The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
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On Feb. 22, 2022, Teck Resources Ltd.'s Red Dog Mine in Northwest Alaska became the largest critical minerals operation in the United States, both in terms of quantity and value of the materials produced at this world-class base, precious, and critical minerals operation. Being catapulted to America's top dog when it comes to critical minerals production is not due to the germanium produced, though this semiconductor metal vital to ultrafast computing and communications is...
Replacing this oft-maligned lithium-ion battery metal comes at a cost Traditionally a headline-grabbing metal due to the perceived human rights and monetary costs it adds to lithium-ion batteries and the electric vehicles they power, cobalt is being overshadowed by the enormous demand and price increases for the lithium and nickel that also go into the storage cells that deliver the "E" to the EV revolution. Cobalt, however, continues to be a vital ingredient that improves...
Tesla and other automakers clamor for nickel suppliers with low CO2 footprint Tesla CEO Elon Musk's 2020 appeal to "please mine more nickel" served as a rallying cry for mining companies with projects positioned to deliver this critical battery metal into global markets. Going into 2022, however, the electric vehicle trailblazer's words were echoing in nearly empty warehouses as the lithium-ion batteries that power EVs are demanding more nickel than global miners can supply....
Electric Vehicles require six times the minerals than their fossil fuel forebearers With even the most basic models boasting sophisticated driver-assist, navigation, infotainment, diagnostics, and other advanced digital systems being fed power from oversized versions of the lithium-ion batteries found in your laptop or smartphone, electric vehicles are becoming personal computers that you can drive. While this puts a whole new spin on the term mobile computing, riding around i...
"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...
Critical minerals can be recycled from decades of e-waste The necessity of reclaiming waste as a means to curb the seemingly impossible material requirements of a renewable future is fostering a different kind of industry – urban mining. "When you're in the renewable energy space, you've got to think through the whole lifecycle – where will EV and lithium-ion batteries go when they are no longer useful? It can't be to a landfill. That's not responsible," said Graphite One Pres...
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...
Coal ash, acid drainage, and tailings for future green economy As the world continues to prime itself for the global energy shift, academia, governments and the private sector are scrambling to extract the valuable minerals and metals necessary to power the low-carbon renewable future – resulting in some truly innovative and unconventional methods. In addition to the rare earths, cobalt, lithium, and other technology metals that capture headline attention, this list often miss...
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...
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...
"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...
Teck Resources Ltd. July 26 reported another quarter of strong zinc production and revenues from its Red Dog Mine in Northwest Alaska. During the second quarter of this year, Red Dog produced 143,800 (317 million pounds) of zinc, 9% higher than the 131,600 metric tons (290.1 million lb) produced during the first quarter of this year and a slight increase over the 140,300 metric tons (309.3 million lb) produced during the same period of 2021. Second quarter lead production at...
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...
Though the 2022 field season is scarcely underway, Vital Metals Ltd., Canada's first rare earths producer, is already eyeing a second banner year at its Nechalacho REE mining operation in Northwest Territories – with recent progress in virtually every aspect of the Australia-based company's Canadian project, from exploration to marketing. Vital's offtake partner, Norway-based REEtec AS, signed a purchase agreement in April to supply rare metals for magnets used in electric m...
In preparation of bringing its Alaska Strategic Metals Complex online in 2024, Ucore Rare Metals Inc. has streamlined its management and technical teams and secured new feedstock for the future rare earths separation plant. To be developed near the Southeast Alaska port town of Ketchikan, the Alaska SMC is a processing facility that will do the hard work of separating rare earths into the individual elements that are used in a variety of high-tech applications. Though often...
While hailing President Joe Biden's use of the Defense Production Act to bolster domestic production of critical lithium-ion battery minerals and metals as good news for the Far North State's mining sector, Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy says this move contradicts actions taken by the administration to reevaluate a road to the Ambler Mining District. "I fully support the President making the development of these minerals a priority in our nation's interest. But the Biden...
Trilogy Metals Inc. March 17 reported additional "outstanding but not unexpected" results from the 2021 infill drilling at the Arctic deposit on the Upper Kobuk Mineral Projects in Northwest Alaska. The company also provided a brief update on the U.S. Department of Interior's suspension of permits to build a road to the Ambler Mining District where UKMP is located. Being advanced by Ambler Metals LLC, a joint venture operating company equally owned by Trilogy and South32...
Tectonic Metals Inc. March 10 announced that its 2021 Phase II drill program at the Tibbs gold project in Alaska's Goodpaster Mining District has discovered the elusive low-angle, Pogo-style veins at Gray Lead West. Located about 22 miles (35 kilometers) southeast of Northern Star Resources Ltd.'s Pogo gold mine, Tibbs is known for high-grade gold targets. While high-angle feeder veins similar to those found at Pogo had previously been identified at Tibbs, the stacks of more...
When most people think about the metals driving the alternative energy revolution, lithium, vanadium, cobalt and rare earths spring to mind. As recently reported by EE Times Europe, "Copper is an important raw material for the electronics industry, being the most widely used conductor for PCB, wiring, and connector manufacturing. The average person, however, might not realize this, thinking that copper is some kind of old metal on which there is no progress to be made." There...
British Columbia and the First Nation people in Canada's westernmost province are poised to benefit from the increased need for minerals to build a low-carbon future, according to a new economic impact study the Association for Mineral Exploration published in partnership with iTOTEM Analytics. "With demand for the minerals and metals we discover soaring to meet the needs of a low-carbon economy, we understand the acute importance of the critical role we play in achieving...
Mineral exploration activity in Northwest Territories showed signs of revival in 2021, coming on the heels of the slowest year in recent memory. Excited by renewed interest in gold deposits in and around the capital city of Yellowknife and other hot spots after the pandemic-related restrictions of 2020, juniors joined longtime explorers Nighthawk Gold Corp. and Gold Terra Resource Corp. (formerly TerraX Minerals) in hunting for the yellow metal across the 1.14...
Goldman Sachs' declaration that "copper is the new oil" may serve as a foreshadowing of Alaska's economic future, one that is not so heavily reliant on the revenues from petroleum flowing from the North Slope and leans more heavily on the state's rich endowment of precious, critical, and base metals. The investment bank's suggestion that copper is to become the strategically most important commodity on Earth is due to the vital role the conductive metal plays in global...
While copper may be the new oil of the green energy revolution, a wide variety of industrial minerals and metals found in abundance in Alaska will be needed to build the envisioned low-carbon future. In a 2021 report on the minerals and metals critical to low-carbon energy and transportation, the International Energy Agency estimates that a typical passenger electric vehicle requires six times the mineral inputs of a conventional internal combustion engine car and an onshore...
