Nevada’s Railroad Valley is home to a tungsten deposit that could be the largest ever found in the United States. Developer 3 Proton Lithium (3PL) reports an inferred resource of 1.78 million tons, making the resource more than five times bigger than the next known domestic deposit, with an in-situ value pegged around $152 billion at current prices.

Tungsten prices have skyrocketed since early 2025 amid surging demand from aerospace, defense and industry. Export controls from China, which controls about 80% of global supply, have accelerated that price rise. (RELATED: The Harsh Reality Everyone’s Missing About Massive Lithium Find In Appalachia)

The United States largely walked away from domestic mining 40 years ago and now depends on imports for a metal essential to munitions, armor-piercing rounds, high-temperature alloys, and a range of Pentagon systems. As 3PL’s Kevin Moore put it bluntly to the Financial Times: “This is not a mining story. It is a national security story.”

Yet a big chunk of the prize remains off-limits because NASA objects to mining on about one-third of the company’s claims. The space agency uses the barren desert expanse to calibrate satellite instruments and insists that activity would interfere with a unique site for receiving and verifying........

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