Critical minerals recovery from unconventional feedstocks

(a) In general The Secretary of Defense, in coordination with the Secretary of Energy and the Secretary of the Interior, shall support demonstration and early commercial deployment of technologies capable of recovering covered materials relevant to the defense industrial base from unconventional feedstocks, including tailings from mining operations, low-grade ores, industrial waste streams, and recycled materials. (b) Eligible technologies Technologies described in subsection (a) may include hydrometallurgical, solvent extraction, electrochemical, pyrometallurgical, separation and purification, biological, bioleaching, and other advanced recovery, processing, and refining technologies capable of recovering, upgrading, refining, or converting covered materials. (c) Form of support The Secretary of Defense may provide support under this section through— (1) the authorities of title III of the Defense Production Act of 1950 (50 U.S.C. 4531 et seq.); (2) grants, cooperative agreements, and other transactions; (3) pilot projects, demonstration projects, and prototype projects; (4) procurement contracts, purchase commitments, and offtake agreements; (5) activities carried out under the Strategic Environmental Research and Development Program, the Environmental Security Technology Certification Program, Industrial Base Analysis and Sustainment activities, and other Department of Defense programs; and (6) any other authority available to the Secretary. (d) Definitions In this section: (1) Covered material The term covered material means any mineral, element, substance, or material on the list of critical minerals published under section 7002(c) of the Energy Act of 2020 (30 U.S.C. 1606(c)), any critical material determined by the Secretary of Energy under section 7002(a)(2) of that Act, or any strategic and critical material under the Strategic and Critical Materials Stock Piling Act (50 U.S.C. 98 et seq.), including ores, oxides, intermediates, byproducts, and refined forms thereof. (2) Unconventional feedstock The term unconventional feedstock means any domestic source of covered materials other than newly mined, on-specification primary ore concentrate processed by conventional means, including: (A) tailings, waste rock, and residues from current or legacy mining operations; (B) low-grade, off-grade, or off-specification ores and concentrates; (C) slags, drosses, anode slimes, leach residues, process liquors, and other byproducts, intermediate streams, or wastes from mineral processing, smelting, refining, or manufacturing operations; (D) industrial waste streams, including energy, chemical, metallurgical, and defense-related industrial processes; and (E) recycled, scrap, end-of-life, and urban-mined materials.