Publications

Each chapter of the 2013 edition of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Mineral Commodity Summaries (MCS) includes information on events, trends, and issues for each mineral commodity as well as discussions and tabular presentations on domestic industry structure, Government programs, tariffs, 5-year salient statistics, and world production and resources. The MCS is the earliest comprehensive source

No abstract available.

The recent labor disputes over wages and working conditions that have affected South Africa’s three leading platinum-group metal (PGM) producers have affected an industry already plagued by market pressures and labor unrest and raised the specter of constraints in the world’s supply of these metals. Although low demand for these metals in 2011 and 2012 helped to offset production losses of recent

Since the beginning of the 20th century, the types and quantities of raw materials used by U.S. manufacturers and consumers have changed over time. This fact sheet quantifies the amounts of those materials (other than food and fuel) that have been input into the U.S. economy annually for a period of 111 years, from 1900 through 2010. It provides a broad overview of all materials used but highlight

The use of light-emitting diodes (LEDs) is expanding because of environmental issues and the efficiency and cost savings achieved compared with use of traditional incandescent lighting. The longer life and reduced power consumption of some LEDs have led to annual energy savings, reduced maintenance costs, and lower emissions of carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide, and nitrogen oxides from powerplants b

Platinum-group metals (PGMs) are required in a variety of commercial, industrial, and military applications for many existing and emerging technologies, yet the United States is highly dependent on foreign sources of PGMs. Information on global exploration for PGMs since 1995 has been used in this study as a basis for identifying locations where the industry has determined that exploration has pro

Indium is a material that has many applications. It is used by anyone who watches television or views a computer screen. It is found in solar energy arrays and in soldering applications that are required to be lead free. In 2009, about 550 metric tons (t) of indium metal was produced from primary sources world-wide; it was estimated that the United States consumed about 110 t of indium metal (20 p

No abstract available.

This report provides a perspective on the amount of water used by a conventional copper flotation plant. Water is required for many activities at a mine-mill site, including ore production and beneficiation, dust and fire suppression, drinking and sanitation, and minesite reclamation. The water required to operate a flotation plant may outweigh all of the other uses of water at a mine site, [howev

This report provides a perspective on the amount of water necessary for conventional gold heap-leach operations. Water is required for drilling and dust suppression during mining, for agglomeration and as leachate during ore processing, to support the workforce (requires water in potable form and for sanitation), for minesite reclamation, and to compensate for water lost to evaporation and leakage

Each chapter of the 2012 edition of the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) Mineral Commodity Summaries (MCS) includes information on events, trends, and issues for each mineral commodity as well as discussions and tabular presentations on domestic industry structure, Government programs, tariffs, 5-year salient statistics, and world production and resources. The MCS is the earliest comprehensive source

Cobalt-copper ± gold deposits of the Idaho cobalt belt, including the deposits of the Blackbird district, have been analyzed for their sulfur, carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen isotope compositions to improve the understanding of ore formation. Previous genetic hypotheses have ranged widely, linking the ores to the sedimentary or diagenetic history of the host Mesoproterozoic sedimentary rocks, to Meso