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Here is the thing. Its not about what can happen in 20+ years. Of course the US can do whatever it want's in 20 years with enough money. In 20 years lot of thin

Here is the thing. Its not about what can happen in 20+ years. Of course the US can do whatever it want's in 20 years with enough money. In 20 years lot of things will be very different. But again, there was already plenty of lithium in the US, this discovery changes nothing. The US already has competent lithium companies. The US already has good relationship with South America and Australia where the resources are coming from. But currently 90%+ of refining is in China. Controlling the 'raw' resources is mostly uninteresting in this case.

iancmceachern 3y ago
It's very similar to aluminum in this way. Aluminum mining is very different than many other minerals and metals. It's basically a processing thing. It's all about where you can get the resources to do the refining, not where the ore is. In the case of Aluminum its electricity. They call aluminum solidified electricity for a reason. That's why the biggest aluminum smelters in the world are where electricity is cheap. Same here, it's not like there is big chunks of Lithium just waiting to be picked up. It's a small percentage of dirt, and you need to process huge amounts of that dirt to extract it. That processing takes resources. Those resources are the limiting factor, not the raw ore. In the case of aluminum its electricity. In the case of lithium I gather it's also energy (to do the heating) and sulfuric acid, and the associated containment snd cleanup of such. Source: "After the ore is mined, it is crushed and roasted at 2012°F (1100°C). It is then cooled to 140°F (65°C), milled and roasted again, this time with sulfuric acid, at 482°F (250°C), a process known as acid leaching." https://www.sttsystems.com/industries/lithium-extraction/#:~:text=After%20the%20ore%20is%20mined,process%20known%20as%20acid%20leaching https://www.sttsystems.com/industries/lithium-extraction/#:~....
- reacharavindh 3y ago
  Interesting to hear about refining of Aluminium. It is a very useful metal, and if it is electricity intensive to define, I wonder if it would fit the use of excess renewable electricity. A lot of times, UK has excess wind power than they can pass on to any grids that they idle the windmills. Same with countries like Morocco that gets a lot of sun, but not enough transmission lines to push them into(for a lot of geo political reasons, building out transmission lines seem to be a lot complicated). If it could be as simple as “we produced this much aluminium from all the excess energy we had last summer! Go use it in residential construction, shelters, tools, whatever, heck even mounts for further more solar panels”
  - johncalvinyoung 3y ago
    Most industries that deal in refining or other heat-intensive processes are nearly hard to impossible to pause or stop. My understanding is that glassmaking plants, for instance, will literally solidify if they ever stop operation--making it an extremely rare occurrence. I wouldn't be surprised if aluminum refining is the same way--fighting entropy keeping things hot is a losing battle, so not very dispatchable.
    - speed_spread 3y ago
      I confirm that an aluminium refinery is not something you stop lightly. I remember something about taking two weeks to restart? Maybe more. Source, had family working at a large northern plant.
      - Filligree 3y ago
        Being able to restart it at all makes it better than a lot of industries. Many of these liquid-metal affairs depend on convection and inertia to keep the metal molten, and if it solidifies inside a pipe—well, then you don't have a pipe anymore; you have a bimetal pole. Or ceramic cladding for an iron pole, depending. Either way it's a rebuild, not a restart.
        iancmceachern 3y ago
        Totally, like magnetic induction pumps that pump molten iron, once the iron solidifies its a composite tube.
        Arrath 3y ago
        > well, then you don't have a pipe anymore; you have a bimetal pole. I love that way of describing it.
    - iancmceachern 3y ago
      That is true about float glass plants but for a different, very interesting reason. Float glass plants work by literally floating a thin sheet of molten glass on top of a giant tank of liquid tin. They have a swimming pool of liquid tin, float molten glass on top, and then push it along the tank length wise. The glass and tin is then gradually cooled until the glass is solidified. It's then cut into pieces, cooled and stacked. If the thing suddenly stops, or there is a hiccup of some kind, the thermal expansion of the glass, along with its extreme hardness (lack if strength) it will just shatter the whole mile long sheet of glass. My understanding is that it takes the better part of a year to recover from something like this. In aluminum, its basically electroplating. They basically electroplate the aluminum out of the ore onto the ingots. My understanding is that takes a few weeks to a month to recover from a similar incident.
mark_up 3y ago
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deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
conradev 3y ago
90% of rare-earth elements, but only 60-70% of lithium and cobalt (which, as said in parent, are not rare): > ... with China being responsible for the refining of 90% of REEs and 60-70% of lithium and cobalt. https://www.iea.org/reports/energy-technology-perspectives-2023/clean-energy-supply-chains-vulnerabilities https://www.iea.org/reports/energy-technology-perspectives-2...
anovikov 3y ago
It is indeed mostly uninteresting, but it is exactly what naysaysers along with paid lobbyists of the oil industry telling us - "you are trying to replace oil which is sufficient, for lithium which is fundamentally insufficient and there is nothing you can do to make it work". Glad to find out for certain that this isn't true.
safety1st 3y ago
These dismissive "oh this big event that's just occurred is uninteresting" comments on HN are always so weird. Like just because you don't see the ramifications doesn't mean they don't exist, why not keep an open mind? Lithium and lithium batteries are a critical resource. If the US can mine the lithium, refine it, and turn it into batteries all domestically, that has big geopolitical implications.
- vel0city 3y ago
  It's not really a question of if the US can though, it's a question of will. Even before this finding the US had known massive lithium reserves that were essentially just sitting there idle. The US refining a larger chunk of the market is just a question of if we want to do it or continue outsourcing that. The US definitely have competent people (or still has access to, convincing international people to work here) able to build and operate the refining side of it. There's loads of capital available to build the refineries. The US just has to choose to do it.
bettercallsalad 3y ago
> Of course the US can do whatever it want's in 20 years with enough money. Are we sure US can anymore? Last I checked we couldn’t build a high speed rail despite spending billions of dollars and lots of time. I would not be so optimistic. Even for things as crucial as defense supply chain we can’t seem to figure out how to build things at scale.
- nickserv 3y ago
  Building high speed rail is complicated because of land rights, the US is not China where the government can just order people off large swathes of land as needed. Lithium mining is more like the shale oil boom, when the US went from an net importer to a net exporter of fossil fuels, environmental damage be damned. When it's for private industry's profit, the US is quite competent at eliminating any oversight of environmental and societal concerns.
  - megaman821 3y ago
    Shouldn't we be seeing wide-scale, obvious signs of environment destruction consider how many barrels a day the US produces? Maybe it is not covered well by the news, but do you have any sources for major environmental destruction?
    - nickserv 3y ago
      https://news.stanford.edu/2016/03/29/pavillion-fracking-water-032916/ https://news.stanford.edu/2016/03/29/pavillion-fracking-wate... https://www.consumerreports.org/water-contamination/how-fracking-has-contaminated-drinking-water-a1256135490/ https://www.consumerreports.org/water-contamination/how-frac... https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/fracking-water-its-just-so-hard-to-clean https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/frack... https://www.propublica.org/article/scientific-study-links-flammable-drinking-water-to-fracking https://www.propublica.org/article/scientific-study-links-fl... https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/editorials/fracking-oil-gas-pennsylvania-health-cancer-asthma-ban-20230907.html https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/editorials/fracking-oil-gas... Etc etc

iancmceachern 3y ago

It's very similar to aluminum in this way. Aluminum mining is very different than many other minerals and metals. It's basically a processing thing. It's all about where you can get the resources to do the refining, not where the ore is. In the case of Aluminum its electricity. They call aluminum solidified electricity for a reason. That's why the biggest aluminum smelters in the world are where electricity is cheap. Same here, it's not like there is big chunks of Lithium just waiting to be picked up. It's a small percentage of dirt, and you need to process huge amounts of that dirt to extract it. That processing takes resources. Those resources are the limiting factor, not the raw ore. In the case of aluminum its electricity. In the case of lithium I gather it's also energy (to do the heating) and sulfuric acid, and the associated containment snd cleanup of such. Source: "After the ore is mined, it is crushed and roasted at 2012°F (1100°C). It is then cooled to 140°F (65°C), milled and roasted again, this time with sulfuric acid, at 482°F (250°C), a process known as acid leaching." https://www.sttsystems.com/industries/lithium-extraction/#:~:text=After%20the%20ore%20is%20mined,process%20known%20as%20acid%20leaching https://www.sttsystems.com/industries/lithium-extraction/#:~....

reacharavindh 3y ago
Interesting to hear about refining of Aluminium. It is a very useful metal, and if it is electricity intensive to define, I wonder if it would fit the use of excess renewable electricity. A lot of times, UK has excess wind power than they can pass on to any grids that they idle the windmills. Same with countries like Morocco that gets a lot of sun, but not enough transmission lines to push them into(for a lot of geo political reasons, building out transmission lines seem to be a lot complicated). If it could be as simple as “we produced this much aluminium from all the excess energy we had last summer! Go use it in residential construction, shelters, tools, whatever, heck even mounts for further more solar panels”
- johncalvinyoung 3y ago
  Most industries that deal in refining or other heat-intensive processes are nearly hard to impossible to pause or stop. My understanding is that glassmaking plants, for instance, will literally solidify if they ever stop operation--making it an extremely rare occurrence. I wouldn't be surprised if aluminum refining is the same way--fighting entropy keeping things hot is a losing battle, so not very dispatchable.
  - speed_spread 3y ago
    I confirm that an aluminium refinery is not something you stop lightly. I remember something about taking two weeks to restart? Maybe more. Source, had family working at a large northern plant.
    - Filligree 3y ago
      Being able to restart it at all makes it better than a lot of industries. Many of these liquid-metal affairs depend on convection and inertia to keep the metal molten, and if it solidifies inside a pipe—well, then you don't have a pipe anymore; you have a bimetal pole. Or ceramic cladding for an iron pole, depending. Either way it's a rebuild, not a restart.
      - iancmceachern 3y ago
        Totally, like magnetic induction pumps that pump molten iron, once the iron solidifies its a composite tube.
      - Arrath 3y ago
        > well, then you don't have a pipe anymore; you have a bimetal pole. I love that way of describing it.
  - iancmceachern 3y ago
    That is true about float glass plants but for a different, very interesting reason. Float glass plants work by literally floating a thin sheet of molten glass on top of a giant tank of liquid tin. They have a swimming pool of liquid tin, float molten glass on top, and then push it along the tank length wise. The glass and tin is then gradually cooled until the glass is solidified. It's then cut into pieces, cooled and stacked. If the thing suddenly stops, or there is a hiccup of some kind, the thermal expansion of the glass, along with its extreme hardness (lack if strength) it will just shatter the whole mile long sheet of glass. My understanding is that it takes the better part of a year to recover from something like this. In aluminum, its basically electroplating. They basically electroplate the aluminum out of the ore onto the ingots. My understanding is that takes a few weeks to a month to recover from a similar incident.

mark_up 3y ago

[dead]

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

conradev 3y ago

90% of rare-earth elements, but only 60-70% of lithium and cobalt (which, as said in parent, are not rare): > ... with China being responsible for the refining of 90% of REEs and 60-70% of lithium and cobalt. https://www.iea.org/reports/energy-technology-perspectives-2023/clean-energy-supply-chains-vulnerabilities https://www.iea.org/reports/energy-technology-perspectives-2...

anovikov 3y ago

It is indeed mostly uninteresting, but it is exactly what naysaysers along with paid lobbyists of the oil industry telling us - "you are trying to replace oil which is sufficient, for lithium which is fundamentally insufficient and there is nothing you can do to make it work". Glad to find out for certain that this isn't true.

safety1st 3y ago

These dismissive "oh this big event that's just occurred is uninteresting" comments on HN are always so weird. Like just because you don't see the ramifications doesn't mean they don't exist, why not keep an open mind? Lithium and lithium batteries are a critical resource. If the US can mine the lithium, refine it, and turn it into batteries all domestically, that has big geopolitical implications.

vel0city 3y ago
It's not really a question of if the US can though, it's a question of will. Even before this finding the US had known massive lithium reserves that were essentially just sitting there idle. The US refining a larger chunk of the market is just a question of if we want to do it or continue outsourcing that. The US definitely have competent people (or still has access to, convincing international people to work here) able to build and operate the refining side of it. There's loads of capital available to build the refineries. The US just has to choose to do it.

bettercallsalad 3y ago

> Of course the US can do whatever it want's in 20 years with enough money. Are we sure US can anymore? Last I checked we couldn’t build a high speed rail despite spending billions of dollars and lots of time. I would not be so optimistic. Even for things as crucial as defense supply chain we can’t seem to figure out how to build things at scale.

nickserv 3y ago
Building high speed rail is complicated because of land rights, the US is not China where the government can just order people off large swathes of land as needed. Lithium mining is more like the shale oil boom, when the US went from an net importer to a net exporter of fossil fuels, environmental damage be damned. When it's for private industry's profit, the US is quite competent at eliminating any oversight of environmental and societal concerns.
- megaman821 3y ago
  Shouldn't we be seeing wide-scale, obvious signs of environment destruction consider how many barrels a day the US produces? Maybe it is not covered well by the news, but do you have any sources for major environmental destruction?
  - nickserv 3y ago
    https://news.stanford.edu/2016/03/29/pavillion-fracking-water-032916/ https://news.stanford.edu/2016/03/29/pavillion-fracking-wate... https://www.consumerreports.org/water-contamination/how-fracking-has-contaminated-drinking-water-a1256135490/ https://www.consumerreports.org/water-contamination/how-frac... https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/fracking-water-its-just-so-hard-to-clean https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/article/frack... https://www.propublica.org/article/scientific-study-links-flammable-drinking-water-to-fracking https://www.propublica.org/article/scientific-study-links-fl... https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/editorials/fracking-oil-gas-pennsylvania-health-cancer-asthma-ban-20230907.html https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/editorials/fracking-oil-gas... Etc etc