US begins searching old mines for the new gold

EARLY PROSPECTORS digging for gold, silver and copper across the American West had no idea that one day something else very valuable would be buried in the piles of dirt and rocks they tossed aside.

America is scrambling to find key components of mobile phones, televisions, weapons systems, wind turbines, MRI machines and regenerative brakes in hybrid cars — and old mine tailings piles might just be the answer.

One era’s junk could turn out to be this era’s treasure, because experts say the tailings may contain a group of versatile minerals the periodic table called rare earth elements.

“Uncle Sam could be sitting on a goldmine,” said Larry Meinert, director of the mineral resource programme for the US Geological Survey (USGS) in Reston, Virginia.

The USGS and Department of Energy are hunting for deposits of the elements that make magnets lighter, bring balanced hues to fluorescent lighting and colour to the touchscreens of smartphones in order to break the Chinese stranglehold on such goods.

They were surprised to f ind that the critical elements could be in plain sight in piles of rubble otherwise considered eyesores and toxic waste.

“Those were almost never analysed for anything other than what they were mining for,” Mr Meinert said.

“If they turn out to be valuable that is a win-win on several fronts — getting us off our dependence on China and having a resource we didn’t know about.”

The 15 rare earth elements were discovered long after the gold rush began to wane, but demand for them only took off over the past 10 years as electronics became smaller and more sophisticated.

When China cut off supplies to Japan in a dispute over international fishing

territory, the US government went into emergency mode and sent geologists to hunt for new domestic sources.

At the University of Nevada-Reno and Colorado School of Mines, USGS scientists used lasers to examine extensive samples of rocks and ore collected across the West during the gold rush days by geologists from Stanford University and Cal Tech.

“If we could recycle some of this waste and get something out of it that was waste years ago that isn’t waste today, that certainly is a goal,” said Alan Koenig, the USGS scientist in charge of the tailings project.

One sample collected in 1870 from an area near Sparks, Nevada, where miners had searched for a viable copper vein, has shown promise and has given researchers clues in the search for more.

Picture: Getty Images. Getty Images. Hold on there pardner, there could be neodymium in them thar hills. Old prospectors may have discarded much sought after “earth elements” such as dysprosium, left.