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Huge phosphate rock deposit discovered in Norway
- ren_engineer 3y agostuff like this really makes it seem like simulation theory might be real, there have been people warning about phosphate shortages leading to food crisis for years and even as recently as a few months ago, then Norway finds this massive supply https://phys.org/news/2023-02-phosphorus-shortage-affect-worldwide-crop.html https://phys.org/news/2023-02-phosphorus-shortage-affect-wor... https://www.wired.com/story/the-worlds-farms-are-hooked-on-phosphorus-its-a-problem/ https://www.wired.com/story/the-worlds-farms-are-hooked-on-p... Norway also seems to be the luckiest/most blessed nation on earth, now they struck another gold mine to go along with all their oil
- standardUser 3y agoThe world is very large and we have a detailed accounting of what, maybe a fraction of one percent of it? It would be FAR weirder if we stopped discovering new things in a mostly unexplored planet.
- ryan93 3y agoYou are exaggerating. but there is definitely more to find. some of the largest mines are just like the first place they started digging without any modern exploration techniques. Mostly doesn't matter. humans will run out at some point of critical materials.
- standardUser 3y agoDeepest human-made hole is about 40,000 feet and the Earth's crust is about 160,000 feet. We've barely scratched the surface, literally.
- flangola7 3y agoHow do you intend to reach 100,000 feet, much less conduct large scale mining?
- standardUser 3y agoHow did people 200 years ago expect to reach 40,000 feet? Have a little perspective.
- flangola7 3y agoWe don't have 200 years to figure it out. I'm not the one that lacks perspective here. Hard problems also often take over 200 years to solve, we can't rely on the dogmatic belief that we will somehow figure it out. A failure to plan is a plan to fail.
- saiya-jin 3y agoGood luck getting deeper, temperatures rise, everything becomes much harder, thus costly. You can't do any serious extraction of solid minerals, only gasses and liquids (oil) are possible in certain situations
- standardUser 3y agoYou could craft that same type of argument about literally thousands of technical challenges from 200 years ago that are now thoroughly solved. Is this one super extra special?
- xkcd1963 3y agoThis is simply not true as materials don't disappear.
- simmerup 3y agoPeople are investing money to find solutions to the problems we face. Seems reasonable that with money comes results
- makx 3y agoThis, and also: all the discoveries that don't immediately help solve our problems rarely make the news, or if they do we gloss over them and forget them immediately.
- renewiltord 3y agoDoesn't that seem that perhaps the people warning about crises are the ones who are wrong?
- YurgenJurgensen 3y agoSeems like this is warnings about crises working exactly as intended. If someone hears a fire engine siren and as a result doesn't pull into a road and get hit by a fire engine, what you're saying is that sirens are pointless because nobody was hurt?
- renewiltord 3y agoI don't think the causative direction is like that. I think the market responded as it did. People didn't find new oil fields because experts said there will be Peak Oil.
- mcpackieh 3y agoVital demand for a resource caused people to go looking for the resource. Attributing this discovery to 'the simulation' or benevolent gods seems silly to me.
- hospitalJail 3y agoCan't wait for the redditors to say 'we need to be more like Norway'.
- soligern 3y agoI would definitely say the Arabs are more blessed. They have massive oil reserves, favorable warm weather and a central location in the world to sell that oil. Norway is a frozen wasteland in the north.
- csomar 3y ago> favorable warm weather I don't know about that.
- kwhitefoot 3y ago50°C in the shade is not 'favourable warm weather'. And Norway is not a frozen wasteland. Where I live in Norway is currently rather warmer than where I am visiting family in southern England. And the average annual temperature is 13°C, hardly a frozen wasteland.
- mcpackieh 3y agoThere's too much sand there. It's coarse and gets everywhere.
- soligern 3y agoI’ll take clean, sterile sand over disgustingly cold snow and clouds of biting insects any day.
- Cthulhu_ 3y agoThere's loads of untapped resources still, but it costs money to find & extract it; it's a cost / benefit tradeoff, or an investment / risk tradeoff. Nothing weird about it.
- andrewstuart 3y ago“Huge old pile of bird shit found, everyone rejoices.”
- nabla9 3y agoThose lucky sons of bitches in Norway. 1. Huge oil and gas resources 2. Huge hydropower resources. 96 per cent of all electric power generation comes from hydropower. 3. Gigantic phosphate deposits. 4. Sensibility to avoid resource curse and invest excess money. 5. Fjords designed by Slartibartfast
- fulltimeloser 3y ago6. https://www.tasteatlas.com/map-of-european-cuisines-with-ratings https://www.tasteatlas.com/map-of-european-cuisines-with-rat...
- royjacobs 3y agoI'm fairly sure Italy would happily trade some pasta-based dish for unlimited hydroelectric energy.
- manuelmoreale 3y agoAs an Italian I have my doubts ahah
- benj111 3y agoTinned spaghetti hoops?
- fastball 3y agoItalians will let you take their pasta over your dead body.
- intothemild 3y agoAs an Italian living in Norway.... No
- avgcorrection 3y agoThis is because Jamie Oliver hates brunost.
- rmm 3y agoGreat news, but just to tone it down to reality a bit. The current drilled orebody is only down to 400m and are only resources now and not fully reserves (important distinction in mining). The massive numbers they are talking about are extrapolating drill results down to 4500m, which is pretty crazy. But let’s say the orebody does extend to depth at regular grades, that would be the deepest mine in the world, and there are a lot cheaper options. (I’m a hard rock mining engineer)
- underdeserver 3y agoWhat are the cheaper options?
- rmm 3y agoWestern Sahara but realistically it’s all morroco. They have largest reserves now and at the price to mine 4500m deep underground, it would turn a lot of resources in morroco to reserves. I did feas work on a project in Tunisia a decade ago that was quite substantial but economics marginal and couldn’t get it over the line due to then prices of phosphorous and the ability of morroco to just ramp up production (actually should probably dust it off). There are lots of resources like this that would become economical faster. Supply/demand and all that. That said the initial ore body may be great and 50 years from now who is to say
- pedalpete 3y agoThis is what I was curious about, thanks for clarifying. But based on the 400m orebody results, do you have any suggestion for how much phosphate this "rock" might contain at reasonable mining depths based on todays technology? I'm curious if this could turn out to be enough for 20 years, or a drop in the ocean. Assuming it's enough for 20 years, and we estimate batteries will continue to get more efficient, does the 20 years in todays technology end up being 50 years?
- rmm 3y agoNot with just that info. Lot of what I quickly found is all press release marketing fluff. You need the % phosphorus and a bunch of other variables. Battery tech needs little phosphorous now, in terms of overall percentage and even with overly optimistic battery estimates I don’t think it will get to any more than 10% of demand. It’s mostly about fertiliser/agriculture.
- whiplash451 3y agoGood thing this did not happen to a country that was already sitting on billions of $ of gas exploitation. Fairness always wins in the end. Oh wait…
- benj111 3y agoIt's a democracy and has a strong rule of law. At least the whole population will be seeing the benefit, not just the corrupt few.
- Fervicus 3y agoThose two points are true for most western countries today and yet only a corrupt few reap the benefits.
- midoridensha 3y agoI think you're overestimating the strength of the rule of law in those western countries.
- namaria 3y agoLol look up Dutch gas fields.
- hju22_-3 3y ago[flagged]
- dzhiurgis 3y agoI suspect it's same here in New Zealand. It's absolutely impossible for incumbent company to get into big gov or enterprise scale projects. Everyone knows each other. In Health everyone are even from same school. Hundreds of millions are spent on software licences that no one uses.
- deciplex 3y ago> At least the whole population will be seeing the benefit, not just the corrupt few. Indeed. Had this happened in a country more vulnerable to regime change their government may have been couped already.
- rgmerk 3y agoI remember reading part of a PhD thesis about the implications of “peak phosphate” more than a decade ago. (Not my area of expertise, but the guts of it weren’t particularly difficult to understand). My takeaway (though not the author’s) was that it’s way down the list of things to worry about. Basically, the cost of phosphate is such a miniscule component of the cost of food that it would make essentially no difference if we had to mine lower-grade sources of it. Higher prices might also reduce the amount wasted as runoff, which also would reduce the environmental damage caused by fertiliser use, something we’re going to have to take more seriously at some point.
- pfdietz 3y agoPhosphate in soil is mostly in fixed, unavailable forms (like ferrous phosphate). Prolonged application of phosphate fertilizer would cause their accumulation. At that point, I think it would be worthwhile to look for ways to tap into that store, for example Phosphate Solubilizing Bacteria (PSBs), or plants genetically modified to perform the same function in their roots. Phosphate removed from fields by erosion or in plant matter would have to be replaced at some point.
- pfdietz 3y agoJust 10-20% of applied phosphate fertilizer is taken up by plants. The rest gets lost in these insoluble forms. So there's a lot of room for improvement here.
- mech7654 3y agoSo for NPK fertilizer, I now know that nitrogen is manufactured cheaply with the haber-bosch process, and we've got a lot of phosphate available. Do we also have plenty of potassium around? i.e. enough to realistically never worry about "peak potassium".
- adrian_b 3y agoSea water contains huge amounts of potassium that is easy to extract. The most abundant rocks also contain huge amounts of potassium, but which is expensive to extract. Neither in nature nor in agriculture potassium is ever a limiting nutrient like nitrogen and phosphorus.
- Der_Einzige 3y agoFun little thing to mention about Phosphate mining. A tiny island country called Nauru (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nauru https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nauru) got super rich off of Phosphate mining which kept going into the 1990s. This led their government to invest in many projects abroad, including what may in fact be the worst large-scale well funded musical ever. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonardo_the_Musical:_A_Portrait_of_Love https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonardo_the_Musical:_A_Portra...
- EdwardDiego 3y agoTo be fair, most of the phosphate was mined by colonial powers before independence. I think at its peak the trust had $1 billion in investments. But, yeah the majority of that wealth was extracted by Australia before independence. Not that any of that excuses the grossly wasteful spending. But the money's gone, the phosphate's gone, and most of Nauru looks like that crazy bit of Madagascar: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsingy_de_Bemaraha_National_Park https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsingy_de_Bemaraha_National_Pa...
- a_bonobo 3y agoNow Nauru is getting that money back via Australia's off-shore detention program! A bipartisan program by previous governments that spends hundreds of millions on private security companies to run private prisons for asylum seekers who tried to get to Australia by boat. (likely illegal under international law?) https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/nov/07/cost-of-australia-holding-each-refugee-on-nauru-balloons-to-43m-a-year https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/nov/07/cost-... >By August 2021, the number of asylum seekers and refugees held on the island had fallen nearly tenfold, but the costs of running the offshore program remained broadly static. In that month, there were 107 refugees and asylum seekers on Nauru at a cost to taxpayers of $464,486 a month for each person, or more than $15,000 a day. Imagine getting paid $15,000 per day... I guess Nauru is getting its P money back.
- heywhatupboys 3y ago> companies to run private prisons for asylum seekers who tried to get to Australia by boat. (likely illegal under international law?) It isn't a prison if you are free to leave........
- kepler1 3y agoNot wanting to stray into too culturally sensitive topics, but I am glad to see a find like this land in a country like Norway. Maybe it's something about the cold weather/caution as a people, Protestant/Lutheran/Calvinist cultural restraint, or factors along those lines, but I have relatively more confidence that this country will not squander and flush the money from this resource down the toilet like some other countries. (at least under the country's political leadership that has given an observable track record with the oil resource as an example) Maybe it's that they can manage the expectations of their people not to suddenly want to get rich and live off of mineral resources and nothing else. Like some other countries have fallen into the trap of.
- Animats 3y agoNorway may be able to mine phosphate without making a huge mess. Unlike Florida [1] and Nauru.[2] [1] https://eros.usgs.gov/media-gallery/earthshot/phosphate-mines https://eros.usgs.gov/media-gallery/earthshot/phosphate-mine... [2] https://interestingengineering.com/culture/phosphate-mining-ruined-island-nauru https://interestingengineering.com/culture/phosphate-mining-...
- hospitalJail 3y ago>Protestant/Lutheran/Calvinist While I'm happy we got Freedom of Religion from the movement, if you look at the actual belief system its regressive(dogmatic interpretations of 'holy' text). I find myself in the Catholic camp when I study philosophy. It aligns more with what the Deists think God would want if he was interested in Earth/Humans. (Do good vs believe in 1 holy human) Still happy we got Freedom of Religion so I can be a skeptic. I can't help but roll my eyes that the perfect, all knowing, all powerful God doesn't care if we are good, he want's us to believe 1 human is the son of God. Deism is so much easier to rationalize.
- getwiththeprog 3y agoHaving studied philosophy, I find myself in the philosopher camp.
- ericls 3y agoDon’t sell to China and maybe not any other county
- petre 3y agoWhy not? Sell batteries to them at a premium and profit. If there's something nice to do in Norway and Denmark, regardless of weather, it's fishing and eating fish.
- Cthulhu_ 3y agoIsolationism isn't benefitting anyone anymore; if anything, mutual dependencies have kept the world at relative peace for a long time.
- kragen 3y agofor context here, phosphorus is the 11th most common element in the earth's crust https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth%27s_crust#List_of_abundance_by_element https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abundance_of_elements_in_Earth... making up 0.1% of the crust. phosphorus and oxygen be sittin' in a tree, k-i-s-s-i-n-g, so virtually all of it is in the form of phosphate (PO₄), which is 33% phosphorus by mass, so the earth's crust is about 0.3% phosphate. the most common phosphate is apatite, which is ubiquitous in igneous and metamorphic rocks. you can find phosphate literally anywhere on earth; there is no danger of any country monopolizing world phosphate supplies if the crust is 3 × 10¹⁹ tonnes then phosphate is about 10¹⁷ tonnes of it, and phosphate rock a slightly larger amount this article says the humans use 50 million tonnes of phosphate a year, much of which ends up in the oceans. at this rate, in 18 million years, the humans will have consumed 0.001% of the phosphate in the crust but being able to find phosphate isn't the same thing as being able to mine it profitably, because, thanks to modern shipping, another phosphate miner halfway around the world can sell phosphate to your local customers at almost the same price they can sell it to their own neighbors. if they are working from more concentrated phosphate deposits, their price will be lower, and you'll lay off the miners and declare bankruptcy so what's going on here is that local mining companies are fishing for government subsidies with rhetoric about sovereignty based on a completely imaginary phosphate shortage crisis i'm not a hard rock mining engineer, just interested in questions of natural resources
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- hkt 3y agoThat is a really interesting response and I hadn't considered any of it. TIL. Relating to this: > so what's going on here is that local mining companies are fishing for government subsidies with rhetoric about sovereignty based on a completely imaginary phosphate shortage crisis Is this kind of the same as the occasional panics about rare earths? My understanding is that they're not really that rare but the environmental impacts and costs of extraction are both high enough that in essence, nobody wants to bother for so long as it remains someone else's problem and the materials remain available.
- erikbye 3y ago- First findings go back to at least 2012 - Amount of minerals worth discovered so far approx. $33 billion - Drilled to 2200 meter in 2020 and confirmed extension of orebody - Mining already takes place in the surrounding area, for ilmenite, part of the same orebody https://norgemining.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Norge-Mining_ResponsibleBusinessReport2020_Final_WEB.pdf https://norgemining.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Norge-Min...
- bartislartfast 3y agoThe greenwashing here is burning my eyes > A huge phosphate rock deposit discovered in Norway contains enough minerals to meet the global demand for batteries and solar panels for the next 100 years, according to the mining company that controls it. 90% of mined phosphates are used for fertilizer and pollution of waterways with it is a growing problem, but the mining company PR firm is telling us about electric cars and solar panels. This is similar to discovering a massive new oil field, and telling the world that it'll help with electric cars because they all have plastic components.
- hfkwer 3y agoWhat else would you expect from a petromonarchy?
- zapdrive 3y agoThank God they didn't being Greta Thunberg to do the press release on their behalf.
- hanche 3y agoI know you’re joking, but all the same I might point out that she’s Swedish, not Norwegian.
- rich_sasha 3y agoCould be worse. Pollution is a huge problem, but climate change is literally an existential problem. I'd trade a bit of the former for less of the latter.
- bartislartfast 3y ago> Pollution is a huge problem, but climate change is literally an existential problem 100% agree. If there's a choice between a small amount of pollution vs a large payoff to cut carbon emissions, it's definitely a good idea. For instance, any pollution that comes from the production of solar panels and batteries is probably something we should accept, because the payoff is a large cut in emissions. But we're not talking about pollution directly in the cause of cutting emissions here. We're talking about separate pollution which is avoidable and has nothing to do with cutting emissions. The point is, if we use all of this phosphate to make better batteries it would be great and have a good impact on emissions, but most of it will be spread on the ground and let run into rivers because that is the main industrial use of phosphates
- pfdietz 3y agoSome phosphate deposits are high in cadmium, to the extent that cadmium contamination of the derived fertilizer (and the fields it's applied to) is an issue. I wonder how much cadmium is in this deposit. I also wonder if it could be mined by dissolving it underground with acid, rather than mining it and dissolving it at the surface.
- 1letterunixname 3y agoThis is fortuitous as we reached peak phosphorus in 2016, and should also be capturing and recycling it if we want to continue producing food cheaply and efficiently.