can and likely will change as production technologies evolve and new products are developed.

Furthermore, the committee concludes that in implementing the methodology to assess criticality, it is important to distinguish among three time or adjustment periods. In the short term (period of a few months to a few years), mineral markets and in turn prices are influenced primarily by unexpected changes in mineral demand, such as the largely unanticipated increase in Chinese mineral demand over the last several years, and by unexpected shortfalls in production due to technical or other problems at existing mines and production facilities. In the short term, from the perspective of a mineral market as a whole, mineral users and producers are constrained by their existing production capacity, and therefore, unexpected changes in demand or supply are reflected largely in inventories held by producers, users, and commodity exchanges.

In the medium term (a few years, but no more than about a decade), markets respond to short-term developments but still in a relatively limited manner; for example, if a mineral’s availability has become restricted, mineral users make any easy substitution for this mineral, and mineral producers bring into production any easy-to-develop, higher-cost sources of the restricted mineral (e.g., higher-cost scrap that previously was not recycled; and higher-cost, known but underdeveloped mineral deposits). In the medium term, mineral users and producers are essentially limited by existing technologies and known primary and secondary mineral resources.

Over the long term (roughly a decade or more), mineral users and producers can respond more significantly to changes in mineral availability through conscious decisions about whether and to what degree to invest in innovative activities in mineral exploration, mine development, mineral processing, product design and manufacturing, and recycling technology and policy.

Users demand minerals and mineral attributes for the functionality they provide—their chemical and physical properties in specific applications

Front Matter (R1-R16)

Summary (1-18)

1 Critical Minerals (19-38)

2 Minerals and Materials Uses in the United States (39-70)

3 Availability and Reliability of Supply (71-108)

4 Applying the Matrix (109-168)

5 Mineral Information and Possible Initiatives in Research and Education (169-204)

6 Conclusions and Recommendations (205-222)

Appendixes (223-224)

APPENDIX A: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff (225-232)

APPENDIX B: Workshop Agenda and Participants (233-236)

APPENDIX C: Glossary (237-244)

APPENDIX D: Periodic Table of Elements (245-246)