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America about to go to war against a volcano
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Better than exploiting other countries, I suppose. But I think Lithium is a transitional battery source, and that we will move to much more efficient designs within a decade.
There are a few promising leads in sodium, graphene, and liquid hydrogen batteries. And yeah that includes salt batteries as well
The volcanic crater is found along the Nevada-Oregon border.
The Lithium Americas Corporation “expects to begin mining in 2026. It will remove clay with water and then separate out the small lithium-bearing grains from larger minerals by centrifuging. The clay will then be leached in vats of sulfuric acid to extract lithium.”
All subsequent waste products will then be released into local waterways via “unfortunate accident” on a regular schedule, to maximize shareholder profits.
Sigh.
Sulfuric acid is one of the few chemicals that is bad to have around and can be controlled. The very first wet scrubbers to be designed (per WW2 tech here) were for dealing with it. Add water plus a calcium base like Diatomaceous earth and you get harmless sulfur-calcium salts. There are almost no local waterways and mining is very regulated.
Maybe be happy for once that more mining will be happening in a country that bothers to regulate environmental stuff and is closer to the consumer market.
I legitimately am, this is a win, especially since the deposit is in an entirely different economic and political sphere of influence from where all the other lithium is.
It’s just so easy to assume the worst when it happens so often.
It doesn’t happen often. You hear about it happening often. Observation bias. No one reads an article “everything fine at the mine”. No, they read an article about a disaster from the 1970s caused by a scumbag.
A lot of freaken work and regulations has gone into make sure chemical plants don’t explode and mining doesn’t mess things up for decades. And no one gets credit for that. Any site this big is going to have at least monthly inspections there from the local DEP. Taking soil samples, reviewing logs, checking for the very things you mentioned like getting into waterways. Which again, desert.
The biggest environmental dangers I am betting they are going to have is a fight over city water and of course the normal greenhouse gas emissions that all of us are going to ignore.
On the bright side, that area is an endoheric basin, so at least it won’t go all the way downriver to the ocean. It’ll just, uh, build up in salt flats/dry lake beds instead, which obviously won’t cause any problem at all.
Well, that’s good news 🤣
Like a mini Aral Sea.
LoL. I’m so glad it will be accidental
Someone using the in game editor?
Earth Genie
There’s also 32 million metric tons in Niland, California that can be harvested with green energy. I assume the same could be done with this deposit. Could be very good for domestic battery production and cost.
Now all they need is some poor immigrants to work on extracting it and they can make fat stacks
Why bring in immigrants when we have hundreds of children yearning for hard work and life building experiences.
The children yearn for the mines…
Is that the state where they signed into law that the work hours of children could be extended?
along the Nevada–Oregon border
Something else we won’t benefit from. Nice. Uh. Go us.
Just imagine the shareholder value.
China owning the vast majority of raw lithium is not the world you want to live in. The world absolutely benefits from a greater spread of lithium sources.
It could lead to more affordable Li-ion batteries.
It means we don’t have to go to the Congo or through Russia, China, or others anymore. Which is a pretty big political relief because it means that we have a little bit more resource independence.
Maybe even a way we could compete on the global market if we play our cards right.
If they’re smart, they’ll use it to beef up our power grid for the global warming shock.
Unfortunately, I imagine @poopa_mo is right, and this is just going to beef up someone’s bank account. Or rot in a warehouse.
There’s no good reason to use lithium for utility-scale power storage. We need it for transportation because it has the best power compared to its weight. Utility storage doesn’t care as much about weight, and there are plenty of better options.
If this works out and is feasible it would be something of a game changer and would weaken some of our international dependencies
Yea a-a-a yea
I’m so happy…
‘cause today I found my friends…
They’re in my head
I’m so ugly
Awesome. Now leave it there and don’t let anyone touch it 😁
Man I can’t wait for it all to get donated to the Ukraine.
