Lithium-air battery technology breakthrough

The U.S. might have just discovered the largest deposit of lithium in the world (20-40 million metric tons). For comparison, Bolivia's salt flats (at high elevation) are believed to have 23 million metric tons. A volcanic crater on the Nevada-Oregon border is the source of the lithium. And the lithium is in a form that is easier to process, as a lithium clay infused with more additional lithium than it would normally have.

Not good news for China's hoarding program.

Colossal Cache of Lithium Found in US May Be World's Largest

 

Let’s see if we will be allowed to mine it…

 

Yeah because we have a history of not exploiting the hell every natural resource we have.

SMDH at the nonsense

 

Seriously?

Go look at how many projects get shut down due to environmental concerns.

Hell even the left in Martha’s vineyard didn’t like the idea of an offshore wind farm.

 

Yeah seriously it’s a clownish statement based on our history. Today we produce a record amount of oil thanks to a strong economy. Our capatistic system operates largely unfettered. We’ve never starved the engine of economic growth on any front with the exception of interest rates.

 

We produce near record oil due to that capitalistic system you hate. Thanks to fracking, oil shale, deep drilling. All innovation financed by capitalism. Not to mention the price of oil is high so there is a reason to pump.
World demand is driving our production, that and OPEC and Russian cutting production. Eventually they will increase in an effort to crush our production. They have done it before.

 

Feels hypocritical that mining for lithium is good but drilling for oil is bad. The 9th circuit approved the mining to proceed.

“A three-panel judge of the San Francisco-based appellate court rejected a half-dozen legal arguments the opponents had put forth in their appeal seeking to overturn federal land managers’ approval of one of the projects at the forefront of President Joe Biden’s plans to combat climate change.

The critics have been fighting it in federal court for two years. They claim the open-pit mine, as deep as the length of a football field, will violate multiple environmental laws and destroy lands tribal members consider sacred because they say dozens of their ancestors were massacred there in 1865.“

9th Circuit denies bid by environmentalists and tribes to block Nevada lithium mine

 

Thanks for the links.
Maybe that other poster will actually admit he knew nothing about a 2 year legal challenge to stop mining for lithium.

 

Who says I hate capitalism.? I work in big company corporate finance. I am well off because of investments I’ve made in myself and America. Oil is a pretty modest portion of our economy and is falling every year. You know so many thing that aren’t true

Oil Intensity: The Curiously Steady Decline of Oil in GDP - Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University SIPA | CGEP

 

Yup we have better alternatives to coal.

 

I have a pessimistic counter point. The US has something like 250-450 years worth of coal at 2021 use. Someone may need it for the nuclear winter. What is important here is that we (the US) use the World’s resource first and maintain a strategic long term advantage with the capability to tap our strategic resources when needed. It’s a long game, but it’s effective for future generations.

 

Man you really struggle with reading comprehension.

 

So they are the same to you? You see no difference?

The primary problem with coal mining is the actual burning of coal - it is dirty and carbon intensive. Coal mining itself has negative environmental impacts, but it isn’t the primary reason for opposition to coal.

 

Makes sense to me. There are trade offs to everything. It’s a question of cost vs benefit.

 

I think the environmental concerns of the mining are based on what type of mining is required (strip-mining or tunnel mining), and what will get released into the watershed, combined with the effects of those chemicals on humans and wildlife. Coal is typically found in 2-4'-thick seams that are layered in with dirt that has all kinds of other things in it, like heavy metals. For every ton of coal removed by strip-mining, there is probably a hundred tons or more of earth dug up and moved, containing a lot of hazardous things that get flushed into creeks and rivers when it rains. West Virginia has a lot of hills and mountains (elevation changes) with rivers running in between them.

On the northwestern edge of Clay County (off Hwy 228), there is a titanium mine that used to be owned by DuPont, I believe, and it functioned by moving a floating processing plant around on a man-made lake, dredging up dirt to remove the titanium. It didn't seem to affect the surrounding area, and when an area was finished with mining, they pumped the water out and let nature creep back in. I never heard that any waterways were affected (I had a friend who worked in the facility a while ago)--the landscape was fairly flat.

I have no idea what is required for lithium mining, but it sounds like there is a high concentration of lithium in the clay, which should mean that there is not as much spoils (leftover dirt) as strip mining of coal.

I think the other positive of lithium is that it is a high-value product, so the mining operation can afford to do things correctly and minimize the damage to the environment. Coal is not a high-value product compared to lithium, so the mining operation is more likely to try to cut corners and allow damage to the environment.