After many years of selling excess metals and other materials, the US government could start adding to its strategic stockpile, according to American Metal Market yesterday.
Representatives of the US Defense National Stockpile Center told AMM that it is awaiting the results of an independent study by the National Academy of Sciences which will address whether there should be a stockpile at all, and if so, what it should contain. The study was commissioned in October and is expected to be released in September. Since 1993 the DNSC has been required by Congress to dispose of its holdings of most minerals held in the stockpile.
The US government amassed a huge stockpile of over 300,000 tonnes of tin during the early years of the Cold War and has been selling it off since the 1960s. The DNSC is currently authorized to sell 12,000 tonnes per year, but the stockpile is now nearly depleted. At the end of 2006 some 15,436 tonnes remained, and this had been further reduced to 8,623 tonnes as of 19 June.
