The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Sorted by date Results 1 - 9 of 9
GIL-SOURDOUGH – With a Sept. 23 blast of explosives that fractured rock in preparation for the start of mining at Gil-Sourdough, Kinross Gold Corp. has raised the bar for mine openings with a literal groundbreaking ceremony at what is now the sixth large-scale metal mine in Alaska. "I hope this is just the beginning and there are a lot more plays like this and we have a future, not just here at Fort Knox but across the great state of Alaska," Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy said t...
Extremely hard and with the highest melting point of all the metals, tungsten's toughness is legendary. Like many of the other metals that have found their way onto critical mineral lists in Canada, Europe, and the United States, this durable metal is vulnerable to Chinese control. "World tungsten supply was dominated by production in China and exports from China," the U.S. Geological Survey inked in its 2021 mineral commodities report. It is estimated that mines in China...
Though gold is not considered a metal critical to the United States, this increasingly valuable precious metal could serve as a pathfinder element for several of the other minerals and metals the U.S. Geological Survey deemed critical to America. Selling for roughly US$2,000 per ounce and expected to climb much higher as central banks and governments inject unprecedented amounts of cash into a global economy affected by COVID-19, gold has become an increasingly vital...
Would you consider drinking heavy metals to make your stomach feel better? A serum containing arsenic, cadmium, lead or mercury would only make matters worse and could be deadly. Bismuth, the heaviest of the heavy metals, however, is swigged by millions of indigestion sufferers each year. In fact, stomach remedies such as Pepto-Bismol, along with cosmetic applications, are currently the largest market for bismuth. Being the only non-toxic heavy metal, bismuth is being...
America's supply of tungsten, an extremely durable metal that is vital to a broad range of American industrial sectors, is at high-risk. A recent U.S. Geological Survey assessment to identify which mineral commodities are most at risk to supply disruptions ranked tungsten near the top of the list – alongside rare earth elements, cobalt and graphite, platinum group metals and tungsten. Like many of its neighbors at the top of the mineral commodity supply risk list, much of the...
A true northern pioneer far from his Eastern European home, 'Wise' Mike Stepovich, settles in a new land and leaves behind a historic legacy in Alaska's Golden Heart City. The history of Fairbanks is not unlike many other gold rush settlements, rife with rugged explorers, savvy tycoons and luckless vagabonds. So, the melting pot of happenstance plays its hand again and begets a fascinating tale of a frontier city and a man far from home. It is hard to say whether Stepovich...
Extremely hard and with the highest melting point of all the elements on the periodic table, tungsten is a vital ingredient to a wide-range of industrial and military applications, yet none of this durable metal is currently mined in the United States. According to the United States Geological Survey, more than half of the tungsten consumed in the U.S. last year was used to make the cemented tungsten-carbide, a compound typically made with equal parts tungsten and carbon....
Since the stampedes of prospectors trekked North in the latter half of the 19th Century, the lure of Alaska's rich gold lodes has drawn dreamers and miners North. Today, four hardrock mines and hundreds of family-run placer operations across the Last Frontier churn out roughly 1 million ounces of this alluring precious metal each year – and the largest stores of aurum discovered here have yet to be realized. Despite being a relatively rare metal that has served as a c...
Extremely hard and with the highest melting point of all the elements on the periodic table, tungsten is vital to a broad spectrum of commercial and military applications, yet there are no mines in the United States producing this durable metal. Nearly 60 percent of the tungsten consumed in the U.S. during 2018 was used to make the cemented tungsten-carbide, a compound of roughly equal parts tungsten and carbon. Roughly twice as strong as steel, tungsten carbide is often...
