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Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:
Located in the 28-mile-long and 22-mile-wide McDermitt Caldera, the discovery of the deposit will be a massive boost to the United States' lithium reserves, which have been estimated at just one million metric tons. Most of the world's major deposits are in countries outside of North America, such as Chile, Bolivia, Argentina, China and Australia. It could also encourage more US investment in electric cars and will alleviate fears over lithium shortages – it's thought that a million metric tons of lithium will be needed by 2024.
"It could change the dynamics of lithium globally, in terms of price, security of supply and geopolitics," Belgian geologist Anouk Borst told Chemistry World. "The US would have its own supply of lithium and industries would be less scared about supply shortages."
The size of the deposit still has to be confirmed, but Lithium Americas Corporation says it expects to start mining the supply in 2026.
[...] Not everyone is celebrating the discovery, especially the Native American tribes who say the land is sacred. There are also potential dangers to native wildlife, and researchers are worried that the project will cause groundwater levels to drop to dangerous levels. Even NASA has spoken out against mining in the area. The space agency has been using Nevada's Railroad Valley lakebed since 1993 to accurately gauge the time it takes for satellite signals to travel to Earth and back, allowing it to calibrate the satellites.
(Score: 2) by ShovelOperator1 on Friday September 15 2023, @07:00AM (1 child)
I still think that we shouldn't overestimate the market ability.
I still remember collecting various things from citizens when the previously commonly available materials got more and more scarce, starting from British recycling of records during WW2, American recycling of precious metals for ?particle accelerators? during early cold war and lots of such actions in Europe.
And about market sorting it out, in some EU countries, its now more profitable to make the scrap collecting yard burn "itself" overnight than to run it. This will unfortunately go worse when the populist governments will act using people's superstitions.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 15 2023, @10:21PM
Local governments may interfere with markets, but the market for lithium is worldwide, and anywhere with access to the sea and power can build a lithium extraction plant. The ocean source of lithium is effectively infinite.
The global price of lithium is capped at about twice the current price and the supply is unlimited. Scarcity of lithium is just agenda driven crap.
Also not often mentioned in these sort of articles is that the raw cost of lithium is a small part of the cost of battery-powered things. Doubling the cost of lithium might add a couple of hundred dollars to a Tesla bill of materials.