Reducing U.S. Critical Mineral Reliance Through Substitution and Recycling
Critical Minerals: Reducing U.S. Import Reliance with Substitution and Recycling
I examined how substitution and recycling technologies can reduce U.S. reliance on imported critical minerals for batteries and semiconductors. While battery recycling offers near-term solutions within two to three years, semiconductor alternatives face significant maturity challenges. I identified four policy options, including building domestic manufacturing and recycling capacity, to address these supply chain vulnerabilities and support long-term economic security.
Battery recycling technologies are mature and offer a pathway to reduce imports for copper, cobalt, lithium, and nickel in 2 to 3 years.
- 1970-01-01
Meta had the right idea of adding older RAM to their existing servers instead of just buying more. Shame how nobody really noticed. Reduce, REUSE, recycle is the correct order and what we should be doing.
https://www.neowin.net/news/meta-is-reusing-old-ddr4-ram-in-...
- tencentshill
If the government want to pay for my electronic scrap, great! I've got a box of 2nd-gen Intel CPUs, bidding starts at $3000.
- Veliladon
Start by banning disposable vapes. The sheer waste of lithium from those fucking devices is insane in 2026. We need every scrap of it we can get!
- maxglute
TFW "near term potential" F35s will get their radars.
- lightedman
As someone that just got done doing a legal dig in a national park (inholding from the 1800s owned by a mining company, preparing to trade that land to the park for another mineral patent elsewhere) before you think of recycling you should perhaps think of developing your own domestic supply to recycle in the first place.
And maybe introduce some technological improvements, too. Like portable millsites and leach pads so you don't fuck up the landscape with dead buildings and environmental waste. And maybe look into some chemical process improvements, like using DMSO instead of cyanide for leaching gold.
Oh, and look into using Z-pinching for mining so we don't need explosives, we just need capacitors and metal tubes and drills to make precision tunnels to grab ore and leave more of the land intact.