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..
