POLICY
America Bets $162 Million That Its Mine Waste Is Full of Treasure
In 1884, miners in Butte, Montana, hauled copper out of the earth and dumped the leftover rock beside the pit. They didn't care what else was in it. Copper paid the bills.
Those piles are still there. So are thousands more like them, spread across every mining state in the country. America has more than 500,000 abandoned mines. The waste they left behind has been a problem for over a century — toxic, expensive to clean up, and worth nothing.
On August 18, the Department of Energy put $162 million behind a bet that it's not worthless anymore. DOE picked nine projects to pull critical minerals out of old tailings, slag heaps, and factory waste. The targets: scandium, rare earths, copper, and antimony. Not from new mines. From stuff that's already been dug up and tossed aside.
SiTration, an MIT spinout in Cambridge, Massachusetts, built a system that recovers copper and rare earths from diluted mining waste at existing sites. Alcoa is tapping byproducts from its own aluminum plants. Thompson Creek Metals is testing recovery from existing mine infrastructure and waste streams. Felix Gold plans to pull antimony from a site near Fairbanks, Alaska, using infrastructure that's already in place.
The pattern is clear. DOE isn't paying for exploration. It's paying for technology that turns old waste into new supply. Four of the nine projects move lab-stage work toward working prototypes. Five aim to push existing pilots to the edge of commercial production.
For rare earths, the idea works even better. Tailings from copper and gold mines often contain rare earth minerals that nobody bothered to extract the first time around. Aluminum plants produce a waste called red mud that holds scandium. The feedstock is above ground, at known sites, with no new permits needed. That alone cuts years off the timeline.
This is part of a bigger play. Since August 2025, DOE has committed nearly $1 billion to domestic critical mineral production. Last week's $162 million is the latest round, run through DOE's Office of Critical Minerals and Energy Innovation.
The logic is simple. New mines take 10 to 15 years to permit and build. China refines most of the world's rare earths, and the November 10 deadline for its suspended export controls is 78 days away. The fastest way to add supply isn't to dig new pits. It's to recover value from old ones.
There is a catch. Nine projects won't match Chinese output. The combined volume might cover what one refinery in Jiangxi produces in a few weeks. But DOE isn't chasing scale yet. It's proving the technology works. If waste-to-mineral recovery hits the point where it can make money, the next round of funding — from the government and from private capital watching on the sidelines — will be much larger. And the raw material is practically free.
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Gallium Shows Up at Every Level of Ontario Rare Earth Deposit
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PRICING
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China's Rare Earth Price Index closed at 267.4 on August 3, easing from around 270 in late July. Most listed products held steady. NdPr oxide ticked up while gadolinium oxide and NdPr alloy pulled back slightly. The more telling number sits outside China's borders: heavy rare earth prices on Western markets remain several times the domestic Chinese level. The index has stayed above 260 for most of 2026. Outside the 2021–22 rally, it has rarely sustained that level. The floor keeps moving higher.
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"November 10 is not simply an export control deadline. It is the day the West discovers whether it has built anything that China cannot interrupt.”
Jack Lifton, Co-Chairman, Critical Minerals Institute — Critical Minerals Report
August 16, 2026
Sc
SCANDIUM
The Element
Scandium sits near the top of the rare earth group, but almost nobody mines it on purpose. Global production is small — an estimated 40 to 80 tonnes of oxide per year. Most of it shows up as a byproduct of other mining. Add a small amount to aluminum, though, and the alloy becomes lighter, stronger, and easier to weld. That matters for planes, spacecraft, and high-end sports gear. Scandium also runs inside solid oxide fuel cells, where it helps convert natural gas to electricity. At $3,333/kg for scandium metal on the Shanghai Metals Market, it's one of the most expensive rare earths you can buy. The DOE's new $162 million program targets scandium recovery from mine waste — a clear sign that Washington sees a supply gap worth closing.
AROUND THE MARKET
Critical Minerals Institute Heads to Atlanta in October
The Critical Minerals Institute will host panels on supply chains and rare earths at the Critical Minerals Expo and Rare Earth Conference in Atlanta this October. CMI Co-Chairman Jack Lifton and other industry figures are scheduled to speak. Registration is now open.
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NdPr oxide closed at $97.40/kg on the Shanghai Metals Market as of August 4, sitting below the $110/kg floor the Defense Department guaranteed in its contract with MP Materials. Chinese domestic supply is running ahead of demand even as Western buyers keep paying a premium.
Carbonium Core Reports Rare Earth Content in First Assays
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