THOMAS B. NOLAN 59 



of a number of metals, including uranium, vanadium, the rare earths, 

 silver, nickel, zinc, and molybdenum, as well as appreciable quanti- 

 ties of fluorine, distillable hydrocarbons, and sulfur. McKelvey and his 

 co-workers -^ have estimated that the formation is present over a large 

 part of a 135,000 square-mile region. Within this area, the formation 

 contains billions of metric tons of phosphate. In recent years a great 

 deal has been learned about the distribution and amount of the trace 

 elements in the formation; on the basis of present knowledge, a thick- 

 ness of 50 feet or more of rock, extending over several hundreds of 

 square miles, may contain more than a half dozen commodities with 

 a gross value of something in the order of $5.00 a ton. 



Finally, I am convinced that a still further extension of our resource 

 base of mineral raw materials will come about through research into 

 the basic physical and chemical properties of the elements and their 

 compounds, with the objective of developing synthetic or substitute 

 materials. Indeed, it seems entirely probable to me that in the future 

 we may be able to invent, or produce out of abundant materials, new 

 substances that have predictable, specific desired properties. A first 

 step along this line is already well under way, and substances are 

 being developed to provide particular, desirable properties. The rela- 

 tively new field of powder metallurgy has provided one means of ac- 

 complishing this; one of its techniques — that yielding the so-called 

 "cermets" and "cermet coatings" — has been especially fruitful. These 

 substances may be considered as comprising refractory carbides, ni- 

 trides, borides, silicides, or oxides with or without a cementing metal. 

 Some of them combine high chemical stability and oxidation resist- 

 ance with high strength and low density.^- 



Events of the four years that have elapsed since this earlier review 

 of our nonrenewable resources have strengthened the conclusion that 

 was reached then, that "it does not seem too improbable that, through 

 one or another of the methods of improved exploration techniques, 

 exploitation of presently unavailable supplies, or programs of substi- 



21V. E. McKelvey, R. W. Swanson, and R. P. Sheldon, "The Permian 

 Phosphorite Deposits of Western United States," Origine des gisements de 

 phosphates de chaux, XlXth International Geologic Congress, Fasc. XI, p. 56. 



22 A good summary is provided by Technical Assistance Mission No. 141, 

 Powder Metallurgy (Paris: Organisation for European Economic Co-operation, 

 1955). 



