However, potential development of Railroad Valley has hit a NASA roadblock.
Posted by Leslie Eastman
America may have just found a critical minerals mother lode beneath Nevada’s Railroad Valley: An estimated 1.78 million tons of tungsten, alongside enormous lithium, potash, and boron resources.
The discovery matters because the United States stopped mining tungsten roughly a decade ago and now relies on imports for a metal essential to defense, manufacturing, and advanced technology. This is precisely the supply chain vulnerability that President Trump’s executive order seeks to address by accelerating domestic critical-mineral production and processing.
The entire deposit may be worth $3.5 trillion and is significantly larger than the biggest tungsten source currently being utilized in this country.
As per 3PL, the deposit is reportedly five times larger than the biggest tungsten resource currently listed in the US and comes at a time when the country relies heavily on imports for the strategic metal. Its in-situ value is estimated at about USD 152 billion based on current market prices.
…The report also confirmed another 31 million tons of measured lithium carbonate equivalent, 533 million tons of measured potash, and 87 million tons of measured borate minerals within the same salt complex. Combined, the resources feature an estimated in-ground value of USD 3.5 trillion.
At current consumption rates, the resources could provide the U.S. with tungsten for hundreds of years, 3PL said. The Railroad Valley project spans approximately 39,000 acres and covers an extensive sodium-rich salt basin in eastern Nevada.
They can’t keep getting away with this
US hits jackpot with 1.78 million tons of tungsten in Nevada Desert https://t.co/vUBAugCsb7
— Heskel Balas (@heskelbalas) August 6, 2026
Tungsten’s price has climbed nearly 600% since early 2025, propelled by growing aerospace, defense, and industrial demand just as Chinese export restrictions tightened an already constrained market. China still accounts for roughly 80% of global tungsten output.
Recognizing that vulnerability, the Trump administration has elevated critical-mineral security as a national priority and designated Railroad Valley for the FAST-41 process, which we have previously reviewed as a way to make federal permitting for major infrastructure projects more coordinated and predictable.
And while this is an exciting development, it will still take time and capital to develop this resource.
As a strategic critical mineral that is difficult to substitute, tungsten has prompted the United States to continue advancing the reconstruction of its domestic supply chain.
As early as last year, 3PL’s Railroad Valley project was included in the US federal FAST-41 fast-track approval process to shorten the cycles for environmental assessment and mining permit approval. The Trump administration continues to list the security of critical minerals as a strategic priority. Concurrently, US mining investment institution Cove Capital has also reached a cooperation agreement with Kazakhstan to establish tungsten mining and smelting processing plants.
The combination of significant resource discovery and supply chain tension has drawn attention from various sectors in the US to this tungsten mine, but the industry generally remains cautious about the pace of project implementation. Eurasia Group analyst Timothy Puko pointed out that the significant surge in tungsten prices this round has attracted more than twenty junior mining companies globally to accelerate the advancement of mineral development projects.
However, the mineral development cycle is lengthy. Even if various obstacles such as land ownership and approvals are smoothly resolved, it takes at least five years for a mine to go from exploration to production. Within such a long cycle, market prices and the policy environment are subject to significant variables.
However, there is a potential roadblock to some of this land being developed.
NASA opposes mining on about one-third of the company’s claims. The agency uses the flat Nevada desert to calibrate satellite instruments and says mining would interfere with a unique site used to receive and verify satellite signals. The Bureau of Land Management withdrew roughly 17 square miles from mining and exploration in 2023 at NASA’s request.
US hits jackpot after finding multi-million-ton critical mineral reserve in Nevada | Georgina Jedikovska, Interesting Engineering
The deposit holds 1.78 million tons of inferred tungsten.
A U.S. critical minerals company has recently confirmed the nation’s largest known… pic.twitter.com/V0YWaQtJl9
— Owen Gregorian (@OwenGregorian) August 6, 2026
The Bureau of Land Management approved NASA’s request to withdraw nearly 23,000 acres of the area in 2023, before the focus on rebuilding our critical mineral supply chain.
Railroad Valley presents the sort of interagency conflict that should be solved, not allowed to calcify into another self-inflicted strategic vulnerability.
NASA’s calibration mission is plainly important, but so is access to a significant domestic supply of tungsten and other critical minerals currently dominated by China.
Hopefully, the administration, NASA, and 3PL can identify a technically credible accommodation that protects essential satellite work while allowing Americans to develop American resources responsibly.
Interesting, because Railroad Valley also includes some small oil and gas fields which were discovered in the Fifties, the first such in Nevada. Our western states are resource rich; we can’t allow the libs and the socialists to block development. I’m not too worried about NASA; the director is an appointee of the current President, after all. It’s just a matter of streamlining the bureaucracy – easily done (sure!).
I strongly suspect that NASA chose this site for their calibration work (when?) because they thought this section of desert contained nothing of value, and they didn’t expect ANY development, ever.
NASA began using Railroad Valley Playa for satellite calibration in 1993
Its useful characteristics are:
During an overpass, scientists measure the sunlight, atmosphere, and exact brightness of the ground. They calculate what brightness the satellite should report and compare that with what its instrument actually reports.
Everything we find to help our economy and lives will stay in the ground until the West realizes we are being played the fool for allowing activists to control our natural resources. AGW is just another means to cripple Capitalism and it only impacts the West.
NASA wanted the land as it is flattish, not owned by anybody besides the federal government and they did not have to adjust the numbers to resolve elevation changes. They could do the same thing using Mt Everest if they wanted to do that.
… or Bonneville Salt Flats.
nope bonneville is a bright mirror, railroad valley is a gray photo card. im guessing you never calibrated a camera sensor,.
At first glance, the Bonneville Salt Flats seem like the obvious choice: they are flatter, whiter, and probably brighter than Railroad Valley. But for routine optical-satellite calibration, Bonneville’s surface is too changeable.
The decisive difference is repeatability.
There are areas all over this planet they can use. Blocking resources development is stupid, which is par for the course with NASA.
Its useful characteristics are:
During an overpass, scientists measure the sunlight, atmosphere, and exact brightness of the ground. They calculate what brightness the satellite should report and compare that with what its instrument actually reports.
3 Proton Lithium (3PL) 🙂
“Railroad Valley presents the sort of interagency conflict that should be solved, …”
Hold a meeting with all significant parties represented. Meeting to be held in a room with large urns of coffee, tea, and lemonade. No one allowed to leave the room until a consensus solution is agreed on. Problem solved!
Seriously, I suspect the Basin & Range Province is home to many such valleys.
In the 2004 disaster film The Day After Tomorrow, Vice President Raymond Becker spoke at the end of the movie. “For years, we operated under the belief that we could continue consuming our planet’s natural resources, without consequence. We were wrong. I was wrong.”
I agree philosophically. But that does not mean we do not or should not acquire and use the resources. It means do so responsibly with conservation of natural resources applied and a full, complete, analysis of alternatives and potential consequences.
Again, it does not mean we have to leave stuff buried in the ground. It means we must be good stewards of the planet while letting the planet supply our needs.
NASA has other calibration sites. It is unclear how critical or uncritical this specific site is and it is curious why 17 square miles is needed.
Another way of putting it – the planet is full of resources which are available to sustain and promote life if you find and utilise them.
The best way to manage resources is to have some part of the economic system dedicated to reclaiming and recycling all the used resources which are not destroyed in their use without deeming this use of energy as waste.
I suspect ‘calibration site’ is euphemism for something else going on.
This is written in the vein of ‘its the only source available.’ An attitude I’d try to project if it were my claims. The truth is, we have a lot of mineral claims scattered throughout the west plus Canada & Alaska. The process from mineral claims to mining takes about 20 years, and there are armies of lawyers trying to shoot them down.
As if NASA does not have the usual deep state greens?
There’s plenty tungsten in Fort Knox.
Shhh…
If Clinton, Obama or Biden were still in power, they’d declare that area was a National Park or Refuge or something to prohibit mining in the area.
I did some research before commenting. The mineral deposits lie between 1200 and 2400 feet down as salt beds. The proposal is to solution mine them. Such wells would have a small footprint, and the above ground processing facility would have a footprint of only 80 acres. The needed water can be ‘trucked’ into the desert and then repeatedly reused.
The NASA satellite calibration concern should be easily resolvable.
I don’t think that solution mining is applicable to the tungsten, which is implied by the articles below that reference skarns, which are typically associated with scheelite, calcium tungstate.
https://discoveryalert.com.au/nasa-opposes-nevada-tungsten-mine-railroad-valley-2026/
https://news.chemnet.com/news-8287.html
https://interestingengineering.com/energy/1-78-million-ton-tungsten-discovery
From what I can find out, the population in the area is miniscule so the ground water disturbance is not something the eco-activists have much to gripe about.
It should be easily resolvable but, I’m sure the dimwits that are lawfare crazy will put up resistance since it would benefit the country and they are foreign funded.
The federal government owns most of Nevada, and California even owns some of the water rights and much of the electrical generation and most of the trees. So it depends on who in the capital is calling the policy shots in the outer districts as they say in the Hunger Games and the Sage Brush Rebellion.
So, the states are not so united, eh?
It’s more a case of a big empty outside of Las Vegas and Reno. The great white fathers in the east don’t even know it’s there unless some nonprofit activists tell them to make another national park out of it from reassigning some federal land categories with new restrictions. It may be how Russians view Siberia, as a place for nuclear and chemical weapons testing. So united or ununited is the wrong question.
I doubt that NASA will be the thing that puts the skids on. More like a lawsuit and a Boasberg.