Giant tungsten deposit discovered in Nevada, USA, valued at over $152 billion

Recently, US mining company 3 Proton Lithium (3PL) released a resource assessment report stating that the company has discovered a giant tungsten deposit at its Railroad Valley mining project in eastern Nevada, which may become the largest tungsten resource in the United States. However, about one-third of the mining rights area overlaps with a NASA area dedicated to space signal reception, posing an obstacle to large-scale mining plans.

The mining area is located in a remote part of the Great Basin Desert in eastern Nevada, near the city of Ely. 3PL holds the lease and mining rights for this approximately 58-square-mile area. In addition to tungsten, the company has also identified various mineral resources such as lithium, boron, and potash in the subsurface salt layers of the region.

Drilling assessment data shows that the discovered tungsten deposit contains approximately 1.78 million tons of resources. If subsequent exploration confirms commercial mining value, the scale of the deposit will be more than five times that of the second-largest tungsten deposit in the United States; calculated at current market prices, the resource value of the deposit is approximately $152 billion.

The core conflict hindering the project comes from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). NASA has explicitly stated that one-third of 3PL's mining rights area is designated as a zone dedicated to satellite signal reception and tracking, undertaking tasks such as satellite-to-earth communication and signal monitoring. Relevant agencies believe that large-scale mining activities will interfere with the signal environment and directly threaten the stable operation of on-orbit space missions, therefore imposing restrictions on large-scale mining in this area.

The current global tungsten market is in a state of high tension. Since February 2025, benefiting from robust demand in the aerospace and military sectors, global tungsten prices have risen by nearly 600%. 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.

Industry analysis also cautions that even if US parties subsequently coordinate to resolve the NASA land-use conflict, the project still faces multiple tests such as environmental assessment, land approval, and capital investment. In the short term, this giant tungsten deposit is unlikely to rapidly alter the current global tungsten supply pattern.