I came across this new USGS report today at work. It is long overdue of an update of "critical" (non-fuel) minerals that the U.S. needs for our modern economy and defense. Some of these weren't even thought of much (e.g. "rare earths") back when the 1973 report was released. There are automated map "slide shows" of both the U.S. and global deposits of these minerals if you hit the "related work" link down below the links to the individual chapters. A lot of these minerals most of us have never or seldom heard about before now.
https://pubs.er.usgs.gov/publication/pp1802
You may wonder why it took the USGS so long to modernize such a report? One reason is that a lot of the technologies we now use were only just starting to be on the horizon in the 1980s, '90s, and maybe into the early 2000s. The truth is also that neither the G.W. Bush or the Obama administrations were overly excited to produce a new report, for whatever reasons. To be fair, Obama DoE did do a strategy for critical minerals and a report in 2010 & 2011 but never pulled the trigger in changing the situation on the ground. A little quid pro quo, especially on rare earths, with China and our national debt??
Anyway the Donald and the Zink have at least got a new report out. Now if the new digging actually gets started, we'll just have to see...
https://www.usnews.com/news/business...tical-minerals
https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/fi...lsstrategy.pdf
https://capitalresearch.org/article/...ent-of-riches/
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