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United States

Gem Hunters Found the Lithium America Needs. Maine Won't Let Them Dig It Up (time.com) 145

Mary and Gary Freeman, founders of a Florida-based lab supplies company, discovered a rich lithium deposit in Maine while searching for tourmaline, a striking, multi-colored gemstone found in the region. The timing of their find is significant as it could provide the United States with a domestic source of lithium for the clean energy transition and potentially be worth $1.5 billion. However, there's strong opposition to developing a mine. "Maine has some of the strictest mining and water quality standards in the country, and prohibits digging for metals in open pits larger than three acres," reports TIME. "There have not been any active metal mines in the state for decades, and no company has applied for a permit since a particularly strict law passed in 2017." Slashdot reader schwit1 shares an excerpt from the report: "This is a story that has been played out in Maine for generations," says Bill Pluecker, a member of the state's House of Representatives, whose hometown of Warren -- a 45-minute drive from the capital city of Augusta -- recently voted overwhelmingly in favor of a temporary ban on industrial metal mining after a Canadian company came looking for minerals near a beloved local pond. "We build industries based on the needs of populations not living here and then the bottom drops out, leaving us struggling again to pick up the pieces." "Our gold rush mentality regarding oil has fueled the climate crisis," says State Rep. Margaret O'Neil, who presented a bill last session that would have halted lithium mining for five years while the state worked out rules (the legislation ultimately failed). "As we facilitate our transition away from fossil fuels, we must examine the risks of lithium mining and consider whether the benefits of mining here in Maine justify the harms."

The Freemans' point out that they plan to dig for the spodumene, then ship it out of state for processing, so there would be no chemical ponds or tailings piles. They liken the excavation of the minerals to quarrying for granite or limestone, which enjoys a long, rich history in Maine. Advocates for mining in the U.S. argue that, since the country outsources most of its mining to places with less strict environmental and labor regulations, those harms are currently being born by foreign residents, while putting U.S. manufacturers in the precarious position of depending on faraway sources for the minerals they need. Though there are more than 12,000 active mines in the U.S., the bulk of them are for stone, coal, sand, and gravel.

There is only one operational lithium mine in the U.S., in Nevada, and one operational rare earth element mine, in Mountain Pass, Calif., meaning that the U.S. is dependent on other countries for the materials essential for clean energy technologies like batteries, wind turbines, and solar panels. Even after they're mined, those materials currently have to be shipped to China for processing since the U.S. does not have any processing facilities. "If we're talking about critical metals and materials, we're so far behind that it's crazy," says Corby Anderson, a professor at the Colorado School of Mines. "It's the dichotomy of the current administration -- they have incentives for electric vehicles and all these things, but they need materials like graphite, manganese, nickel, cobalt, lithium, and copper. The only one we mine and refine in this country is copper."
Further reading: Federal Ruling Approves Construction of North America's Largest Lithium Mine
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Gem Hunters Found the Lithium America Needs. Maine Won't Let Them Dig It Up

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  • by slashdot_commentator ( 444053 ) on Wednesday July 19, 2023 @05:08AM (#63698438) Journal

    The problem with lithium is not finding cost-effective, "pure" deposits. Some lithium concentrations don't even require destructive strip mining. The problem with lithium is the processing! It generates garbage byproducts as a result of refining and that also needs to be processed. The reason why China supplies a huge amount of lithium to the world is basically they don't give a rats ass about the processing byproducts. They just dump it in the desert, or just leave it the waste onsite.

    • by mridoni ( 228377 ) on Wednesday July 19, 2023 @05:56AM (#63698492)

      And that's also the main reason why, at small scale, you can order a dozen of PCBs from China for a few dollars/euros while the corresponding product in Europe (or in the USA, but I guess it-s mainly a problem of scale) has a cost in the hundreds. Producing electronics is one of the most environmentally unfriendly processes imaginable, with a quantity of very nasty stuff as a byproduct.

      • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        That's not the reason why Chinese small scale manufacturing is so cheap. It's because they make up for low margin with volume. They aren't making 5 boards just for you, they are making large panels containing dozens of different people's boards.

        They have a very efficient workflow too. European manufacturers always want you to send over detailed specs for the PCB and will build to them exactly. The low cost Chinese manufacturers have a web interface with a limited number of options. If you want anything but

    • That's why I respect Maine for this decision (for reference, I don't live there, nor have I ever been there so I have no skin in the game), they're not prepared to turn a chunk of their state into a toxic slag heap to benefit some out-of-state corporation whose only concern is lining its pockets.
    • The problem with lithium is not finding cost-effective, "pure" deposits. Some lithium concentrations don't even require destructive strip mining. The problem with lithium is the processing! It generates garbage byproducts as a result of refining and that also needs to be processed. The reason why China supplies a huge amount of lithium to the world is basically they don't give a rats ass about the processing byproducts. They just dump it in the desert, or just leave it the waste onsite.

      There's also the even bigger problem of deciding who gets to make all the money from it.

      I'm sure the rules can be adapted to open up the mine as soon as that little detail is sorted out.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      Just in case anyone's wondering why the fine people of Maine might object to mining in their state, here some facts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] Sorry, not sorry if these facts don't agree with your feelings.
    • by Smidge204 ( 605297 ) on Wednesday July 19, 2023 @08:26AM (#63698758) Journal

      > The problem with lithium is the processing! It generates garbage byproducts as a result of refining and that also needs to be processed.

      Such as?

      The ore is spodumene. Traditional mining tailings would include things like feldspar, mica, iron oxides, and quartz, which is the bulk of the non-ore material dug up during mining. None of these are particularly hazardous.

      Once you've recovered the spodumene from the bulk material, you roast it, grind it up into a fine powder, and react it with sulfuric acid. This converts the LiAl(SiO2)2 into an aluminum silicate and lithium sulfate in solution. Aluminum silicates are not particularly hazardous and even have lots of industrial uses.

      Usually the lithium sulfate is converted to lithium carbonate by reacting it with sodium carbonate, resulting in sodium sulfate... a chemical often used as filler in powdered cleaning products and could be used to store heat energy with its low melting point and high heat capacity. Not considered hazardous...

      The lithium carbonate is converted to lithium chloride by reacting it with hydrochloric acid, leaving CO2 and water.

      The lithium chloride is then turned into metallic lithium via electrolysis as a molten salt, producing chlorine gas which can be turned back into hydrochloric acid.

      While energy intensive in some steps, none of these processes inherently produces toxic byproducts. None of the intermediate products are especially toxic either. So what's this garbage you speak of that's so awful only China is willing to put up with it?

      I propose instead that the reason so much of the refining is done in China is because they have the infrastructure in place to do it at large scales, making it cheap enough to bother shipping it across the globe rather that build local facilities.
      =Smidge=

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by drinkypoo ( 153816 )
    • by mi ( 197448 )

      The problem with lithium is the processing! It generates garbage byproducts as a result of refining and that also needs to be processed. The reason why China supplies a huge amount of lithium to the world is basically they don't give a rats ass about the processing byproducts. They just dump it in the desert, or just leave it the waste onsite.

      And yet, we continue referring to this as "clean energy", including in TFA:

      domestic source of lithium for the clean energy transition

      and our government coerces us into [nytimes.com]

      • by Ksevio ( 865461 )

        Yep, because even with all that, it's still better than mining coal or oil and then just burning all of that

      • This assumes there is zero environmental cost to petroleum extraction and refining and the toxic outputs of the combustion itself which is more than just CO2.

        In a compairson of lifetime emissions through the entire lifecycle EV's so far are still coming out ahead even with the "dirty" mining.

        https://www.iea.org/data-and-s... [iea.org]

        Not to say EV production does not have work to do in cleaning up it's whole process but it's not like ICE vehichles and their engines environmentally free to build, ie, "don't let perfec

      • by dgatwood ( 11270 )

        And yet, we continue referring to this as "clean energy", including in TFA:

        Lithium isn't used in the production of energy. It is used in the storage and transportation of energy. In relative terms, you need to compare that with the oil used to produce the plastic for the gas tank, the metal for the tank in the ground at the gas station, the trucks that haul around the gasoline and the fuel that they use, the energy expended digging up the tanks every few years to replace them when leaks are detected, the environmental impact of mitigating those leaks, the environmental impact of

      • Lithium is mined and processed once, and the waste streams can be collected and stored / cleaned or diverted to secondary uses.

        Petroleum is mined and processed once, and just all of it that comes out of the ground will either end up in the air as production byproduct, end up in the air as usage byproduct, or end up in the ocean as plastics.

        The best case with petroleum is that it ends up in a landfill as plastic.

        So yeah, I'll continue referring to it as "clean energy" because the alternatives are hideously d

    • Note though that the biggest producers of lithium are Australia (52%), Chile (25%), China (13%), with United States in 8:th place. The worlds largest reserves (54%) are found in the “lithium triangle” i.e. Bolivia, Argentina, Chile and in that order. The US has a bit less than Chile but nearly twice that of China.
  • We need to stop with the mining for batteries. This electric car trend is heading down the wrong path. The right path was Hydrogen, but when someone built an easier-to-develop battery operated car they sent us down one of the more destructive “green” paths possible - in terms of mining and human rights. And then there are charge losses, oh glorious charge and transmission losses!

    Another slashdot article shows Hydrogen has been made in a lab with 90% efficiency. Even without this technology,

    • by jeadly ( 602916 )
      Time to head over to the /. comments to read about all the problems still hanging over the latest miracle hydrogen breakthrough.
      https://science.slashdot.org/s... [slashdot.org]

      I'm not opposed to H2 research, but I'm opposed to burning gas until we can crack that H2 nut. When fuel cells become a better battery we'll use them, till that time we'll just have to use what's actually viable.
    • by DarkOx ( 621550 )

      I agree the BEVs are a dead end, and are going to be this centuries environmental calamity where 50 years from now everyone is going to be asking the grey-beards WTF were you thinking.

      I'll may or may not live just long enough to find out if I am correct before they bury me. However I think when we factor in the impacts of mining, processing, manufacturer, disposal, of the these batteries, and extend that to other things like there mass leading increased road maintenance (extremely carbon intensive BTW), the

      • by jbengt ( 874751 )

        . . things like there [EVs] mass leading increased road maintenance (extremely carbon intensive BTW) . . .

        Road damage is modeled to be approximately proportional to the fourth power of weight per axle. A Tesla Model S is maybe 2,400 pounds per axle. A maximally loaded semi is up to 16,000± pounds per axle. A loaded garbage truck is about 12,000± pounds per axle. So, really, the amount of road damage an electric car does is less than 0.2% of the damage that gas and diesel trucks do.
        (And I kn

        • Plus the people who are going out and buying an EV are typically going for the smallest one that will do the job to minimise cost and maximise range. Folks who dislike EVs are typically going out and buying some huge Wankpanzer SUV.

          It's very interesting that this talking point about weight is starting to crop up EVERYWHERE only a month or so after it simultaneously hit a group of newspapers owned by folks who are heavily invested in oil.

      • Amen, brother. The amount of junk mandated in a car today, because some politicians thought they had some good ideas despite having never manufactured anything (hint: everything has a positive side) is 'weighing us all down'.

        The other day I couldn't see a pedestrian because the A pillars in the borrowed car are about 6 inches wide! Why? "It's got to handle the unlikely event of a rollover." Every car's got to have a rear camera now and all the supporting electronics, wiring and power. Why? "Peopl
        • I'm not necessarily against all the fancy-pants electronics that have proliferated into cars these days. But they should be tools to reduce the driver workload; not crutches to hold up incompetent drivers who don't belong on the road in the first place.

          And I think that's the elephant in the room here. There are too damned many incompetent drivers on the road. I guess you could argue that there are just too many drivers. But if we expelled the incompetent ones, that'd improve the total numbers too. But

          • by kackle ( 910159 )
            Yeah, the eggy blobs aren't going away because they need every tenth of a mile per gallon to meet the regulations. Heck, cars are automatically shutting off their engines at stop lights now. "Ooo, we'll save gasoline!" Never mind that the starter will have to be replaced after 10 years now, and its manufacture/shipment/installation/inconvenience has its own environmental impact. But, again, politicians have never "made" (done?) anything; so, to me their debates ring hollow.

            1970s+ cars may not have b
      • by Ksevio ( 865461 )

        It's pretty clear that the future of transportation is going to be electric, at least for land vehicles. The challenge is the energy storage, but luckily that's an easier thing to change.

        Cars are much safer and more reliable than they were 100 years ago, but even all that isn't why cars are so large and heavy. People want to buy a big-ass SUV instead of the smaller, lighter cars. Car companies love this because they can sell the large vehicles for more money so they actively push these to customers. Cus

      • by dgatwood ( 11270 ) on Wednesday July 19, 2023 @03:39PM (#63699892) Homepage Journal

        However I think when we factor in the impacts of mining, processing, manufacturer,

        The impacts are only slightly more for an electric car than for a normal car. The reduction in wasted energy that an electric drivetrain provides quickly exceeds the extra energy spent creating it, and over the lifetime of the car, the savings are substantial (unless you wreck it after 15,000 miles).

        disposal, of the these batteries,

        There is no disposal. Right now, failed batteries get stored in warehouses waiting until there are enough of them to make it worth setting up recycling plants. After that, they're relatively easy to recycle, and approximately 100% of the metals are recoverable and can be used in making new batteries (or whatever). So the environmental impact of building these things is a cost that gets taken once per car on the road, not once per car that is built. Once all the cars on the road are BEVs, there will be approximately no further environmental impact to the BEV transition, at least beyond the energy spent melting the old batteries down and turning them into new ones.

        and extend that to other things like there mass leading increased road maintenance (extremely carbon intensive BTW),

        BEVs are not believed to increase road maintenance significantly. They don't weigh *that* much more than gasoline-powered cars. A Model 3 is about the same size as an Audi A4, and it weighs only about two to three hundred pounds more than the Audi, depending on configuration. When the Audi is full of fuel, that modest difference in weight goes down further by about a hundred pounds. Yes, the battery is much heavier than a fuel tank, but the rest of the drive train is much, much lighter. In the end, the difference in weight is the equivalent of adding only about one extra passenger in the car, i.e. it is a tiny enough difference that it is almost entirely lost in the noise.

        their mass leading to social consequences increase injuries, etc..

        Again, if one extra passenger in a car would increase injuries, you'd have a point, but that's just not realistic. Also, most EVs have much more advanced navigation than your average gasoline-powered car, so on average, you'll have way fewer injuries. That's not anything inherent about EVs, of course — it is just a side effect of them tending to compete with a higher-than-average class of vehicles — but it tends to be the case more often than not.

        That said you should study hydrogen. Look for "Why Hydrogen Engines Are A Bad Idea" on the Engineering Explained youtube channel. Its really not a practical fuel choice for consumer automobiles. Its really not going to be without major materials sciences advances either. Which is not to say those don't happen, show someone from 1930 modern plastic polymers. However its not going to arrive in time to address the problem we have now.

        It isn't ever going to happen. The energy loss in a battery is ~1%. The absolute minimum theoretical possible loss of converting electricity to hydrogen and back with a fuel cell is something like 17%. And that's if the conversion to hydrogen is 100% efficient and you find some way to use energy that would otherwise be wasted to compress the hydrogen. The real-world expectation is more like 40% to 50% loss, and even though you might be able to incrementally improve that a little, you're not going to get it down to the point where it isn't utterly ridiculous.

        The REAL answer has to be change in what people expect from an automobile. In the 50s manufacturers had light weight vehicles that had not awful performance and could deliver 50+ mpg. There is no reason we can't make car that seats four or five, and delivers 100+mpg today with internal combustion, no reason except all the heavy stuff we mandate be included.

        You mean power steering, air bags, crumple zones, e

        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          For quite a few years now you have been able to buy used automotive batteries on AliExpress. The Chinese have been reusing them for a while. The manufacturers themselves supply them, e.g. BYD.

          Lots of hobbyists buy them for DIY home battery systems, because they are very good value. They are sold on the basis of having a minimum capacity, but often you get much more.

          That's the bottleneck. Businesses could build them into products, but would have to sell those products as having a lower minimum capacity, and

    • Hydrogen is great but it's very difficult to deal with. Unfortunately hydrogen it seems is not a panacea. See here [youtube.com] for the lowdown.

      Storage: Having to compress it to 700bar and store it is a massive challenge and expensive af. The smallest atom in the universe likes to seep through stuff.

      Emissions: currently 90+% of hydrogen generated from flossil fuels so dirty hydrogen won't solve the geenhouse gas problem

      Clean hydrogen: generated from wind and solar is great but wind and solar is unstable power

      Fuel

      • by Junta ( 36770 )

        Clean hydrogen: generated from wind and solar is great but wind and solar is unstable power

        Generally agree, but this statement is weird. If you are using it explicitly for hydrogen extraction, then you wouldn't care about stability, just average power output. If hypothetically hydrogen turned out to be a good strategy for short term energy storage, it would be a good addition to wind/solar to provide stability. Currently other strategies look better than hydrogen for energy storage, but just pointing out stability is not a key concern when applying it to store energy.

      • by Uberbah ( 647458 )

        Clean hydrogen: generated from wind and solar is great but wind and solar is unstable power

        Way more stable than radioactive water heaters, which go down for months or sometimes even years for maintenance. Like much ballyhooed France where more than half their plants were down at the same time for repairs.

        https://www.france24.com/en/fr... [france24.com]

        • by sfcat ( 872532 )
          Nuclear power is the most stable form of power we have, that's why it has the highest capacity factory by 50% more than FF and about 9x that of renewables. But don't let me stop you from making up facts as part of your propaganda campaign in service of fossil fuel extractions.
    • stored hydrogen wonâ(TM)t dissipate over time like energy stored in a battery.

      Unless you actually store it with good energy density, in cryogenics, in which case it totally will dissipate. You either need to keep it cooled, which takes energy, or it leaks off.

    • We need to stop with the mining for batteries. This electric car trend is heading down the wrong path. The right path was Hydrogen, but when someone built an easier-to-develop battery operated car they sent us down one of the more destructive “green” paths possible - in terms of mining and human rights. And then there are charge losses, oh glorious charge and transmission losses!

      If one is going to discuss H2 as an option (and it is), we should also consider carbon-neutral synthetic fuels. The technology to make them is available, but expensive due to its niche market and small scale. However, if we scaled it up, it is debateable whether in the long run it would be more costly than massive new mining and refining for battery materials, extensive upgrades to the electrical grids and creation of an all new EV charging infrastructure, complete overhaul of production lines for automobi

    • by sfcat ( 872532 )

      The right path was Hydrogen

      The right path is synthetic fuels. Hydrogen is hard to store and needs an entirely new infrastructure. Hydrogen storage longer than a few days actually requires a non-trivial amount of energy input to keep the Hydrogen cold. Hydrocarbon fuels don't need that and if the carbon in them doesn't come from extraction, they are just as good as Hydrogen from a CO2 emission POV and better than Hydrogen in all other measures (density, efficiency, etc). The materials to make fuel cells at scale just don't exist.

  • by ArchieBunker ( 132337 ) on Wednesday July 19, 2023 @07:27AM (#63698614)

    That not everything is for sale.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Train0987 ( 1059246 )

      We should all be content that lithium mining remains in the parts of the world with zero care for the environment or the workers. That way we can all be as guilt-free as you using our electronics while burying our hands in the sand. Screw those brown and yellow people amirite!

      • by DarkOx ( 621550 )

        Unless we are pointing the cruise missiles in their direction and saying produce lithium or else, yes - we are not screwing anyone.

        They are making a choice, they are exploiting their local resources and risking the environmental consequences in exchange for wealth. They should enjoy the right to make that choice, just as we enjoy the right to chose not to do so and pay them to do it. if they elect not to do it than we have to chose if we wish to do or go without certain products, that will also be our choic

        • by G00F ( 241765 )

          2) A Racist assumption that they are incapable of knowing what is good for them, and need us to decide what is best.

          3) A Racist assumption they choices they make are morally inferior to our own.

          It's racist to think race dictates political system or economics.

        • by gTsiros ( 205624 )

          " They are making a choice, they are exploiting their local resources and risking the environmental consequencesÂ"

          are you fucking stupid? There is no "we" and "they", we live on the same fucking planet

          do you need your brain jump-started?

      • But muh states rights!

        • by schwit1 ( 797399 )

          What about the rights of the property owners?

          Maybe Musk ought to prohibit sale of Teslas in states that don't want to support battery independence.

    • Well put, and apparently it also means that not everyone is for sale I guess. I have no idea why your comment is rated funny, it's rather philosophical, hence insightful...
  • "America Needs" (Score:5, Insightful)

    by PJ6 ( 1151747 ) on Wednesday July 19, 2023 @07:34AM (#63698632)
    I just love political titles people just pass off as fact without any question.

    "America Needs" is an emotionally charged phrase with a lot of assumptions packed into it.

    Who decides what we need? Maybe we should examine that question a little more, because that's a position of power.
    • The country does need the resource. That should be uncontroversial. Now if the implication is clearly about needing independent access to the resource, that is different.
      • by PJ6 ( 1151747 )

        The country does need the resource. That should be uncontroversial.

        That is exactly the "should" that I'm calling out here. You may be right. But all the assumptions behind that statement need to properly unpacked and defended.

        I would start the discussion with the need for rules and limits, and that it's a false choice to say you can either have those or prosperity.

  • by junkname ( 8623905 ) on Wednesday July 19, 2023 @09:56AM (#63698972)

    "Gem Hunters Found the Lithium America Needs. Maine Won't Let Them Dig It Up"

    Apparently us poor Americans so desperately need lithium that only Maine can provide, and those stubborn Maine people are getting in the way with a silly want to protect their clean water, natural landscapes, and clean air! They just need to roll over and let some faceless corporation destroy all that, leaving a desolate wasteland behind when its no longer profitable to strip what they want out of the land. Capitalism baby! Burn everything to the ground, destroy everything beautiful so we can make a little bit more money!

    I'm glad the people of Maine have made it clear they do not want that. Just look what mining has done everywhere else when allowed to proceed unchecked in any way they want.

    • by PPH ( 736903 )

      Well said.

      Now excuse me while I get a bid on those Maine granite kitchen counters.

    • by sfcat ( 872532 )
      It is also a tiny fraction of the Li that the US "needs". Such a small amount that it wouldn't even have a measurable impact on the global Li market. Maybe a few 1000 EVs and that is all you are going to get. The fact that environmentalists think it is worth it shows just how little analysis goes into their policies. I expect it is mostly PR and branding research driving their policies.
  • by peterww ( 6558522 ) on Wednesday July 19, 2023 @10:41AM (#63699092)

    All mining is, literally, pulling a finite resource out of the ground. After a hundred years, thousand years, etc, it's all gone. What do we do then?

    The answer, always, is "we don't care." Let the next generations deal with the ramifications. I want my cheap batteries *now*.

    Wouldn't it be better to plan for the next thousand, or ten-thousand years? To put solutions in place that are renewable, and stand the test of time?

    It's not a crazy idea. Ancient peoples built structures that we still use, thousands of years later. They used technology that was renewable, like water and solar power. They had natural batteries, natural refrigeration, "less toxic" agriculture.

    I get why we want batteries. But if we think really hard, we'd probably find that we don't actually need them for most things in our lives. We can generate power without batteries, and without consuming finite resources. We can make more use out of less technology. We can change the way we live to reduce our dependence on energy. We can live a little bit closer to the rest of the natural creatures on the planet.

    I think this would solve a ton of problems we have, and take us out of the constant cycle of churning from one disaster to the next. Less dependence on technology, and more dependence on *ecology*, is good for everyone.

    • Wouldn't it be better to plan for the next thousand, or ten-thousand years? To put solutions in place that are renewable, and stand the test of time?

      It's not a crazy idea.

      It's a crazy idea.

      Ancient peoples built structures that we still use, thousands of years later. They used technology that was renewable, like water and solar power. They had natural batteries, natural refrigeration, "less toxic" agriculture.

      "Natural" batteries. Wtf "natural" batteries? Ancient peoples didn't use electricity. If by "natural battery" you mean "store of energy", yes, they burned a lot of wood. We can't do that anymore.

      As for "less toxic" agriculture, in case you hadn't noticed, there are more than 8 billion of us now. Ancient agriculture couldn't feed 8 billion. Are you volunteering to starve to death? No? Then shut up about modern agriculture. If you're so ignorant as to advocate for the death of billi

      • > "Natural" batteries. Wtf "natural" batteries?

        Dams, which stored energy in the form of water, released to power windmills. And the Baghdad Battery, a galvanic cell made 2,000 years ago. And weights used to store energy to offset pulleys to lift things on demand. And more simple batteries.

        > If you're so ignorant as to advocate for the death of billions, you shouldn't open your mouth at all.

        It's not ignorance, it's common sense. If the only way to sustain an overpopulation is to slowly destroy the ecos

    • by sfcat ( 872532 )
      Do some research, crunch some numbers, learn why your proposals would likely starve billions. If you care so little about this topic that you don't even do the most basic research into it, why do you post at all? Learn what peakers are. Learn what EROEI is. Learn what baseload power is. Learn about capacity factors and how poly-silica is purified and how rare earths are mined. You clearly haven't done any of these things. I don't believe you care at all. I think you just want others to think you are
    • It's not a crazy idea. Ancient peoples built structures that we still use, thousands of years later. They used technology that was renewable, like water and solar power. They had natural batteries, natural refrigeration, "less toxic" agriculture.

      Some of them even lived into their 40s.

  • by rbrander ( 73222 ) on Wednesday July 19, 2023 @10:53AM (#63699118) Homepage

    $1.5B is just 40,000 tonnes. The recently found 1.6M tonnes in Alberta, in lithium carbonate brines. Alberta is already messed up by 4.2M oil wells, and just re-elected a Conservative government that was happily bribed to let the oil companies out of well-remediation. Since they're already screwed by oil, the lithium wells won't do much more damage, and Alberta seems to actually like it.

    • $1.5B worth of spodumene ore, not lithium carbonate (and it's hard rock ore, not brine).

      The deposit contains an estimated 11 million tons of spodumene [boston.com], which assuming a typical composition of 7% Li2O (770,000 tons) would produce 1.9 million tons of Li2CO3, worth over $7 billion in 2022 prices.

      Newry, Maine has more lithium than Alberta, Canada.
      =Smidge=

  • I guess we should be able to ignore the rights of white folks in Maine...Right?

    https://www.npr.org/2023/07/17... [npr.org]

  • Part of me is proud of Maine for not caving to private interests to perform operations that will potentially have severe environmental effects on their land. However, another part of me feels like it's a bit hypocritical since the people of Maine almost certainly love their phones and tablets which require lithium to operate wirelessly. The biggest problem that I have with it is that if everyone adopted Maine's stance, then no one would be willing to mine lithium and huge portions of the tech industry wou
  • Leave it in the ground; it's not worth the environmental hassle of digging it up.
    Maine's GDP is $65 billion USD; the theoretical max value of this entire deposit is a mere 2.5% of a single year of Maine's economic output?
    This will make a few people very rich but will do sweet fuck all to satisfy America's demand.

  • Corporate addicts want their fix.
  • Eventually. For a hefty sum.

  • But, isn't Mother Nature uncovering it for us?

Anything free is worth what you pay for it.

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