Sweden has been an industrial powerhouse for centuries, due to its rich deposits of various ores in its relatively young mountains, and excellent access to the rest of Europe by sea.
No wonder chemistry was in high regard there for quite some time.
Some of those elements they discovered (e.g. chlorine, silicon) hardly require geographic luck to discover, just a beach. Could it be that Sweden just had some enterprising chemists at the right time, rather than just hand-waving their discoveries away as geographic luck?
The combination of being dismissive and adding nothing to the conversation is what makes it assholish. Their only contribution was to shoot down what was an interesting aside.
I don't particularly like the way the comment was delivered either, but it does add to the conversation (as evidenced by the other comments that respond to its content and not its tone). The comment in question is bringing up the point that geography may have something to do with the reported stats, which is another interesting thing to keep in mind.
Others have pointed out what struck me as assholeish: perceived snarky tone, seems antagonistic for no reason, and completely unproductive. Like, why did they make that comment? I can't see any point other than criticizing and demeaning the other person for their statement (which also seems to be intentionally misinterpreted).
Of course, there could be a language barrier (which I didn't think of immediately), in which case I'm the asshole
I actually find it quite interesting that people are jumping to the conclusion that the comment is demeaning. Ambiguous and lacking a particular effort to be explicitly positive, sure. But where is the "criticizing and demeaning" the author part? The comment is bare and terse, questioning whether it's really that impressive when you factor in geography or whether it's more or less to be expected. There is no ad hominem attack.
For instance, Japan has good sea food cuisine. Sure that's awesome and nothing to disparage, but neither is it especially impressive considering they're an island. I think this is the point the comment is attempting to communicate.
> actually find it quite interesting that people are jumping to the conclusion that the comment is demeaning. Ambiguous and lacking a particular effort to be explicitly positive, sure.
Maybe most of us had worse experience with people than you, and have developed a more cynical model of human behaviour.
> But where is the "criticizing and demeaning" the author part?
This is just my quick analysis of what is probably more intuitive in my head than well fleshed out. I didn't think about this very hard, but I wanted to indulge you since you put effort into your comment of the situation.
It was written very tersely, it was disguised as a question, and it was directly aimed at the author of the comment, not the content of their comment. Also the way they clung onto a narrow definition of impressive seems like a petty attempt to reconstruct the narrative around the original comment's content to show how they're smart and the original poster isn't for "giving kudos" (ie being impressed) to a geographical area.
Like I said earlier though, maybe I read too much into it.
Also, I have higher standards for comment etiquette on HN than I would on other platforms. Why? I don't really know. Maybe that's a mistake too, clearly.
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It's a combination of historical industrial strategy, a culture with love of learning and individuals with a great love of learning who happened to be creative and innovative enough to discover these elements.
It's not like these elements are nowhere else. In fact, I don't think any yttrium, ytteribum, etc. is mined in Sweden at all.
If you keep breaking the site guidelines, we're going to end up having to ban you. We've warned you more than once before (not counting the other place in the current thread):
Edit: I kinda know that because I have some weird passion about the elements of periodic table and because I'm reading "Periodic Tales: A Cultural History of The Elements From Arsenic To Zinc" which I really recommend!
Indeed, good catch :
> Thorium was discovered in 1828 by the Norwegian amateur mineralogist Morten Thrane Esmark and identified by the Swedish chemist Jöns Jacob Berzelius, who named it after Thor, the Norse god of thunder.
I don't know anyone who refers to the element as wolfram in English. The abbreviations are internationally standardized and many don't stand for the English words anyway (Latin is quite common, e.g. Pb means plumbum, for lead).
That's gonna be people either in specialized areas, or non-native English speakers using their own words. I see British English spelling all over Wikipedia, for example, but I never see anyone in my actual life in the US use it except for one guy who is from, you can guess.
The area around Viborg was lost to the russians in 1721 and 1743. The western part of that, Lappeenranta and part of Kymenlaakso, are part of Finland today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Finland
Gadolin was Finnish by the same logic Benjamin Franklin was American. Or would you consider him an Englishman? He was born in the British colony, after all.
That Finland has a sizable Swedish-speaking minority? The guy was considered Swedish back then; Finland was simply the Eastern half of the Swedish kingdom.
There's plenty of Finnish speaking Swedes too. Is that also an argument for invasion?
Thule comes from a Greek cartographer, Pytheas. Thule was supposed to be an island to the north of Britain, but nobody knows what he referred to or if whatever place he referred to even was real. Some people, especially 19th century Scandinavian nationalists, associate Thule with Scandinavia.
Unlikely. Thule was supposed to exist in 330 BC, long after Doggerland had disappeared. There are many other candidates which would make more sense and fit better with his descriptions, including Norway.
Multiple I think. I believe Thule was the capital of the Greenland Norse civilization, but it's also a local story about a high culture that disappeared.
Fun to see Kiruna here on Hacker News! My wife and I lived there for a year in 2014/2015. The mine is the _reason_ for the town, and it's exciting for my friends that live there to see additional minerals other than the high-quality iron ore they currently are mining.
As some other comments have mentioned, the town is being moved as the mine follows the iron ore under the current town. It's a relatively small town (~22,0000 people) but it's still a huge project to move.
The new deposit is under the town's ski slope on Luossavaara, which is the site of a now-abandoned iron ore mine. Luossavaara is the "L" in the mining company's LKAB name (Fully, Luossavaara Kiruna AB), so good that it's going to be working again under that same played-out deposit. It's also almost directly under my sister-in-law's house--which means they're probably slated to move too!
Just hematite, apatite and phosphorus, which is mined there for over hundred years already. What is new that they decided to use the new other minerals than iron ore from apatite, mainly Titan, and they'd need phosporus for fertilisers. There's also lot of V (Vanadium) needed for steel.
This Per Geijer deposite (already mined since the late 1800's) is close to the old and new Kiirunavaara mine.
Kiruna has a long history about mining incl world war II importance for iron.
Also due execessive minig the whole town needed to be moved:
“In 2004, it was decided that the present centre of the municipality would have to be relocated to counter mining-related subsidence.[29] The relocation would be made gradually over the coming decade. On January 8, 2007, a new location was proposed, northwest to the foot of the Luossavaara mountain, by the lake of Luossajärvi.[30]“
Yeah the Swedes helped Nazi Germany immensely selling them high quality iron. There were invasion plans drawn up going from German controlled Narvik to Kiruna, but the Swedes was so accommodating that it wasn't needed.
Honestly, okay and?
To understand context, Germany was like USA back then. A LOT of media, books, philisophy, goods came from there. German was read and spoken as a language like English is now.
We did it so we would not get bombed, rolled and smoked.
Sweden was dirt poor after the wars of 1600s. In the 1800s and early 1900s people emigrated to the USA as people where so poor and the government actually had to stop it for a while. It was only after WW2 we really started to prosper. First due to natural resources, still important exports for us, enabled us to renovate cities, but making the right choices, we also invested in a knowledge based society, government laid phone cables and fibre, had a tax programme for home computers in the 90s/early 00s, school was mandatory early on, collage was free from the start etc etc etc
We are a country of 10milion and we built 3 jets of our own design, JAS Gripen is one of the best currently flying, we design our own submarines, worldwide tech companies like Ericsson for phones, 3/4/5G, Software companies like Spotify, Gaming like Minecraft, Battlefield, Division, SAAB/Scania for trucks all over.
Imagine the city of New York doing that, cant imagine.
Interestingly, the Brits had drawn up their own 'preemptive invasion' plans for Norway and Sweden to 'discourage' Germany from doing the same, which was then 'pre-pre-empted' by the German invasion of Norway:
There's a big difference between planning something and actually going through with it. The military makes all sorts of contingency plans that never have a serious shot of seeing use. Per the linked article, the Allies were expecting some level of cooperation from the countries in question, which they never got, thus the plan never executed. It was not supposed to be a full-on violent invasion like the Nazis' actions.
It is a bit more complicated than that. Sweden was selling to both sides but then Germany invaded Norway in order to secure the shipping lane from Norway to Germany and also stopping the allies from buying ore from Sweden. They did draft up more plans in case Sweden would stop selling, but all the primary goals was already completed by the invasion of Norway.
Also sold ball bearings for the Spitfire to the UK, and trained tens of thousands of Norwegian "police" in exile during the Nazi occupation of Norway. Gotta hedge your bets. (Or make the best of being between a rock and hard place.)
Churchill famously quipped when Sweden started to build atomic shelters during the 1950s something along the lines of - "why? who are you going to fight"
At that time, Sweden had a secret program to acquire nuclear weapons. They intended to either buy them from America or manufacture their own, with the intent of defending themselves from the Soviet Union. America decided not to support this, so Sweden wound down the program in the 60s and 70s and exported the plutonium they had produced to America.
Whats your point? Kiruna, mining, and ww2 is linked with Germany. HN posts are not the place for thorough disseminationof Sweden during ww2, and it is also off topic.
This deposit has been known for a long time. The news is that they have a better estimate how much rare earths are actually in there now. You don't just stumble upon something like this right next to one of the most important iron mines in Europe.
It is going to be an agonizing compromise for Sweden - destroy the Kiruna area with extraction (a million tons is a lot) or be environmentally friendly.
Currently the Congo and Chile are being torn apart with toxic dollar a day child labor extraction.
The Swedes will do a good job of mechanizing/sanitizing the process though.
I went to Kiruna once to see the northern lights but they didn't show up.
Much of what is being done to protect the environment isn't voluntary, the government is pushing reductionn of water use, use of renewable energy and lowering of emissions at mining sites.
It's a mining country and it has been for more than 100 years, wars have been fought over this. There is no other meaningful industry here. So this won't stop anytime soon.
Africa is where the child labor disaster is, I think everyone who is paying attention knows the methods and issues in Atacama/ Chile are very different to Africa in the coming tsunamai of extraction at the altar of electrification.
Isn't rare earth metals mining insanely pollutive? I've heard they can be found all over the world but only China mines them massively because nobody else is willing to destroy their ecology.
It often is as I understand it. But it's also helping reduce pollution through electrification so it's a balance. I (being not far from there) feel it's better to have polluting operations like this in heavily regulated and modern economies where there is a good chance the damage can be minimized at least.
They say they have a way to do it without being very pollutive, that is why they started looking for large deposits to mine and why they now found this one. Likely they will find many more large deposits in the near future.
> The Norwegian company has developed an innovative and sustainable technology to separate rare earth metals that can compete with China's dominating production of these materials, the LKAB press release reads.
The underground mine has been operating for 70 years, and is according to the company the largest iron mine in the world. The location itself has been a place for top mining since 1642. The site has grown so much that the mining town that was built next to it has been forced to physically relocate their old buildings in order to extend the mine.
This is the main reason I'd like to see asteroid mining take off. Let's tear some uninhabited asteroids apart, instead of the only planet we can live on.
Humans will always $hit where they eat, so I say, go full hog on the Universe. We are less than a rounding error in time and space in terms of the damage we can do to it. It's like peeing in the ocean.
The Earth is unique and precious, but the vast out there - we cannot do our worst even if we tried.
So does every other living thing, in fact. It's not like every animal and plant is a nature conservationist and humans are the mindless exploiters - it's actually the other way around. We talk about restraining ourselves because, unlike the rest of the nature, we can choose to be selfless, or at least thing longer-term and at ecosystem scale.
Also, you're absolutely correct. Earth is a gem. Everything else in space we know of is just rocks and deserts and clumps of gases. And there's so much of it that we aren't going to make a dent even if we rode the exponential growth for a while longer.
In the past I've also wondered if it wouldn't be too destructive to mine asteroids, but it makes no sense to worry about that while we continue to destroy our planet. This is the only place we can live, with vibrant, complex, diverse ecosystems, and we're causing a massive extinction event here, while making this one habitable planet less habitable for ourselves.
Meanwhile asteroids are completely uninhabited and dead, and there's millions of them. They have all the same minerals the Earth has, and often much closer to the surface. We could even just mine a few and easily replace all the destructive mining on Earth.
I just can't imagine mining the moon being in any way shape or form easier than mining the earth. The list of workplace hazards would be impressive. I imagine we're talking surface mines to keep the logistics manageable, but then:
1. How do you get astrominers there and back safely and on a regular basis whilst still keeping costs down?
2. What would it cost to keep your astrominers well fed and rested in a comfortable environment (warm, enough water, entertainment, etc)
3. How much more in bonuses (danger of hazard, long way from home, etc) do you even have to pay an astrominer vs a terraminer?
4. Most mines have some form of processing on site, e.g. break down rocks and sift through shit. How do you get those massive machines up there on the cheap and service them frequently on the cheap? Do we even have the machines that can work in those conditions?
5. Gravity is weak on the moon, I can imagine rocks of considerable mass flying or tumbling about being an issue. Sifting doesn't work as it does on earth without normal gravity and abundant water.
6. etc. etc. etc.?
I mean I think it'd be cool if we could pull it off as a civilisation but I just can't imagine how out there in scope and complexity moon mining would be.
But I think mining asteroids will be easier than mining the moon. Because on asteroids, everything is right at the surface. There's an asteroid that seems to be just the nickel-iron core of a former planet. That's more nickel and iron than you could ever hope to mine on Earth, and there's no planet around it.
Mining the earth is of course the easiest, because we're already there and there's no space travel or vacuum involved. But it's also very destructive, and once you tackle the space travel and zero-g mining issues, I think asteroid mining is going to be way more profitable. As well as saving our planet.
I can imagine dragging smaller asteroids and letting them "drop" into earth (e.g. attach massive parachutes and then guide them to land on some mining site. Totally sci-fi but I still find it less so than the moon. The reason I don't imagine robots mining the moon is that minerals, as you say, are not readily on the surface, nor is the moon mainly made up of a specific mineral.
I once heard that the one thing we might mine on the moon is He3, once/if we get to that level of fusion power. There's apparently a lot of it, and it's right at the surface.
But the advantage of asteroids is that everything is at the surface.
Maybe it's time for the rest of the world to do sustainable rare earth metal mining or end up being more geopolitically subjugated by China and Russia.
What exactly does "sustainable rare earth metal mining" mean and look like? Are there any actual examples of it?
Also not all minerals are so evenly spread. For example, it's estimated that half of all cobalt reserves is in little old Democratic Republic of the Congo
It certainly depends on the industrial process as a whole. But it's worth pointing out that nobody ever had a complaint about gold, silver, platinum or diamond mining, nor about the unimaginable volumes of ore processed to acquire iron and copper. But somehow these days everyone likes to think that they know that rare earth metals are "the devil".
> But somehow these days everyone knows that rare earth metals are "the devil".
Of course. Everyone knows that rare-earth metal extraction involves ugly, environmentally destructive strip mining, and the metals themselves are primarily used to build components for first-world toys and gadgets, such as electronics and batteries in mobile phones, computers, or electric cars.
In contrast, gold, silver, platinum and diamonds are extracted through perfectly ordinary environmentally destructive strip mining, and they have important applications such as jewelry, tax evasion and more jewelry, much of it critical to important industries such as the wedding industry.
Diamond mining is absolutely idiotic. We can grow them in a lab without any problems. And so much of them that we can put them on angle grinders and sell them at ordinary hardware stores.
So why would anyone want a "real" diamond these days? Engagement/wedding ring is just not the same if it's made without spilling some poor African's blood or something?
> nobody ever had a complaint about gold, silver, platinum or diamond mining
In what world? NGOs, academics, journalists, and non-profits have been speaking out about these and the blood diamond industries around them for decades at least
> Gold mining is one of the most destructive industries in the world. It can displace communities, contaminate drinking water, hurt workers, and destroy pristine environments
> Most silver production results in large emissions of mercury to air, soil, and water. Where silver is extracted by small-scale miners, large quantities of mercury are used, resulting in large health and environmental damages.
> The mining, metal extraction and beneficiation phases are accompanied by air and water pollution, the generation of solid waste deposited on tailings dams and waste rock stockpiles, the abstraction of vast quantities of water and the use of huge quantities of energy
> Mineral resource exploitation also causes irreversible damage to the natural environment including deforestation, soil disturbance, air emissions, surface water pollution, groundwater contamination, dust, noise, workplace health and safety, and others.
I know there's a "clique" criticizing this. That's not my point, but thanks for trying to balance the needle on its tip. Ask common people and the media about gold, silver and platinum mining, and you'll get a careless shrug on the shoulders in return.
Wouldn't 'most people' also shrug if you mentioned mining of rare earth minerals? I don't think there is a distinction except 'most people' know what gold and diamonds and platinum are.
I don't think academics, journalists, and NGOs formulate a "clique". I think the matter is just those that are informed and those that aren't. The simple fact of the matter is most people simply aren't aware of the environmental and ethical impacts of the production of our everyday electronics.
I really doubt more people are aware/making noise about rare earth minerals as they have been about the impacts of the sort of mining used to get gold, silver, etc
Criticizing gold and diamond mining isn't uncommon. A popular example coming to mind is the "Dirty Money" Netflix documentary series (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11947154/). The existence of "Blood diamonds" is also a pretty commonly known fact.
> But somehow these days everyone likes to think that they know that rare earth metals are "the devil".
Many years ago people also thought smoking is healthy and asbestos are a great material to use in construction.
"Not really sure what you are trying to say here."
That there's an ongoing movement with common people and the media, almost a fashion, of yapping about the perils of lithium extraction from ore, despite most of it coming from brine evaporation.
"Criticizing gold and diamond mining isn't uncommon."
Yes, polluting and expensive -- that's why the world let China exploit and pollute their own environment. Then they found out that it wasn't such as a good idea to depend on China for REM supplies -- China was all too happy to weaponize their dominant market position to settle diplomatic disputes with other countries (eg, Japan in 2010). China's share in REM mining/processing declined significantly from 95+% to ~65% today.
The slag from refining is horribly toxic. Mineral deposits are also high in Actinides (the bottom row of the periodic table) which makes them radioactively unsafe.
Mining generally pollutes in relation to the price. You can usually immobilize anything by conversion to sulfides and carbonates, but that may not be economical.
It is true that these colder areas have less biodiversity. It feels like a simplified nature, less species to learn to get an overview of what you're likely to find. It's still a long list of course..
Looks promising but still only a mineral resource as opposed to a mineral reserve. Which means it may not be economical to mine amongst other the things.
Lot easier to publish/announce resources and most don’t go anywhere. (Been a mining/mech engineer for a while now)
The good part is that it is located in an area that is already planned for iron mining (with LOTS of existingt and past iron mining in the greater area), so the infrastructure needed is mostly there already.
They already have infrastructure for moving the bulk material from the mines, but certainly not for extracting rare earth elements.
It's an iron mine dating to pre-WWII so if they process the ore on site they're probably using either direct reduction or the newer electrolytic process. Neither of which have much in common with the liquid-liquid extraction process used for rare earth elements. It requires mixing the ore with an extractant (see D2EHPA or PC88A) into a nasty acidic slurry which is then separated into a aqueous layer containing the waste and a nonpolar solvent that strips the rare earth elements bound up with the extractant. All the different rare earth elements then have to be separated out of the nonpolar solvent.
The process resembles uranium mining far more than iron mining.
The reason we (in the west) don't mine much is that they are very dirty to refine. We don't want pools of toxic waste left over from refining all over the place but China etc will tolerate those.
Given the ore itself is (ironically) quite common, all the mining happens where the refining happens because why would you bother shipping tonnes of ore there when is so common.
The Mt Weld rare earths mine located in the Goldfields Region of Western Australia is one of the highest grade rare earth mines operating in the world [1].
The ore is initially drilled and blasted and the blasted ore is excavated and loaded on to trucks. The trucks transport the mined ore to the concentration plant located 1.5km away from the mine.
The ore at the concentration plant is crushed before being fed to the ball bill, after which it undergoes flotation. The flotation concentrate is thickened and filtered and the final concentrate is subsequently shipped to the east coast of Malaysia to the Lynas Advanced Materials Plant in Kuantan, where the concentrate is processed [2] to produce separated Rare Earths Oxide (REO) products.
Step [2] is the significantly nasty step and typically occurs awy from mine sites that produce concentrates for input.
For further overview, see (for example): Rare Earth Elements: Overview of Mining, Mineralogy, Uses, Sustainability and Environmental Impact [3]
I weirdly think Aus would be one of the best places to do this sort of work. There are huge (truly gigantic) areas of the outback where pollution would not bother anyone. A trade oriented, democratic country etc could provide refined metals for densely populated areas to use.
> There are huge (truly gigantic) areas of the outback where pollution would not bother anyone.
That's exactly what the British colonisers said when they engaged in a bit of atomic testing at Maralinga, leaving Aboriginal people blinded, affected by radiation poisoning and left with an ongoing legacy of radiation-related health problems.
I expect we're less in favour of a repeat of that kind of dumping of the side effects of first world problems on indigenous people than you seem to be.
Or .. you reckon we should agree to be rounded up and shipped off to the reservation again?
Not at all, I'm in Western Australia and we've already agreed to build a commercial heavy rare earths (HRE) separation facility in Texas for the US DoD [1].
This is ideal, as central north americans that seek the upside of acres of thin film TV sets and excess consumption also get the toxic waste that comes with it while no longer having to complain about the Chinese having all the rare earths and associated waste.
I like that a lot better than having to tell Jill [2] that a bunch of people from across the planet want to fart and shit in her back yard (as you proposed).
Poor woman has seen her family through enough already.
No, that's not the only reason. It's also just currently a lot cheaper in China, so European mines can't afford to operate (I believe due to the very low density of deposits), so we keep the closed in reserve. There's awareness that this is probably a strategic mistake but as far as I know nobody's doing anything about that yet.
A larger strategic mistake would be having lots of very large and both military and natural disaster vulnerable tailings ponds everywhere in your country "just because there is the possibility of a strategic mistake if we don't mine stuff".
It doesn't take more that a dozen of those Tailings dam failures to completely ruin a small country.
It's more about China being strategic. They subsidies rare earth mining enough that very few others are able to compete and set up sustainable mining operations.
> Because of their geochemical properties, rare-earth elements are typically dispersed and not often found concentrated in rare-earth minerals. Consequently, economically exploitable ore deposits are sparse (i.e. "rare")
I enjoyed a TV show set in Kiruna with many scenes inside the mines. I like Nordic Noir type shows for the entertainment but I also enjoy the geography of my ancestors. It's really pretty country.
> The Kiruna mine is the largest and most modern underground iron ore mine in the world. The mine is located in Kiruna in Norrbotten County, Lapland, Sweden
Sweden's possibly the country most serious about the environment, but money talks.
There are 195 countries, so Ukraine is doing well growing six times the average amount of wheat produced, but I'm guessing there are far more than 195 iron mines in the world and so a single mine that produces 1% of the world's iron is way more above the average than Ukraine's wheat production is.
For a block that won't even grant a rocket launchpad permit, I'd say this timeline is probably optimistic.
If we look at how other permit processes have worked within our industry, it will be at least 10-15 years before we can actually begin mining and deliver raw materials to the market.
it is important to check that the stuff is really there, what grade in which place, how to design the mine so that it hits all the high grade places but doesn't collapse and machinery can get in, if it can be extracted without risks to outsiders, how to process it, where to get power, water, how to transport stuff there and back, what will be waste products, what to do with those, how much can be recycled, etc. Preliminary feasibility study & definitive feasibility study.
All this "studying" costs real money (as it involves drilling, chemistry experiments and so on) that needs to be raised first, too
It's a guesstimated million tonne of rare earth oxides .. it doesn't say in what kind of volume that million tonnes is diffused through (ie. how much has to be removed and sorted through) and then the oxides need to be processed to extract the actual rare earth elements.
What you won't see for a few years yet is an industry standard Economic Feasibility Technical Report - which outlines over a thousand pages or so the model of the ore, the exploration techniques used to create that model, various alternative costed plans to extract that target ore (and the value of any other material also extracted) and the expected value of the ore over the lifetime of the mining operation.
The key to this report is whether or not it's actually worth while to extract or whether it would cost more in earth movin and processing than the value of the result.
As for the tonnage;
> In 2019, Kiruna produced 14.7Mt of iron ore products [1]
this is the adjacent current mine and the location from which a drift is being driven.
Iron ore would be the co-product.
For comparison;
> Western Australia's iron ore output for 2020–21 was 838.7 million tonnes, the second-highest figure after 2017–18.
ie: big iron regions (all of WA iron mines are in the Pilbara) produce ~ 57x the mass.
Bear in mind that this million tonne of rare earth oxides would extracted over a decade or more, it's not going to be a fast hit all in a year.
Rare earths aren't really that rare, so probably not. Everyone has lots of rare earths, the rare thing is an environmental policy that allows them to be mined economically.
Not everyone has lots of rare earths... USA for example has just 1.8 million tonnes, and Europe currently has no significant rare earth mines. Rare earths are everywhere, true, but it is very rare to find them in high enough concentrations to be worth mining.
According to a quick google, there are approximately 120 million metric tons of rare earths in the world. So that's not a minuscule amount, but also not earth-shattering.
Those are "reserves" means proven deposits. There's generally no point of searching for more if you have proven deposits for decades ahead.
That's why all the early predictions for peak oil have failed, the proponents assumed "proven oil reserves" are all that's left, while we still continue to search and find more. US ratio of "proven reserves" to production is stable for around 100 years.
Seems about 200-300k is mined per year worldwide [0], so maybe it is a large amount if it could account for 3-4 years worth of the worlds mined supply.
That's what I was going to ask: can anyone comment as to whether this is a disruptive event? Or is Europe so ordinarily devoid of such metals that it's comparatively little versus world supply?
800 mio tons in china, 1 mio ton in sweden. So, four years of worldwide supply, unless we start building more electric cars.
#fuckcars, IMHO. Trains are nicer and bikes provide exercise, but the world seems to rely on two-ton vehicles for mostly one occupant, except for kei cars.
Why not, as many other niches, but 2 different links on the same topic, in a 5 minutes interval it's the kind of things that doesn't occurs that frequently, and it's usually for big news (either general world events or programming/tech world announcements).
It could be a coincidence of course, but I find it suspicious nonetheless.
Since AFAIK most of the current production of rare earth metals is in China and (to an extent) the United States, large deposits being found in Europe would be interesting from a general technology point of view, IMO.
Kiruna also has some of the largest mines in Europe, so the headline might catch some people's attention.
Of course multiple posts linking to a company press release might seem a bit curious.
I've wondered how that works - I'm sure Biden isn't calling Erdogan and saying that directly, right? How does the "you will fall into line, we are the hegemon" message get conveyed in 2022?
I don't think Erdogan is even that opposed, I think he wants to be seen as a player.
But the problem with this approach is that NATO actually needs Turkey, it's in a vital position and is locally a major player.
Ideally, NATO members need Turkey to be truly cooperative. (You know, discuss, compromise, that old thing.)
What NATO really needs is for Turkey to be not directly hostile. That would be incredibly costly. We already got a tiny tiny preview of that by Turkey turning a blind eye to ISIS.
Correct. Turkey has one of the best - maybe the best? Singapore could be better - positions on the planet. The straits alone are a remarkable advantage, much less the direct path along the new Silk Road, the warm water ports, the vast Anatolian plain, etc.
Turkey is one of the most important NATO members, and they know it.
While they are hailing this as a deposit of REEs what it most likely is is a greenwashing by the Swedish state, and LKAB to more easily sell the public on more iron mining, as this is really just yet another iron ore that happens to have a high content of REE. Shockingly high to be honest, almost enough to make me a bit skeptical that they hadn’t misplaced a decimal in the press release.
The major iron ore deposits that are mined in the Kiruna area, Kirunavaara, Malmberget and so on are what are known as iron-oxide apatite deposits. These occur in other places in Sweden, including central Sweden, Grängesberg, Blötberget to name a couple, and in the world. They are rich in, well, iron, as well as the mineral apatite, which containes abundant phosphorus. Phosphate minerals like apatite have a habit of acting as sort of a vacuum for REEs, enriching them in thes iron ores. These deposits also contain other REE minerals, xenotime, monazite, allanite.
Now why do I suggest that this is greenwashing? Well REEs are a hot topic right now due to being metals that are critical in transitioning to green technology, as well as other high tech uses. The currently mined iron oxide apatite mines up right next door to this new ore body also are rich in REE. Not as rich, but they come out to be about 0.07 percent on average in these ores, but the sheer volume of ore means that the potential tonnage is high. But they aren't hailed in the media as a harbinger of European REE independance.
Now, apatite and its phosphorus is not wanted in iron, so when the iron ore is crushed and enriched on site, it produces a waste sand known as tailings, which are then dumped in ponds near to the mine. The tailings are enriched in the apatite and other REE rich minerals, as the iron has been taken out.
Just the tailings pond in Kiruna, which amount to 76 million tonnes of tailings (as of 2019) have been measured to contain 0.12% REE. Pretty close to what is reported from this new deposit. Combined with other tailings repositories in the area, it is potentially hundreds of thousands of tonnes of REE just sitting there, ready to go more or less, already mined and crushed. They could easily be exploiting that resource if they were serious about REE production. To be fair, there are projects working on it, but it is still small scale pilot projects.
But they don't get splashy international headlines because like I said, I doubt this is really about them hot to mine REE. It is because they want to get at the easy to extract, easy to process iron fast, so the Swedish government makes a big announcement, to sell this as an REE deposit and try and get mining it faster, and wrapping it up in a big green bow to try and make the environmentalists and the Sami keep quiet.
But note that, overall, the ores we're using now are much less rich than the ores we used up a generation or two ago. Cheaper energy costs have kept commodity prices about the same.
<waves hands at literally every strip mine on the planet and the insane amounts of pollution and environmental devastation they wreaked>
Because we care about the environment a bit more in Europe and Scandinavia than we used to. Part of responsible planet ownership is foregoing short term gain for a nice planet to live on long term.
Mining lots of various minerals is necessary to transition the world to a net-neutral climate gas economy that has similar standard of living as today. Huge increases in production of batteries, wind turbines, solar panels, synthetic fuel production and so on.
And this is necessary because the people of the world are not willing to reduce their standard of living to a level where net neutral climate gas emissions are possible without a similarly huge economic development. Some dream that this is possible, but it's plainly politically impossible. (Or in so many words, the people of less developed nations will kill their leaders if they try to force it on them, democracies will vote their politicians out).
So essentially, the choice is between some local environmental damage due to mining and new industry, or indefinitely continuing climate gas emissions and the corresponding climate change, which will hit poorer people disproportionately and continue causing war and mass extinction.
With that attitude, I really hope Sweden goes "that's not our problem" and leaves it where it found it. Heaven forbid we might want to use it for infinitely better things, say, 300 years from now. When we're no longer a shit species destroying the planet. If we're lucky.
Personally, I'd prefer not to condemn 2 billion people to war, famine and poverty due to avoidable consequences of human nature. Sweden ostensibly has a similar political climate, but I wonder if it's still true when push comes to shove.
I think this deposit is under Mt Luossavaara, which is close to the main iron ore body currently being mined. The old city core is currently being moved and/or torn down anyways, so it shouldn't affect much...
...other than the houses already transferred to the slopes of Luossavaara, I guess. :)
The value of many "rare earths" suddenly plummeted recently when an iron+nitrogen [edit: not "nickel"] alloy/crystallization ("allotrope") was discovered that approximates the properties of the best lanthanide magnets.
("Rare-earths" are not, incidentally, needed for [edit:batteries], wind turbines, or solar panels, however much certain people wish they were, or confidently claim.)
> "Rare-earths" are not, incidentally, needed for electric vehicles, wind turbines, or solar panels, however much certain people wish they were, or confidently claim.
What exactly does this mean? EVs use a ton more rare earth minerals than conventional cars
Solar panels use silicon, indium, gallium, selenium, cadmium, and tellurium. Neodymium and dysprosium are mainly used in the permanent magnets of offshore wind turbines
The graph you linked shows that this is not true. See the tiny purple graph at the right side of the bar? That's the rare earth minerals and their amount in an electric car is tiny.
Isn't 0.5kg per vehicle a lot for rare earth minerals?? Sure it looks tiny compared to the amount of copper, nickel, manganese, etc used, but the whole point is that they're rare...
0.5kg of neodymium is around $200 and it's probably the cheapest of the rare earths
0.5kg of europium is around $3,750
Obviously lots of variation there, but maybe ratio of how much it costs vs the total cost of all the other minerals is a better metric to use here than pure weight
ferrocerium is the cheapest of the rare earths, but if we're talking about purified elements, cerium and yttrium are probably cheaper than neodymium
the reason the purified elements are expensive is that they're so hard to separate from each other
rare earth elements aren't actually rare
they're called that because we've inherited alchemical terminology from the 18th century when alchemists were first starting to discover that there were more than four elements, and that in particular there were several different kinds of earth, such as magnesia, silex, etc., and as it turns out things like thoria are in fact quite a bit rarer than silex
> Because of their geochemical properties, rare-earth elements are typically dispersed and not often found concentrated in rare-earth minerals. Consequently, economically exploitable ore deposits are sparse (i.e. "rare").
For the purposes of this conversation, which is about economics not geochemistry, they are in fact rare. At least the minerals are
ore deposits that aren't economically exploitable are uneconomic because the price in the market is too low to pay the necessary costs, which are higher when the concentration is lower
all this means is that there is a wide range of concentrations among ore deposits
it doesn't have anything to do with how high those prices are or how rare the minerals are, and as you pointed out upthread in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34357834, the prices are pretty low
you said neodymium was US$400/kg; gold, the standard rare element, is US$60893/kg today
> Because of their geochemical properties, rare-earth elements are typically dispersed and not often found concentrated in rare-earth minerals. Consequently, economically exploitable ore deposits are sparse (i.e. "rare").
Regardless, they never show up in a pure form in nature so what we should really be looking at is how common minerals that they're easy to extract from are not how common the atom itself is. And the useful rare-earth minerals are indeed "rare"
Vanishingly few things show up in "pure form", anywhere in nature. Gold is is all mixed up into quartz, save for flakes in riverbeds. Nitrogen and argon, famously unreactive, nonetheless come mixed with the other, with oxygen mixed in besides.
Diamond, almost pure carbon, is the only that comes to mind.
So, it is meaningless to single out lanthanides for this. What does distinguish them, instead, is that they are expensive to separate from one another. In certain places such as Yterby and the site mentioned in the original article, ore contains a concentrated mix of many lanthanide compounds. It remains a chore to get the praseodymium and the neodymium into separate ingots.
The amount of magnesium in the human body is .1% by weight. That's not too far different from the amount of rare-earths in an EV.
In the case of a human, i would not wish magnesium deficiency on them, it is not fun, can have severe long-term consequences (such as death), and generally is something that medical professionals will find concerning.
In the case of an EV I don't know what the consequences of removing rare-earths would be, but the fact that it's a tiny percentage of total mass doesn't imply that they can just be dismissed.
most solar panels do not currently use indium, gallium, selenium, cadmium, or tellurium, none of which are rare earth elements (though indium is pretty rare)
the solar panels that used those cannot economically compete with silicon pv for utility-scale solar any more (perhaps that will change)
silicon is also not a rare earth element (and is not at all rare)
evs and wind turbines can use rare earth elements, it's true, but it's just a relatively minor engineering tradeoff not to use them
"According to Philip Pesavento, Cove then managed to refine the composition of the alloy close to Zn4Sb3 – a zinc-antimony alloy with proportions of 4 parts zinc to 6 parts antimony. That, we now know, is also a semiconductor. However, it has a bandgap of 1.2 eV – very close to the bandgap of silicon (1.1 eV). Consequently, it turned his thermophotovoltaic generator into a photovoltaic generator:
“In his enthusiasm, Cove probably made up a larger number of plugs and somehow got the proportions “wrong” on one batch. He then measured an even larger voltage. Finally, he made a careful study of zinc-antimony alloys and found that the 40-42% range zinc alloy gave the highest voltage (compared to 35% zinc in ZnSb). Having – accidentally – discovered Zn4Sb3, the higher bandgap of this semiconductor meant that it no longer worked when it was exposed to the heat from a wood stove. However, it worked even better when it was exposed to solar energy – because it was now converting far more of the visible spectrum of sunlight efficiently into electricity.”
Using colored glass filters, George Cove determined that most of the response was from the violet end of the spectrum and only a little from the so-called heat rays. His earlier PV plugs had responded equally well to heat rays and violet rays, while the older thermoelectric generators (German silver at both sides) did not respond to the violet rays at all.
Bring back the Schottky solar cell?
Schottky junction solar cells have commanded only a small amount of attention from researchers and corporations – few solar cell designs use metals in the active region, other than for contacts. [22] Nevertheless, Philip Pesavento believes that it would be worthwhile to attempt to fabricate some Schottky solar cells according to Cove’s design:
“If it could be demonstrated that Zn4Sb3 (bandgap 1.2 eV) can be used in a photovoltaic cell, there is a good chance that such a solar cell design will be sustainable. It would be a good candidate for a quick EROI and have an acceptably long operational life with a surplus energy output over several decades. It’s astounding that everyone seems to have missed this material and its application to photovoltaic cells and that no development has been done – even after researchers briefly recognized it as being a possible option in the early to mid-1980s. It fits in the category of a premature discovery which should mean it could be developed very quickly in this day and age.”
antimony is toxic, rare, and expensive, and silicon is none of these, so antimony-based solar cells are unlikely ever to be an economically superior alternative to silicon-based solar cells
It's just a name. They are not necessarily rare.
It should be "certain transition metals", but transition is not what it seems in regard to "changing" in the common sense, either. So, certain metals, it is.
It's just a name. They are not necessarily rare.
It should be "certain transition metals", but transition is not what it seems in regard to "changing" in the common sense, either. So, certain metal ores, it is.
It's just a name. They are not necessarily rare.
It should be "certain transition metals", but transition is not what it seems in regard to "changing" in the common sense, either.
"Rare-earth" means lanthanides plus scandium and yttrium. But scandium and yttrium are not used in magnets, so they would confuse people less by saying "lanthanide magnet" instead of "rare-earth magnet".
It's a completely hypothetical process that has 0 proven results and already involved shady deadlings with government, where government officials are chatting with CEO's about how to hide details:
'"As you probably know, it is almost never possible to hide entire documents," she writes apologetically.' [0]
The Hybrit pilot plant is already operational and producing steel, although in small quantities. That sounds like a proven result to me, do you disagree?
Can you summarize what the linked article (unfortunately paywalled and in swedish) says? I am quite interested in this project.
LKAB is 100% owned by the Swedish state. 2021 the dividend was pretty large and apparently around 1000 SEK per swede. Well if it would have been paid that way, it's going into the govt balance sheet of course.
What's the alternative? If we want to electrify, it means more resource discovery and mining than we're already doing, plus likely mining more non-renewable fuels to power the intermediate infrastructure we will need to mine or recycle metals for renewables or EVs.
Degrowth, using less of everything, only keeping what we truly need instead of producing insane amount of next to useless junk, stop shipping bananas to the other side of the planet to have half of them end up in a trash anyways, &c. Basic common sense stuff that we won't do because we need that sweet sweet "growth" at all cost.
Producing less and electrifying a grid are not mutually exclusive, ideally we will do both. Even in a "degrowth" future, we have to power critical infrastructure, which means large infrastructural changes and a bunch of raw materials.
One use of rare earths is for permanent magnet motors. Induction motors don't use permanent magnets, but they tend to be significantly less efficient.
Permanent magnets can also be made without rare earths, but I expect the result would be a physically larger/heavier and/or less powerful motor. So, it's a trade-off.
I think they're more trying to say that this is good for the local economy, since these will be growth industries. However yeah it's a bit of an unfortunate conundrum that we end up doing a bit more of some "bad" things to do good or at least better things
> Because of their geochemical properties, rare earth elements are typically dispersed. This means they are not often found in concentrated enough clusters to make them viable to mine. It was the scarcity of these minerals that led to them being called rare earths.
A HN worthy comment might expand on why they're called 'rare' and why they're hard (in the sense of effort and resources) to extract and deliver in a ready to use state.
> If we look at how other permit processes have worked within our industry, it will be at least 10-15 years before we can actually begin mining and deliver raw materials to the market.
Maybe not super familiar for speed/"velocity" addicted software engineers working on web apps, but things like mining, construction and other huge operations take some time to complete, and safety in modern countries is a huge factor when doing things like this, which adds a lot of time as well.
Ok but why is this news worthy ? Predicting industry demand in 15 years is pointless. I mean I remember 15 years ago everyone was talking about "peak oil imminent collapse". This seems irrelevant for problems of today so framing it as a solution to these is ridiculous. By the time these start producing most of Europe has already proposed ICE bans.
Even though "News" is in the name of "Hacker News" it's not just for "News" or "New Things", it's for everything hackers find interesting. This story, evidently, is interesting enough to gather 133 points in less than 1 hour so it is "Hacker News Worthy" even if it maybe isn't "news worthy".
This is going to have a mayor impact on Swedish politics. A new government is recently installed and this is the first mayor (public) opportunity for them to make a big impact on Europe from a sustainability, financial and political perspective. Expect A LOT faster result than 10-15 years.
It would be unconstitutional for a Swedish government to meddle in individual decisions of its agencies (including courts), and they in turn are required to act impartially.
Yes but the parliament can change the law however they see fit, to exempt this mine from environmental law. This has already happened twice in the last few years (cement production and hydro power).
> If we look at how other permit processes have worked within our industry, it will be at least 10-15 years...
When it takes 15 years simply to get permission to do something, you know that your country will never be competitive globally.
Either the benefits outweigh the downsides, or vice versa. A group of 10 of the right experts ought to be able to decide that in a week.
Spending 15 years paper-pushing, doing court battles, public enquiries, etc. just delays the process. At the end of the day, you will end up either doing it or not doing it, and whatever you choose is best decided quickly (with the right expertise).
Perhaps we should adopt a system like for the choosing of popes - we lock the experts in a room till they come up with a consensus conclusion.
> When it takes 15 years simply to get permission to do something, you know that your country will never be competitive globally.
I think Sweden is quite competitive in general. Also, as others have said, it could have pretty big impact on various things. But I guess if Sweden was a dictatorship the government could just decide to start digging and not care about the people living there or the environment. 10-15 years sounds very long though, but a week.. I don’t know in which country that would happen.
There is also the sami peoples reindeer herding, safety, environmental impact, relocating, buying land. You could not decide things like this in a week if you have a system where human and ecological rights are respected.
You are aware we're talking about a large scale mining operation here?
That doesn't just mean surveying and analysis, but may also involve such things as resettling people, planning new routes for existing rivers and other water, as well as figuring out externalities that will remain after mining is done, but still should be accounted for.
The area is already planned for mining and nobody lives there, it is right next to the largest iron ore mining operation in Europe. Wouldn't even need to move workers, since they already live next to it.
Yes, the problem with your reasoning is those are all things any non-expert could think of. That doesn't mean there aren't concerns that are more complicated than what some programmer on a forum can think of in 2 minutes.
FTA: “LKAB has already started to prepare a drift, several kilometres long, at a depth of approximately 700 metres in the existing Kiruna mine towards the new deposit in order to be able to investigate it at depth and in detail.“
I used to think that the 40K universe was ridicolous when it states that the human empire is hamstringed, outright decaying, through 'bureaucracy' - I don't think that anymore.
> "This is good news, not only for LKAB, the region and the Swedish people, but also for Europe and the climate...
No, this is not good news. Mining is one of the most polluting human activities there is. In addition, all those machines used for digging and pulverizing the minerals, they run on petrol.
In fact, the entire value chain from raw mineral to finished product, be it solar panels, wind turbine, or the latest iPhone, is totally dependent on fossil fuels: coal for making steel, petrol for the all the rest: mining, refining, transporting, installing.
This is the hard truth about so called "renewables" - they would not have existed without the use of fossil fuels. Anyone telling you otherwise is simply greenwashing. If we really care about our future a whole different approach is needed.
Almost none of that is correct, except in the specious sense that most of those technologies run on electricity and electricity is still made from fossil sources in most areas. In some cases it's sort of laughable: solar panels are just semiconductors, everything about that industry is electrified (most of the power input is in growing the wafer out of molten silicon).
Basically your argument is circular: you're saying that renewable electrification can't happen because electricity is made from carbon. But as electrification proceeds that becomes untrue by definition.
But isn’t this a feature of every technological improvement? You need fossil fuel energy to be able to extract renewable energy, yes, but there’s no reason to believe you couldn’t replace it with renewable energy down the line.
It’s sort of like how you bootstrap a compiler: the first version of a new language tool chain needs to be implemented in some other language. But then you can make it “self-hosted” by implementing it in itself.
> yes, but there’s no reason to believe you couldn’t replace it with renewable energy down the line.
Is there any chance of this happening by, say, 2050? I don't think so. The whole "energy transition" idea is a fallacy. Today we burn more coal, petrol and gas than ever before. We simply don't know how to manufacture solar panels and wine turbines without fossil fuels.
> In fact, the entire value chain from raw mineral to finished product, be it solar panels, wind turbine, or the latest iPhone, is totally dependent on fossil fuels: coal for making steel, petrol for the all the rest: mining, refining, transporting, installing.
Well, LKAB has partnered with some other local industrial giants to make the steel making process fossil free, called project HYBRIT. It will just take some 20 years. :)
I would like to know more about this different approach. I don't think we can make a change that doesn't involve using what we are currently using (fossil fuels) but diminishing over time.
In my mind the only thing that can work to mitigate climate change (any way we cannot reverse it) and stop damaging our ecosystem, the planet earth, is to practice sobriety, reduce our economic activity voluntarily, and thus reduce the burning of fossil fuels and emissions in general. This is the hard truth, but how many of us are ready to do this? How many of the people reading this are ready to make a material sacrifice in order to ensure the future of their offspring?
A friend mine is doing research in solar to simplify production and making parts more green so to rely less on these practices. Each component is being intensely studied. Just adding this to the conversation. Also by upping the yield and longevity, costs go down.
- Scandium from Scandinavia
- Yttrium, Terbium, Erbium and Ytterbium from the village of Ytterby
- Holmium from Stockholm
- Thulium from Thule