RUNNING OUT?

Solution mining, chemical or microbial, can be used where conventional mining does not pay off due to the small amounts of deposits, or their low concentration, or both. It has been greatly encouraged by the recent "scarcity" of ores, minerals and metals. But that scarcity, just as in the case of energy, is rarely a genuine shortage of these minerals: The access to them is blocked.

Columbium (used for steelmaking, almost 100% imported, some of it from the USSR); manganese (same comment); bauxite and alumina; chromium (much of it imported from the USSR, which itself may be importing some from Rhodesia¾the US does not buy from Rhodesia straight, for a majority in Congress has evidently decided that its government is not as humanitarian as the good old Soviets); platinum, tin (both partly from the USSR); nickel; cadmium; zinc; potassium; gold (50%); antimony; silver; iron ore; copper; and lead (about 10%).