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Europe's largest deposit of rare earth metals discovered in Sweden
- u320 4y agoThis 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.
- daaayum 4y agoOver 1 millon metric tonnes of rare earth minerals found in Kiruna, Sweden.
- smcl 4y agoThat's the town they had to move due to mining, wasn't it? I hope this doesn't mean they have to move it again :)
- luckylion 4y agoWho needs dowsing rods when you can just move a town and see where it goes to find the next big deposit.
- m_eiman 4y agoShouldn't have to, the rare earth minerals are in an area already designated for iron extraction. The new metals are just a nice bonus, I suppose.
- monotux 4y agoI 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. :)
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- wuiheerfoj 4y ago‚metals which are essential for, among other applications, the manufacture of electric vehicles and wind turbines‘ Great way to frame mining as eco-friendly haha. Is my take too skeptical? Are these very specific metals to eco-friendly production?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Mrdarknezz 4y agoThe company that owns the mine LKAB are together with swedish Steel producer SSAB producing fossilfree steel. They are working with Volvo to build their electric cars with this steel https://www.ssab.com/en/news/2021/08/the-worlds-first-fossilfree-steel-ready-for-delivery https://www.ssab.com/en/news/2021/08/the-worlds-first-fossil...
- baybal2 4y ago[dead]
- kzrdude 4y agoLKAB 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.
- Someone 4y agoFor reference: 1000 SEK is about €90/$95
- raspberry1337 4y agoIt'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] [0]https://www.svd.se/a/pQnQaw/hybrit-har-blivit-ett-klagg https://www.svd.se/a/pQnQaw/hybrit-har-blivit-ett-klagg
- icemelt8 4y agowow this is great news, the Earth keeps surprising us with its riches!
- Nomentatus 4y agoBut 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.
- esel2k 4y agoKiruna 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]“ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiruna https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiruna
- tokai 4y agoYeah 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.
- LeonB 4y agoThe Swedes helped the Allies also.
- actionfromafar 4y agoAlso 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"
- bradhe 4y agoWonder what the practical implications of a million tonnes is? For industry, is a million tonnes really that much?
- detrites 4y agoThat'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?
- amarant 4y agoAbout 3% of rare earth metals mined globally are mined in Europe currently. About 30% of the global supply is used in Europe tho. That doesn't really indicate how much is available in the ground, but only what's being actively mined. Someone else wondered about concentrations of rare earth metals in the ground in this finding, and it's "unusually high: 0.18%" My source is both paywalled and in Swedish, sorry about that, but here it is: https://www.dn.se/ekonomi/jattefynd-av-sallsynta-jordartsmetaller-i-kiruna/ https://www.dn.se/ekonomi/jattefynd-av-sallsynta-jordartsmet...
- kwhitefoot 4y agoDoesn't seem to be pay-walled at the moment although DN does encourage you to log in. I archived it on the Wayback Machine: https://web.archive.org/web/20230112191438/https://www.dn.se/ekonomi/jattefynd-av-sallsynta-jordartsmetaller-i-kiruna/ https://web.archive.org/web/20230112191438/https://www.dn.se...
- LudwigNagasena 4y agoAccording 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.
- detrites 4y agoSeems 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. [0] - https://www.kitco.com/news/2022-02-07/Global-rare-earth-metals-production-up-17-in-2021-as-production-in-China-jumps-20.html https://www.kitco.com/news/2022-02-07/Global-rare-earth-meta...
- moonchrome 4y ago> 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. Meh ?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- capableweb 4y agoMaybe 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.
- moonchrome 4y agoOk 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.
- capableweb 4y agoEven 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".
- daaayum 4y agoThis 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.
- rurban 4y agoJust 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. https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Sketch-map-of-the-geology-of-the-Kiruna-area-Per-Geijer-deposits-are-marked-in-red_fig1_340023132 https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Sketch-map-of-the-geolog...
- londons_explore 4y ago> 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.
- chmod775 4y agoYou 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.
- londons_explore 4y agoDoing those things will take time, sure. But making the decision whether those things should be done should not take long.
- mtlmtlmtlmtl 4y agoI'm sure that's based on your long experience setting up mining operations?
- Jensson 4y agoThe 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.
- mupuff1234 4y agoRare earth elements aren't actually rare.
- defrost 4y agoNot exactly news. 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. Any ideas?
- olddustytrail 4y agoIt seems to be news to a fair number of commentators here. It's a useful comment for every one of these discussions I think.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- capableweb 4y ago> 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. https://lynasrareearths.com/products/what-are-rare-earths/ https://lynasrareearths.com/products/what-are-rare-earths/
- littlestymaar 4y agoI find it suprising that two posts talking about this topic are currently on the front page, although it's not the typical HN material. Maybe it's just a coincidence, or maybe there's something worth investigating for dang.
- defrost 4y agoHN cares about IT and there being conditions suitable for IT. This means an interest in metals for electronics and suitable for climate related tech. Ergo you'll see news about copper, rare earths, battery technology advances, hydrogen, etc all hit the front page and often rise.
- littlestymaar 4y agoWhy 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.
- Jensson 4y agoSwedes are fairly prevalent in technical forums. Can see the HN poll here, Sweden is at spot 6 if you exclude the US regions: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30210378 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30210378 So news about Sweden are probably more likely to be posted than for example news about Chile.
- fragmede 4y agoIt's also currently 4pm there. Prime HN posting hours.
- Delk 4y agoSince 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.
- rmm 4y agoLooks 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)
- yxhuvud 4y agoThe 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.
- akiselev 4y agoThey 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.
- robin_reala 4y agoNot exactly surprising that it’s in Sweden, as many rare earth metals were first discovered here and are named after Swedish things: - Scandium from Scandinavia - Yttrium, Terbium, Erbium and Ytterbium from the village of Ytterby - Holmium from Stockholm - Thulium from Thule
- wodenokoto 4y agoIsn't Thule on Greenland (or are there multiple Thule around?)
- capableweb 4y agoThere seems to be multiple Thule, but none of them in Sweden: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thule_(disambiguation) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thule_(disambiguation), although there seems to be a Swedish brand with the name as well, but unrelated to the location as far as I can tell https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thule_Group https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thule_Group
- jeltz 4y agoThule 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.
- coremoff 4y agothis is possibly in reference to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland
- jeltz 4y agoUnlikely. 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.
- wyuenho 4y agoFor 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.
- aliswe 4y agoPolitically motivated comment?
- yread 4y agoit 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
- LatteLazy 4y ago"Rare" earth metals are actually not that rare. 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.
- guerrilla 4y agoNo, 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.
- ElectricalUnion 4y ago> this is probably a strategic mistake 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.
- noselasd 4y agoIt'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.
- swagasaurus-rex 4y agoUndrselling the market only makes sense if you recoup your losses by jacking up the price once your competition has gone under
- defrost 4y agoThe 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] [1] https://www.nsenergybusiness.com/projects/mt-weld-rare-earths-mine/ https://www.nsenergybusiness.com/projects/mt-weld-rare-earth... [2] https://lynasrareearths.com/about-us/locations/kuantan-malaysia/ https://lynasrareearths.com/about-us/locations/kuantan-malay... [3] https://www.mdpi.com/2079-9276/3/4/614 https://www.mdpi.com/2079-9276/3/4/614
- qwerty456127 4y agoIsn'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.
- 323 4y agoOne could argue that it's so cold in Sweden there isn't really an ecology there.
- le_zonzon 4y agoActually it is quite the reverse, environmental damage in colder area takes much longer to recover.
- dahfizz 4y agoThis is the town where the deposit was found: https://cdn.britannica.com/85/117985-050-36D70897/Kiruna-Swed.jpg https://cdn.britannica.com/85/117985-050-36D70897/Kiruna-Swe...
- jksk61 4y agoAs one could argue that the earth is flat and nothing is real.
- aliswe 4y agoGood one!
- lm28469 4y agoEarth is mostly uninhabited anyways, we can go at it!
- kzrdude 4y agoIt 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..
- bl0rg 4y ago
- edwinjm 4y agoMaybe better announce this after Sweden joins NATO?
- type0 4y agoHow so? Turkey will not allow it to join, until Erdogan is in power.
- htkibar 4y agoThey will be made to allow it. And hopefully that guys reign is nearing its end.
- FpUser 4y ago>"They will be made to allow it." I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse.
- throwayyy479087 4y agoI'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.
- FpUser 4y ago>"I've wondered how that works" Nice country you've got here. Will be a real shame if anything happens to it.
- actionfromafar 4y agoBut 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.
- ciconia 4y ago> "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.
- prox 4y agoA 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.
- pastage 4y agoWith that logic anything we do for the climate is green washing. While your thoughts are catching on, Sweden has always been a nation of mining.
- lm28469 4y ago> With that logic anything we do for the climate is green washing If the goal is to stay in our "growth forever and ever and ever" scheme then yes
- ovi256 4y ago> a whole different approach is needed Why not tell us something about this approach ? Unless it's doing nothing.
- ajross 4y agoAlmost 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.
- kossTKR 4y agoWhat effect will this have economically? GDP surge or invisible in broader scope?
- kaled54321 4y ago[flagged]
- bilekas 4y ago> No rare earth elements are currently mined in Europe This is a little crazy fact I learnt today. Given how much we use, this news hits harder.
- olivermarks 4y agoIt 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.
- sorenjan 4y agoThe find is 700 meters deep and in an already established mine more than 100 years old.
- hulitu 4y agoYes, yes, but they just discover it. /s
- joromero 4y agoAre you sure you are talking about Chile? As far as I know it doesn't have a child labor problem nor is it a big producer of rare earth metals.
- olivermarks 4y agohttps://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/14/electric-cost-lithium-mining-decarbonasation-salt-flats-chile https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/14/electr...
- aeyes 4y agoNot one sentence mentions anything close to child labor. And environmental activists are going to be activists wherever you go. What is however completely missing from the article is them to show actual numbers. If you look at SQMs environmental report you get a different picture: https://www.sqmlithium.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/SQM-Reporte-2021-ES.pdf https://www.sqmlithium.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/SQM-Re... 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.
- hnarn 4y agohttps://archive.ph/CDbRf https://archive.ph/CDbRf
- tunnuz 4y agoI have been there, as far as I know it’s already a mineral mining town. So convenient!
- pkphilip 4y agoSeems like Sweden will need more democracy very soon
- mikaeluman 4y agoVery important to start mining these to get away from dependence on questionable activities in China and Kongo. We just have to hope that the "greens" don't stand in the way as they usually do.
- rileymat2 4y agoI am ignorant on the topic, but strategical, wouldn’t it be better to wait until supply disruptions, while keeping the reserves accessible quickly.
- strangescript 4y agoIts not something you spin up over night.
- mikaeluman 4y agoAll depends but mining operations are complex to setup, not only operationally but legally. When doing this, you get the know-how and research on how to do it properly and efficiently. Plus, we want to - to the extent possible - rely more on metals than oil, so seems logical enough.
- fragmede 4y ago> 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.
- barbegal 4y agoThere are larger open-pit iron ore mines in Australia. This mine produces around 1% of global output.
- anthonypasq 4y ago1 mine producing 1% of global output seems insane no?
- daaayum 4y agoWho's laughing now Norway?
- jabthedang 4y ago[dead]
- saneehaf 4y ago[flagged]
- redsummer 4y ago[dead]
- moloch-hai 4y agoThe 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.)
- Laaas 4y agoDo you have a link, keywords, so I can read further on this topic? Thanks beforehand.
- moloch-hai 4y agohttps://arpa-e.energy.gov/technologies/projects/iron-nickel-based-supermagnets https://arpa-e.energy.gov/technologies/projects/iron-nickel-... You may ignore claims there that they are essential for batteries and wind turbines. But they are important in electric drones and robots.
- telotortium 4y agoThat's from 2012, are there any further developments?
- moloch-hai 4y agoI misremembered, the new advance is iron/nitrogen magnets. https://www.nironmagnetics.com https://www.nironmagnetics.com https://hackaday.com/2022/09/01/iron-nitrides-powerful-magnets-without-the-rare-earth-elements/ https://hackaday.com/2022/09/01/iron-nitrides-powerful-magne...
- telotortium 4y agoThanks! Submitted here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34359383 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34359383
- nielsbosma 4y agoGiven that it's in Sweden it's probably never be mined. We rather save some frogs.
- fumblebee 4y agoHow fortunate we are that silicon is so abundant.
- TheRealPomax 4y agohopefully Sweden is smart enough to go "cool. leave them there " =/
- therealdrag0 4y agoWhy?
- TheRealPomax 4y ago<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.
- therealdrag0 4y agoIs strip mining the only way? Can mining be done responsibly?
- marvin 4y agoMining 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. I'll vote for the local environmental damage.
- steele 4y agoWe must liberate Sweden with Democracy!
- fbergen 4y agoI'm sorry, does this article say which metals were discovered?
- a3w 4y ago800 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.
- michaelleland 4y agoFun 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!
- SahAssar 4y ago> It's a relatively small town (~22,0000 people) Just so no-one gets the wrong idea: there was an additional 0 accidentally added there, the real number is ~22,000.
- michaelleland 4y agoOh, thank you!
- aliswe 4y agoI thought it was indian notation (lakh, crore)
- marsven_422 4y ago[dead]
- labrador 4y agoI 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. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midnattssol https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midnattssol
- pvaldes 4y agoThey are also rich in death metal components, but sadly nobody thinks about naming their band Iced Thorium or ThugSten.
- nixass 4y agoWhile 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.
- lapama 4y agoIs there any material on how they move the city? I am interested on the technical and economic feasibility.
- ListeningPie 4y agoCompared to the mines in China, what’s the potential of this one? The article said biggest in Europe and also that currently Europe was at 0. How big an impact is expected/hoped for from this mine