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Project work in Planning for the Investigation of Scarce Materials and Minerals used in Industry

Advanced technologies that require scarce metals and minerals are used in almost every sector of the economy, primarily due to the ubiquity of computer and telecommunications technology. Key sectors are national defense, electronics, and energy. With respect to the latter, transition from fossil fuels to alternative sources of energy are particularly intensive in their use of scarce metals in batteries, magnets, associated electronics, and catalysts. To defend the national economy against scarce metal supply disruptions, the Department of Defense is considering the reactivation of the national defense stockpile of strategic minerals. To provide longer-term protection, a USGS assessment of national and global resources of scarce metals and minerals will enable policy-makers and industry to identify the next-best available source to supply, in the event of a supply disruption, to develop for use once national defense stockpiles are depleted. An assessment of these scarce metals will also help land planners better account for nationally-important mineral resources when making land-management decisions.

Project tasks include:

• Scarce Metals and Minerals Workshop - A workshop will be held in Tucson, in the Spring of 2007, which will bring together key personnel from industry, government, and academia, to engage with leading USGS research scientists on the subject of scarce minerals and metals in the national economy.
• Update Deposit Models for Rare and Scarce Metals and Material Substrates - Many scarce metals and minerals occur in trace quantities in ores and are recovered as byproducts, usually at the smelting and refining stage, and are typically not considered in existing deposit models. Some of these metals and minerals occur in rare deposit types that have not been modeled. The USGS needs new and updated deposit models to enable the future assessment of resources of scarce metals and minerals.
• Geological Occurrence of Scarce Metals and Minerals - Our basic geological knowledge of the occurrence of scarce metals and minerals has numerous deficiencies, which have yet to be completely identified. One such deficiency arises from the fact that systematic investigation of many of these metals and minerals was last conducted in the 1950s and 1960s with semi-quantitative analytical methods that could not determine the mode of occurrence of these metals in minerals. New analytical methods available to the USGS may solve this deficiency, which will be demonstrated with a pilot study.
• Mineral Resources from Carbonatites - Carbonatites are relatively rare intrusions of magmatic origin that have matrixes composed of carbonate minerals, typically dolomite, calcite and (or) ankerite. About two dozen carbonatites have been recognized in the United States, each associated with alkaline intrusive complexes. In the U.S., carbonatites occur mainly in the Western States; only one has been identified in the Eastern U.S., which is located in New Jersey. Carbonatites are most plentiful in the Rocky Mountain region (particularly in southern Colorado) and in Arkansas. However, the most important U.S. carbonatite in regards to mineral production has been the Mountain Pass carbonatite in California, which was mined for rare earth elements until 2002.
• Methodology Development - Quick Assessment of Rare Metals in Ore Deposits - Develop a protocol for analyses of bulk ore and individual ore-related minerals from ore samples using a combination of laser ablation ICP-MS and microprobe analyses. Integration of these techniques would potentially allow rapid and cost effective assessments of rare metals and different ore forming environments. In addition, characterization of chemical characteristic and metal residence will advance understanding of deposit formation and improve mineral deposit models for rare metals

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