Pub. 7 2017 Issue 1

14 AT THE CENTER OF UTAH INDUSTRY Domestic Minerals Security = National Security + Strong Economy S ociety often debates the proper role of government, but one thing is clear: the United States Constitution declares that it is the federal government’s responsibility to provide for the common defense. Few would argue that our national defense is the priority job of the federal government, but have you ever stopped to think about what is required to provide for the common defense of our nation? Well, for one thing it takes minerals, and lots of them. Minerals and metals are vital to maintaining our national security. Every year, the Department of Defense (DOD) uses about 750,000 tons of minerals such as beryllium, copper, lead, molybdenum, nickel, silver, yttrium, and zinc for many different defense technologies, including military gear such as night-vision goggles, high-performance jet engines, and surveillance applications. Lighter than aluminum and stronger than steel, beryllium is an important resource for the aerospace and defense industries. But did you know that bertrandite ore mined right here in Utah is the only source of beryllium in the western hemisphere? If not for the deposit mined by Materion Natural Resources in the Spor Mountain area of central Utah, the U.S. would be primarily dependant on Kazakhstan for this critical resource. The U.S. has tremendous mineral resources, worth an estimated $6.2 trillion, yet our reliance on foreign sources of minerals continues to increase. In fact, our import reliance for important minerals and metals hit a record high in 2016. When the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Minerals Information Center began tracking this information in 1978, imports made up more than one-half of the U.S consumption of 25 nonfuel mineral commodities and we were 100 percent import reliant for seven of those. In 2016, the U.S was more than 50 percent reliant on imports for fifty mineral commodities, and 100 percent import reliant for twenty. Why are we increasingly reliant on foreign sources of minerals? In short, there are two main reasons: restricted access to mineral deposits and an inefficient permitting system. Mineral deposits are rare and very difficult to find. According to a report from the National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences, less than 0.01% of the Earth’s continental crust contains economically viable mineral deposits. Thus, mines can only be located in those few