Residents filled a gymnasium at the Emily City Hall Tuesday night to hear more about a potential underground mine in their community. The small city surrounded by lakes in northern Crow Wing County, northeast of Brainerd, sits on what’s been described as the largest deposit of manganese in North America. The mineral is an important component of lithium-ion batteries used in electric vehicles, buses and power tools. But the prospect of an underground mine less than 2 miles from downtown Emily has many local residents worried. At the town hall meeting, they peppered representatives of North Star Manganese and parent company Electric…
Author: TJ Markle
West-central Montana’s Little Blackfoot Drainage produced some 300,000 ounces of gold during the 19th and 20th centuries, when the Treasure State was awash in prospectors and miners. Evidence of that earlier period persists today in the Conestoga wagon-sized holes that pock the land, and in hints of the stagecoach route that once connected Helena to Blackfoot City, the commercial hub of a valley that was lauded as a “true American Switzerland” before it faded into a ghost town. But the sought-after minerals that shaped the region have not been exhausted. Recent geological sampling by Falcon Copper Corporation, paired with geochemical…
ASU researchers develop ways to stabilize waste from mining activities and recover critical minerals across Arizona Arizona State University researchers are testing ways to turn one of mining’s biggest environmental liabilities into a potential resource for American businesses and consumers. While the waste created from mining activities carries contaminants that can potentially make their way into nearby waterways, it may also contain critical minerals that could be sourced to strengthen U.S. domestic supply chains. As part of the ASU Mining Innovation Initiative, several projects at ASU are working on ways to stabilize mine waste, reduce environmental contamination and recover critical…
Sudanese Prime Minister Kamil Idris called on Saturday for swift action to address the environmental damage caused by mining activities across the country. Idris emphasized that close coordination between the Ministry of Minerals and state governments is essential to modernize the sector while safeguarding local ecosystems. Sudan faces mounting environmental and public health hazards linked to informal gold mining, where the widespread use of toxic chemicals like mercury and cyanides causes land degradation, alongside frequent mine collapses that result in fatal casualties. Speaking at the conclusion of a mining conference in Khartoum, Idris urged authorities to regulate traditional mining to…
The Trump administration is moving closer to opening up U.S. waters for deep-sea mining—a contentious and largely untested industry focused on extracting mineral-rich deposits from the ocean floor containing cobalt, copper, nickel and manganese. Last week, the Department of Interior’s newly created Marine Minerals Administration (MMA) announced a proposal to hold a lease sale for deep-sea mining activities in federal waters off the coast of American Samoa in the South Pacific. If the plans move forward, it would be the first deep-sea mining lease sale in the world. Interested deep-sea mining companies could bid for 20 years of mining rights…
According to foreign media reports, Panama’s government is evaluating the creation of a state-owned enterprise (SOE) to pave the way for restarting First Quantum Minerals’ Cobre Panamá copper mine. Under the proposed public-private partnership, the Panamanian state would hold a 35% to 40% equity stake, while First Quantum would retain operational control with the remaining 60% to 65%. Alternatively, officials are considering a direct leasing structure where the state maintains sole ownership of the underlying concession in exchange for royalty and tax revenues. Cobre Panamá has remained idle since late 2023 following a Supreme Court ruling that invalidated its operator…
Tungsten is emerging as a critical material in AI, demonstrating its strength in semiconductor fabrication that powers data processing. Artificial Intelligence (AI) has undeniably cracked the code to everyday tasks, leading to massive expansion and more conversations on high-performance hardware. AI and digital hardware such as advanced graphics processing units (GPUs) and energy-intensive data centers hide a secret material beneath their surfaces: tungsten. While often attributed to industrial materials or heavy military armor, tungsten has quietly emerged as an indispensable workhorse of the AI and digital era. As microchip architecture becomes more meticulous to boost performance, the metal’s high conductivity…
As many as two thirds of mining and metals facilities worldwide are located in areas facing ‘significant’ physical water risk, according to a new report by the International Council on Mining and Metals (ICMM). According to the ICMM’s Global Mining and Metals Water Dataset and report, competition for resources is the ‘greatest physical water risk’ facing the mining and metals industry, with water stress, depletion, drought, flooding and unpredictable annual water supplies all playing a role. Water risk As the report found, some 65.7% of mining and metals facilities worldwide are exposed to at least one major physical water risk, while 38.2% are situated in river catchments experiencing high or extremely…
While Ukraine fights for its survival, questions are mounting over whether one of Europe’s most strategically important titanium facilities could become the latest target in a decades-long saga surrounding Russian musical composer Igor Raykhelson. As the war in Ukraine continues to reshape the geopolitical landscape, few industrial assets have become more strategically valuable than the country’s titanium industry. Titanium has emerged as one of the world’s most important critical minerals, essential for military aircraft, submarines, missiles, spacecraft, medical devices and advanced manufacturing. The United States has designated titanium among the minerals considered vital to national security, while Ukraine possesses some…
Companies working at the frontier of aerospace, energy, and computing are constantly looking for new materials to improve performance. But in order to understand how those materials will actually behave once they’re inside rockets or on computer chips, companies first have to make the material and then test it. That’s because even the most powerful simulation techniques struggle to model the complex chemical arrangements in most of today’s solid materials. The problem adds costs and time to materials innovation. Now a team of MIT researchers has created a way to accurately model the behavior of metals, regardless of the complexity…