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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 wi
by qwerty456127 4y ago
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.
- 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 agoYep, it's possible to argue completely incorrect things.
- belorn 4y agoThe 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.
- Jensson 4y agoThey 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. https://www.highnorthnews.com/en/norwegian-swedish-cooperation-rare-earth-metals-marks-beginning-something-new-europe https://www.highnorthnews.com/en/norwegian-swedish-cooperati...
- mcv 4y agoThis 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.
- dsign 4y agoGasp! We must preserve the asteroids, none of that human destructiveness over there! /s
- papito 4y agoHumans 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.
- TeMPOraL 4y ago> Humans will always $hit where they eat 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.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- mcv 4y agoIn 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.
- Tangurena2 4y agoThe 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.
- alkonaut 4y agoIt 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.
- olivermarks 4y agoIt's important to understand that electrification does not reduce pollution.
- alkonaut 4y agoDepends on two things 1) what is being electrified - it’s not just about cars and 2) how the power is generated.
- olivermarks 4y agoAlso 3) the pollution created by unrecyclable end use electronic devices of all sizes.
- kwhitefoot 4y ago> unrecyclable end use electronic devices Surely most electronic devices are recyclable as far as the metallic parts are concerned.
- olivermarks 4y agohttps://www.iea.org/reports/the-role-of-critical-minerals-in-clean-energy-transitions/executive-summary https://www.iea.org/reports/the-role-of-critical-minerals-in...
- standardUser 4y agoElectrification is the only way to curtail climate change.
- keewee7 4y agoMaybe 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.
- culi 4y agoWhat 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
- scythe 4y agoMining generally pollutes in relation to the price. You can usually immobilize anything by conversion to sulfides and carbonates, but that may not be economical.
- daneel_w 4y agoIt 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".
- anononaut 4y agoGold, silver, and platinum are largely by products of zinc mining etc in recent decades.
- Eisenstein 4y agoFun fact: 0.16% of global zinc mined in 2020 went to making US pennies. Source: 7,596,400,000 pennies made @ 2.5g each divided by 12.1Mt worldwide zinc production.
- kwhitefoot 4y agoSurely it is time to abandon the US cent. They have been next to worthless for many years.
- TeMPOraL 4y ago> 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.
- dewey 4y agoNot really sure what you are trying to say here. 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/ 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.
- tooltalk 4y agoYes, 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.