US DOE Seeks Industry Help to Recover Critical Minerals From Legacy Cleanup Sites
Washington, September 19, 2026: The U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) is turning to American industry for help in recovering and putting surplus critical minerals and rare-earth-related materials at former government sites to productive use.
The DOE’s Office of Environmental Management (EM) issued an Expression of Interest (EOI) on September 18, inviting companies to submit ideas for the potential transfer, recovery or processing of surplus materials located at five nuclear cleanup sites across the United States.
The materials are remnants of decades of nuclear weapons production and government-sponsored energy research. DOE says some of the materials are no longer required for its planned activities and could have value for advanced manufacturing, technology, energy and national-security applications.
Five Cleanup Sites Included
The initiative covers DOE sites at Paducah, Kentucky; Portsmouth, Ohio; Oak Ridge, Tennessee; the Nevada National Security Site; and Moab, Utah. The department has provided site-specific information on the types, quantities and locations of the materials identified for potential industrial use.
Materials listed in the EOI include aluminum, copper, fluorine, lead, lithium hydride, platinum, selenium, silver, tungsten and vanadium, along with other materials including cesium-137 and chloride.
Industry Expected to Provide Expertise
Under the initiative, participating companies would be responsible for providing the equipment and technical expertise required for material relocation, extraction, processing or other uses. DOE says responses will be evaluated partly on applicants’ technical capabilities and proposed plans for using the materials.
DOE will also hold a virtual Industry Day on September 30 to explain the EOI process, answer questions and gather information about market demand and industry’s ability to process or recover the materials.
The initiative comes as the United States seeks to expand domestic sources of critical minerals and strengthen supply chains for industries including advanced manufacturing, energy and defense. DOE has separately announced funding for projects aimed at recovering critical minerals and valuable byproducts from domestic industrial feedstocks.
The program represents an effort to combine environmental cleanup with resource recovery, potentially turning materials left over from historic government activities into inputs for modern industrial supply chains.