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There was also an active mine in CA (I forget the name), but it closed down a few years ago... not sure why. I'm guessing it's the fact that lithium requires ma

There was also an active mine in CA (I forget the name), but it closed down a few years ago... not sure why. I'm guessing it's the fact that lithium requires many harsh chemicals to extract and is a very 'dirty' process. Probably why China does most of the processing -- they're far more willing to pollute their own environment than most countries currently. For independence to occur, we either need to accept the environmental wreckage, or find a better way to contain it and make it 'cleaner'.

Animats 6y ago
You're probably thinking of the Mountain Pass, CA rare earths mine. Molycorp finally got the process clean enough that even the Sierra Club approved. Then China cut the price on rare earths and Molycorp went bankrupt. Then China raised the price on rare earths. The Mountain Pass mine is operating again, but it's not clear who owns it now. Names involved are JHL Capital Group, QVT Financial, Shenghe Resources Holding Co. Ltd., and Fortress Value Acquisition Corp. The output has to go to China for processing because the plan to build US extraction facilities at Mountain Pass has slipped from 2020 to 2022.
- southerntofu 6y ago
  > Molycorp finally got the process clean enough that even the Sierra Club approved. Being praised by a big NGO is in no way a marker of being "clean enough". Sierra Club (like Greenpeace) is well-known in ecologist circles to be eco-hostile and business-friendly.
  - jjoonathan 6y ago
    I want to (and do) spend money to lessen our impact on the environment, and I want to do more, but I've met environmentalists who unironically wish that humanity would cease to exist. I am not interested in appeasing them. I am doubly uninterested in environmental policy that encourages bad options over much-better-but-still-imperfect options.
    - caymanjim 6y ago
      Anti-nuclear environmentalists are directly responsible for our continued over-reliance on fossil fuels. Add anti-damming and anti-windfarm environmentalists into the mix, and the environmental movement is anything but.
      - southerntofu 6y ago
        Fossil fuel are terrible, but nuclear energy is arguably just as terrible. Also, nuclear energy (like most pretend-green energies) does not work without considerable amounts of fossil fuels, from extraction to actual energy production. If only that, building a nuclear facility is going to take a lot of fossil fuel to power the machines, and use a lot of concrete, which requires even more fossil fuel to produce and bring over. Water and wind turbines are a little different. Their ecological impact depends on their size. The problem here is most countries insist on urbanization which concentrates energy production and therefore tends to centralize energy production away from usage, in big power stations. Producing a little electricity with turbines has a quasi-null environmental impact, and is good for local usage for a small village. You'll find that people on the countryside are opposing industry's project not because they're new and ugly, but because they have actual concerns about the damage produced by such installations. How much resources does it take to build a wind turbine? How many tons of concrete does it take to anchor so many tons of steel? How does this considerable of concrete affect the local ecosystem? People are not entirely stupid. They protest the nuclear industry and windfarms because they've seen the damage, and they understand these proposals do not bring required change. We need momentum to reduce energy/resources usage, not to produce ever more energy. If you want to understand why many people from here (France) strongly oppose nuclear power, i recommend you do some reading on Areva's many failures (engineering-wise) and on Françafrique, the french neocolonial system which ensures uranium supplies.
        caymanjim 6y ago
        You've demonstrated my point. You're pointing out some valid concerns. They're insignificant in comparison to the fossil fuel alternative. Environmentalists make perfect the enemy of good every time.
- jiggawatts 6y ago
  > Then China cut the price on rare earths and Molycorp went bankrupt. Then China raised the price on rare earths. Speaking of which, China loves projection. They recently accused Australia of dumping products such as wine in order to bankrupt the local Chinese vineyards. As you can imagine, the many independent Australia wine exporters were rather perplexed by this, because they are not centrally state-controlled. In fact, such price-fixing collusion would be illegal here. Any time China accuses another country of some sort of misdeed, just assume they're thinking that everyone acts the same way they themselves do.
  - philipkglass 6y ago
    Any time China accuses another country of some sort of misdeed, just assume they're thinking that everyone acts the same way they themselves do. You can fill in "pretty much any country" for "China" when it comes to trade disputes like this. The vast majority of between-nation dumping accusations seem to be unfounded or extremely thinly founded -- e.g. US accusing China of solar "dumping" when solar equipment manufacturers get state support by tax credits or low interest loans. US states pay to attract manufacturing too [1]. China can make t-shirts and tea cups cheaper than western producers. This has been known since before China joined the WTO. Objections to China also producing sophisticated goods cheaper seem to be mostly post-hoc regret. They weren't supposed to climb the value chain like that. Our countries were supposed to keep the sophisticated production while they just make trinkets! I actually think that it is a problem that the western world has lost so much domestic productive capacity, but countering that with hollow accusations of dumping is dishonest. Countries should formally alter trade obligations to reinvigorate domestic production instead of fabricating rationalizations to match the text of old treaties. [1] https://www.npr.org/2020/01/14/796344782/wisconsin-foxconn-and-the-lure-of-state-tax-incentives https://www.npr.org/2020/01/14/796344782/wisconsin-foxconn-a...
nickik 6y ago
I'm not aware of a lithium mine in California. North Carolina was where most of the world's lithium was mined and refined. Pretty much all mines for lithium closed in the US because it was simply cheaper to get from either South America brine and then Australian spodumene mining. While the US stopped mining lithium however there is still a lot of lithium refinement in North Carolina. And more refinement capacity is already planned both there and other places in the US. The main reason it is in China is because China made EV and the supply chain a priority. However, most of the downstream refinement of the downstream for actual battery materials actually happens in Korea. So a lot of lithium is mined in West Australia, transported to China and then the Korea/Japan until it is shipped to Nevada where it turns into a battery. In the next few years you should see the whole supply-chain from mining to battery in the US.
- SkyMarshal 6y ago
  >However, most of the downstream refinement of the downstream for actual battery materials actually happens in Korea. So a lot of lithium is mined in West Australia, transported to China and then the Korea/Japan until it is shipped to Nevada where it turns into a battery. Why does it need to stop off in China on its way to refineries in Korea/Japan/Nevada?
  - samatman 6y ago
    It leaves Australia as ore, and leaves China as enriched oxide/carbonate, but by no means of the purity needed for batteries. This leaves Korea as highly purified final product, suitable for building cells.

Animats 6y ago

You're probably thinking of the Mountain Pass, CA rare earths mine. Molycorp finally got the process clean enough that even the Sierra Club approved. Then China cut the price on rare earths and Molycorp went bankrupt. Then China raised the price on rare earths. The Mountain Pass mine is operating again, but it's not clear who owns it now. Names involved are JHL Capital Group, QVT Financial, Shenghe Resources Holding Co. Ltd., and Fortress Value Acquisition Corp. The output has to go to China for processing because the plan to build US extraction facilities at Mountain Pass has slipped from 2020 to 2022.

southerntofu 6y ago
> Molycorp finally got the process clean enough that even the Sierra Club approved. Being praised by a big NGO is in no way a marker of being "clean enough". Sierra Club (like Greenpeace) is well-known in ecologist circles to be eco-hostile and business-friendly.
- jjoonathan 6y ago
  I want to (and do) spend money to lessen our impact on the environment, and I want to do more, but I've met environmentalists who unironically wish that humanity would cease to exist. I am not interested in appeasing them. I am doubly uninterested in environmental policy that encourages bad options over much-better-but-still-imperfect options.
  - caymanjim 6y ago
    Anti-nuclear environmentalists are directly responsible for our continued over-reliance on fossil fuels. Add anti-damming and anti-windfarm environmentalists into the mix, and the environmental movement is anything but.
    - southerntofu 6y ago
      Fossil fuel are terrible, but nuclear energy is arguably just as terrible. Also, nuclear energy (like most pretend-green energies) does not work without considerable amounts of fossil fuels, from extraction to actual energy production. If only that, building a nuclear facility is going to take a lot of fossil fuel to power the machines, and use a lot of concrete, which requires even more fossil fuel to produce and bring over. Water and wind turbines are a little different. Their ecological impact depends on their size. The problem here is most countries insist on urbanization which concentrates energy production and therefore tends to centralize energy production away from usage, in big power stations. Producing a little electricity with turbines has a quasi-null environmental impact, and is good for local usage for a small village. You'll find that people on the countryside are opposing industry's project not because they're new and ugly, but because they have actual concerns about the damage produced by such installations. How much resources does it take to build a wind turbine? How many tons of concrete does it take to anchor so many tons of steel? How does this considerable of concrete affect the local ecosystem? People are not entirely stupid. They protest the nuclear industry and windfarms because they've seen the damage, and they understand these proposals do not bring required change. We need momentum to reduce energy/resources usage, not to produce ever more energy. If you want to understand why many people from here (France) strongly oppose nuclear power, i recommend you do some reading on Areva's many failures (engineering-wise) and on Françafrique, the french neocolonial system which ensures uranium supplies.
      - caymanjim 6y ago
        You've demonstrated my point. You're pointing out some valid concerns. They're insignificant in comparison to the fossil fuel alternative. Environmentalists make perfect the enemy of good every time.
jiggawatts 6y ago
> Then China cut the price on rare earths and Molycorp went bankrupt. Then China raised the price on rare earths. Speaking of which, China loves projection. They recently accused Australia of dumping products such as wine in order to bankrupt the local Chinese vineyards. As you can imagine, the many independent Australia wine exporters were rather perplexed by this, because they are not centrally state-controlled. In fact, such price-fixing collusion would be illegal here. Any time China accuses another country of some sort of misdeed, just assume they're thinking that everyone acts the same way they themselves do.
- philipkglass 6y ago
  Any time China accuses another country of some sort of misdeed, just assume they're thinking that everyone acts the same way they themselves do. You can fill in "pretty much any country" for "China" when it comes to trade disputes like this. The vast majority of between-nation dumping accusations seem to be unfounded or extremely thinly founded -- e.g. US accusing China of solar "dumping" when solar equipment manufacturers get state support by tax credits or low interest loans. US states pay to attract manufacturing too [1]. China can make t-shirts and tea cups cheaper than western producers. This has been known since before China joined the WTO. Objections to China also producing sophisticated goods cheaper seem to be mostly post-hoc regret. They weren't supposed to climb the value chain like that. Our countries were supposed to keep the sophisticated production while they just make trinkets! I actually think that it is a problem that the western world has lost so much domestic productive capacity, but countering that with hollow accusations of dumping is dishonest. Countries should formally alter trade obligations to reinvigorate domestic production instead of fabricating rationalizations to match the text of old treaties. [1] https://www.npr.org/2020/01/14/796344782/wisconsin-foxconn-and-the-lure-of-state-tax-incentives https://www.npr.org/2020/01/14/796344782/wisconsin-foxconn-a...

nickik 6y ago

I'm not aware of a lithium mine in California. North Carolina was where most of the world's lithium was mined and refined. Pretty much all mines for lithium closed in the US because it was simply cheaper to get from either South America brine and then Australian spodumene mining. While the US stopped mining lithium however there is still a lot of lithium refinement in North Carolina. And more refinement capacity is already planned both there and other places in the US. The main reason it is in China is because China made EV and the supply chain a priority. However, most of the downstream refinement of the downstream for actual battery materials actually happens in Korea. So a lot of lithium is mined in West Australia, transported to China and then the Korea/Japan until it is shipped to Nevada where it turns into a battery. In the next few years you should see the whole supply-chain from mining to battery in the US.

SkyMarshal 6y ago
>However, most of the downstream refinement of the downstream for actual battery materials actually happens in Korea. So a lot of lithium is mined in West Australia, transported to China and then the Korea/Japan until it is shipped to Nevada where it turns into a battery. Why does it need to stop off in China on its way to refineries in Korea/Japan/Nevada?
- samatman 6y ago
  It leaves Australia as ore, and leaves China as enriched oxide/carbonate, but by no means of the purity needed for batteries. This leaves Korea as highly purified final product, suitable for building cells.