries powering electric vehicles, Graphite One Inc. offers up details of its plans to develop a mine at its Graphite Creek project in Alaska and processing facility in Washington that would produce roughly 75,000 metric tons of advanced graphite products per year. Earlier this year, S&P Global Platts...
"What is the impact of not mining in Alaska?" Liz Cornejo, vice president Dowa Metals & Mining Alaska, asked during the 2022 Alaska's Minerals: A Strategic National Imperative summit. For such a simple question, the implications are enormous. Alaska is practically synonymous with mining. Aside from the strong tourist appeal – which accounts for a large portion of the state's economy – the remaining economic contributors all come from natural resources. Fishing, mining, oil...
Russia's invasion of Ukraine, America's tenuous relationship with China, and global competition for the enormous volume of mined materials needed to build the envisioned clean energy future has elevated the urgency for the United States to bolster domestic critical mineral supply chains. For many, these geopolitical and economic realities have elevated the development of Alaska's incredible critical mineral resources to a national imperative. The urgency of this matter is why...
The White House's bold clean energy ambitions, which are intricately linked to the availability of reliable supplies of the metals needed to build electric vehicles and renewable energy infrastructure, are being slowed by a tug-o-war between departments within the Biden administration. While the departments of Commerce, Defense, and Energy are forging ahead with programs and investments aimed at ensuring America has the minerals and metals needed to support the clean energy...
US invests heavily into developing domestic rare earth element processing plants Despite what their name suggests, rare earths are not all that scarce. An efficient and environmentally sound technology capable of separating this tightly bonded group into the 15 individual elements of innovation, however, is truly unique and the key to establishing a rare earths supply chain in North America. There are currently no commercial-scale rare earths separation facilities in North...
Magnet rare earths transform motion to energy; and energy to motion and music While all 15 of the rare earths have special properties that have been called magical, alchemistical, and futuristic, seven of these elements are imbued with a powerful magnetism that is hard to resist when it comes to creating a high-tech future powered by clean energy. The magnetic qualities of these rare earths – praseodymium, neodymium, samarium, gadolinium, terbium, dysprosium, and holmium – are...
From flashlights to supercomputers, tin is the glue for an electronic age Lost in the clamor for lithium, nickel and other metals needed for the batteries powering electric vehicles and modern electronics, or the rare earth elements that turn stored energy into motion, is the enormous need for a much more modest metal that is so fundamental to the advancement of technology that it almost goes unseen – tin. While other technology metals are critical to certain products and s...
Rare metalloid is key element of CdTe thin-film solar cell tech The rising popularity of thin-film solar cells as a highly effective means of converting sunlight into electricity is creating increased demand for tellurium, amongst the rarest of the stable elements on the periodic table. Tellurium is a metalloid, one of seven elements with properties that fall between metals like aluminum and tin and non-metals like carbon and phosphorus. These semimetals, which also include...
Russia and China's control of global supplies worry DC lawmakers From its uses in flame retardants that have saved countless American lives to being an important ingredient in batteries poised to be the answer to the challenge of storing intermittent renewable energy, few metals are more critical to the national security and economic wellbeing of the United States than antimony. Described as a metalloid, which means it falls somewhere between metals such as zinc and solid...
Tungsten could be held ransom unless domestic mines open Tungsten, or wolfram, is the 74th element on the periodic table of elements and, like many other metals that have found their way onto critical mineral lists in Canada, Europe, and the United States, this sturdy metal is vulnerable to supply disruption. Tungsten has been known since prehistoric times, and as far back as 350 years ago, Chinese porcelain makers were using this element as a pigment to incorporate a unique...
Tech metalloid boasts superior semiconductor, optical qualities From NASA's Gateway space station that will serve as a critical outpost circling the Moon to more down-to-Earth applications such as quantum computers that are millions of times faster than their classical counterparts and fiber optic cables that send data at the speed of light, germanium is among the techiest of the tech metals. "The extensive use of germanium for military and commercial applications has made it...
A blue-collar metal that is vital to weatherizing envisioned green energy future Critical minerals are typically thought of as obscure rare earth elements cloaked in geopolitical intrigue, or exciting metals and metalloids that have risen to stardom due to the special properties they bring to cutting-edge technologies such as quantum computing, smartphones, renewable energy, and electric vehicles. Zinc – a blue-collar metal better known for galvanizing guardrails, light p...
Alaska is known to be a trove of the minerals and metals critical to every segment of the American economy. This critical mineral richness is despite the fact that Alaska is a vast state that remains largely underexplored. To help gain a better understanding of the Last Frontier State's potential to provide domestic supplies of the 50 critical minerals, the U.S. Geological Survey has allotted $6.75 million to explore specific regions of the state for 29 critical minerals. The...
"Grade is king" is an adage that guides mineral exploration and mining. The premise behind this basic axiom of the mining business is the less ore that needs to be mined and processed per ounce of precious metals, pound of base metals, kilogram of critical minerals, or carat of gemstones produced, the more profitable an operation will be. The kingliest of orebodies would be of such high grade that a mining company would simply need to dig up the ore, crush it, and then ship it...
Stratabound Minerals Corp. August 11 announced the end of its 2022 summer field program at the company's Golden Culvert and recently added Win gold projects in southeast Yukon. After optioning Golden Culvert in 2017, Stratabound has spent several years establishing its foothold in the Yukon by advancing this underexplored property that neighbors Seabridge Gold Inc.'s high-grade 3 Aces gold project. Found within the Hyland Gold Belt, a geologic extension of the Tombstone Gold...
Modern society depends on the responsible development of a wide variety of minerals and metals. These commodities are used in numerous consumer products, such as cellular phones, computers, televisions, and automobiles. They are also extremely important for powering the transition from a fossil fuel-based economy to one in which renewable energy is a major part of the energy mix. Many of these commodities have been designated as "critical minerals" by the U.S. federal...
In a move that could help it push the Pebble project across the permitting finish line, Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd. has entered into an agreement with an unnamed investor for US$60 million over the next two years in exchange for royalties from the gold and silver that would be recovered as a byproduct of the copper produced if a mine is developed at the world-class deposit in Southwest Alaska. With an initial $12 million in good faith, this substantial investment could...
Rare earths from the Nechalacho Mine being delivered into the supply chain marks the opening of a new critical minerals chapter in the story of mining in Northwest Territories – a saga that includes a 1930s gold rush to the territory's capital, a whole new town to support the Pine Point zinc mine, and the unlikely discovery of world-class diamond deposits in the famed Lac de Gras region. "We have an opportunity to add to our rich and long-standing mining story," Northwest Terr...
The global transition to low-carbon energy and transportation is both an incredible opportunity and daunting challenge for Alaska's mining sector. On the one hand, Alaska is incredibly enriched with the minerals and metals required to build electric vehicles, solar panels, wind farms, and other clean energy technologies. On the other, America's Last Frontier is burdened by a lack of affordable, low-carbon energy options in the remote reaches of the state where many of these...
Those of us who watch such things are well aware that Senator Murkowski has been the strong vocal lead in the Senate when it comes to sounding the alarm that the country is at substantial risk due to our reliance on foreign countries for the critical minerals that we need, not just for our 21st Century lifestyle, but also for our national defense. Over the past decade, Sen. Murkowski has consistently done yeoman service when it came to getting legislation concerning the...
With renewed interest in nuclear to generate zero-carbon electricity for the clean energy future, coupled with Russia's ongoing war in Ukraine, the past-producing Ross-Adams uranium mine on Ucore Rare Metals Inc.'s Bokan Mountain project in Southeast Alaska has caught the attention of unnamed parties interested in this potential domestic source of nuclear fuel. While Ucore says it is entertaining the unsolicited offers to investigate Bokan's uranium potential, any efforts on t...
Recent analysis by University of British Columbia Professor Greg Dipple indicates that tailings from a mine at the Wellgreen nickel-copper-cobalt-platinum group metals deposit on Nickel Creek Platinum Corp.'s Nickel Shäw project in southeastern Yukon could absorb large quantities of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. About 15 years ago, Dipple realized that ultramafic rocks such as those that host the nickel-rich mineralization at Wellgreen are among the largest carbon...
Nearly all the 50 minerals critical to the United States can be found at mines, deposits, and prospects across Alaska. Intriguing lithium occurrences, however, have not been identified in America's Last Frontier – until now. Discovery Alaska Ltd. says it has identified lithium at the Coal Creek prospect on its Chulitna property about four miles west of the Parks Highway midway between Anchorage and Fairbanks, Alaska. Discovery acquired the Chulitna property early last year t...
