Idaho National Laboratory will soon be home to a pilot project to process antimony needed for munitions — part of a broader plan under the Trump administration to use federal sites and lands to bolster mining and refining of critical minerals.
The federal lab is slated to commission the plant, which will recover various critical minerals like antimony using samples of ore from Perpetua Resources’ Stibnite gold mine, the company said. The federal government recently granted Perpetua permission to begin building and operating the mine in the mountains of Valley County, Idaho, an effort the U.S. military is backing.
Pilot-scale testing at the Idaho lab will produce antimony trisulfide concentrate needed for munitions and advanced systems used by U.S. military personnel, Perpetua said.
President Donald Trump in March inked an executive order that called on federal agencies and the National Energy Dominance Council to use federal facilities like military bases to bolster mineral processing. The order also authorized Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to tap the Cold War-era Defense Production Act.
