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Worlds largest lithium deposit found in NV, a state which is 90% government owned, and we're having trouble deciding what to do. Other countries are probably go

Worlds largest lithium deposit found in NV, a state which is 90% government owned, and we're having trouble deciding what to do. Other countries are probably going like - wow, they just found a Lithium mine and they're just going to sit on it... and they are asking us to ramp up production???

nemo44x 3y ago
I mean, that's sort of smart isn't it? Wouldn't you rather use someone else's resources instead of your own for as long as you can? Additionally, the deposit becomes a strategic reserve to control prices when needed.
- jeffbee 3y ago
  It's not a strategic reserve if you don't develop the capability to timely extract and refine it.
  - vlovich123 3y ago
    Is there something unique in mining lithium that would be different from other kind of mining that America does? I feel like the capability if needed to extract and refine it within the US exists / wouldn’t be hard to develop over the course of constructing the mine, no? Also there’s a lawsuit ongoing here with Native Americans suing to stop any mining. I suspect that there’s going to be a lot of pressure to not start a mine because of how destructive they are to the environment. At the same time, I’m pretty sure the mine will happen. However, at that point you want to have the highest price of lithium possible and this is a substantial amount of lithium that would be coming on the market which would counteract any price growth.
    - jeffbee 3y ago
      > there’s a lawsuit Exactly my point. All other extraction industries in America are grandfathered in from before NEPA, before anyone gave a damn that a dead guy from the far past thought the stones were holy. America is paralyzed by its own legal system which can be wielded as a weapon by any bad-faith actor who doesn't want electrification to happen.
      - vlovich123 3y ago
        Ok now you’re switching your argument from we don’t have the capacity to build mines to NEPA. Except this has nothing to do with NEPA and the tribes weren’t getting anywhere with the lawsuits and constantly losing because of the General Mining Law of 1872. I’m not aware of any serious challenge to the construction of this mine. Sure, there may be governmental red tape (eg environmental assessment impact studies and whatnot) but most “no build” laws I believe would be at the state not federal level. Federal environmental legislation itself tends to be quite conservative. There’s an argument to be made the administrative state sets up additional regulations but in this specific case I believe the Trump administration was in favor and the Biden administration never changed course so I suspect the EPA doesn’t have any major objections (not sure if it really passes regulations or if there’s just selective enforcement in favor of the mine) [1] https://www.nevadacurrent.com/2023/12/07/nv-tribes-will-not-appeal-most-recent-lithium-mine-ruling/ https://www.nevadacurrent.com/2023/12/07/nv-tribes-will-not-...
        jeffbee 3y ago
        I don't think I switched arguments. They are the same argument to me. For example the reason that we don't have enough homes in America is not because we literally forgot how to nail boards together to make a house, it is because we gradually accreted a system where it takes 5+ years to get permission to do it. The bureaucratic capacity to begin building is key, and on the critical path of actual production.
        vlovich123 3y ago
        Sure but housing is a municipal and state level issue while this mine is on federal land. Your argument is maybe relevant to explain why it was 14 years between discovery and being granted approval in 2021 just before Biden took office. But I don’t know the timeline of how long it took to get the approval once filed - do you? Couldn’t find anything online. Your argument would be stronger about the Maine mine but this mine was approved in 2021 and afaik production is ongoing. The mining is being done by the Chinese as Lithium Americas’ majority owner is a Chinese company. GM has already invested 650M to get access to the mine. This does not seem like the right hill to argue about bureaucratic lethargy. And again, I don’t see how any of this has any relevance as to whether America has the capability to build and run a lithium mine - we do. We may not have refining capabilities (not sure - haven’t researched) but that’ll come online once we have significant mining operations. At the end of the day, you don’t want to mine too aggressively because you’ll shoot yourself in the foot economically. The US has some of the largest lithium reserves in the world. This mine alone would represent 25% of the world’s current production capacity. Ignoring environmental damage from mining (which is quite considerable), if you bring it online too quickly you’ll lose out on a lot of money which is probably a larger factor than anything else.
- wardedVibe 3y ago
  Because battery tech is evolving fast, and lithium could quickly become far less valuable...
mihaic 3y ago
Sitting on it makes sense when something could go up in price long-term. This is probably modern government inaction though.
- s1artibartfast 3y ago
  >Sitting on it makes sense when something could go up in price long-term. It could make sense in some very specific situations, but that really depends on the details.
RobRivera 3y ago
Wouldnt you want to have a motherlode hoarded when supplies dry up 100 years from now, a commodity that fuels advanced avionics?
- teaearlgraycold 3y ago
  What do you mean? If you’re referring to lithium battery powered aircraft my understanding is that will never be viable for anything but the smallest aircraft.
  - rnk 3y ago
    What does small mean? We have puddle jumpers (few miles between islands) already in service, like 5-10 miles. I expect it to creep up over time as efficiency slight increases but battery energy increases at the battery moore's law like rate it has. Prices go down and capacity/weight goes up. I agree it will have limits, I doubt I'll see long flights like 200 miles. But I see no reason it can't improve by 10% a year just like the batteries. I believe the ones in service are using lfp batteries, which are safer than lithium batteries, but also have lower energy density - and these have gone up over time too in energy density.
- 93po 3y ago
  There is virtually no way we will ever run out of lithium. It is massively abundant. It's just a matter of how much it costs to extract it. And we'll surely have fusion energy/abundant energy in 100 years and it will make the cost of extraction very close to zero.
  - wkat4242 3y ago
    Yeah it's called a rare earth mineral because the concentration in ore is so low not because there's little of it in total. It does unfortunately mean that you need to excavate a lot to mine it which is not great for the environment either (even though lithium is currently key to most renewable technologies)
    - 3y ago
scythe 3y ago
Lithium deposits come in various grades and have different associated costs for extraction. The famous deposits in Bolivia are considered cheap to exploit. The geothermal brines in England as well. Other rock sources might be harder.
iteria 3y ago
IIRC, they aren't sitting on it. They're investigating the environmental impact. Lithium is the worst because it needs a lot of water to mine, but it's only found in arid places. NV rightly asked for an investigation to see what thr impact on the water supplu would be
VintageCool 3y ago
Construction of the lithium mine at Thacker Pass began in June, and it is expected to start producing lithium by 2026. There is a (super nutty) environmentalist group and some Native Americans protesting and trying to delay the mine, but it looks like they have so far been unsuccessful at convincing judges, and blockers have been getting cleared out. I consider myself an environmentalist, so I'm a bit sensitive about descriptions like "nutty environmentalist", but... the group protesting the Thacker Pass mine is weird and I think largely repudiated by other environmentalists. I mean, they're trying to stop the transition to clean energy. These guys advocate for total deindustrialization, return to a pre-agriculture way of life, only as many humans as the hunter-and-gatherer lifestyle can support, and they're... deeply anti-trans?
- lucubratory 3y ago
  Is this Deep Green Resistance? If it is, the anti-trans thing is a combination of things, one of them being that they view hormone replacement therapy as an unnatural "big pharma" thing that can't survive in their idyllic future where the Earth has a population of 100,000, just like insulin for diabetics. The other is just that they had significant factional splits with thin voting margins, and the faction that kept the name was fighting against another faction that had some transgender members, so "Transgender people are industrialised freaks and/or rapists" was a convenient way to try to expel enough voting members of the opposing faction to seize control of the faction. A lot of the time when you see a random extreme political organisation that's nominally left-wing have a strongly anti-transgender stance, it's because at some point in their organisational past transgender people were casualties in some larger factional dispute.
- bufferoverflow 3y ago
  > only as many humans as the hunter-and-gatherer lifestyle can support They should start reducing the population with themselves, obviously

nemo44x 3y ago

I mean, that's sort of smart isn't it? Wouldn't you rather use someone else's resources instead of your own for as long as you can? Additionally, the deposit becomes a strategic reserve to control prices when needed.

jeffbee 3y ago
It's not a strategic reserve if you don't develop the capability to timely extract and refine it.
- vlovich123 3y ago
  Is there something unique in mining lithium that would be different from other kind of mining that America does? I feel like the capability if needed to extract and refine it within the US exists / wouldn’t be hard to develop over the course of constructing the mine, no? Also there’s a lawsuit ongoing here with Native Americans suing to stop any mining. I suspect that there’s going to be a lot of pressure to not start a mine because of how destructive they are to the environment. At the same time, I’m pretty sure the mine will happen. However, at that point you want to have the highest price of lithium possible and this is a substantial amount of lithium that would be coming on the market which would counteract any price growth.
  - jeffbee 3y ago
    > there’s a lawsuit Exactly my point. All other extraction industries in America are grandfathered in from before NEPA, before anyone gave a damn that a dead guy from the far past thought the stones were holy. America is paralyzed by its own legal system which can be wielded as a weapon by any bad-faith actor who doesn't want electrification to happen.
    - vlovich123 3y ago
      Ok now you’re switching your argument from we don’t have the capacity to build mines to NEPA. Except this has nothing to do with NEPA and the tribes weren’t getting anywhere with the lawsuits and constantly losing because of the General Mining Law of 1872. I’m not aware of any serious challenge to the construction of this mine. Sure, there may be governmental red tape (eg environmental assessment impact studies and whatnot) but most “no build” laws I believe would be at the state not federal level. Federal environmental legislation itself tends to be quite conservative. There’s an argument to be made the administrative state sets up additional regulations but in this specific case I believe the Trump administration was in favor and the Biden administration never changed course so I suspect the EPA doesn’t have any major objections (not sure if it really passes regulations or if there’s just selective enforcement in favor of the mine) [1] https://www.nevadacurrent.com/2023/12/07/nv-tribes-will-not-appeal-most-recent-lithium-mine-ruling/ https://www.nevadacurrent.com/2023/12/07/nv-tribes-will-not-...
      - jeffbee 3y ago
        I don't think I switched arguments. They are the same argument to me. For example the reason that we don't have enough homes in America is not because we literally forgot how to nail boards together to make a house, it is because we gradually accreted a system where it takes 5+ years to get permission to do it. The bureaucratic capacity to begin building is key, and on the critical path of actual production.
        vlovich123 3y ago
        Sure but housing is a municipal and state level issue while this mine is on federal land. Your argument is maybe relevant to explain why it was 14 years between discovery and being granted approval in 2021 just before Biden took office. But I don’t know the timeline of how long it took to get the approval once filed - do you? Couldn’t find anything online. Your argument would be stronger about the Maine mine but this mine was approved in 2021 and afaik production is ongoing. The mining is being done by the Chinese as Lithium Americas’ majority owner is a Chinese company. GM has already invested 650M to get access to the mine. This does not seem like the right hill to argue about bureaucratic lethargy. And again, I don’t see how any of this has any relevance as to whether America has the capability to build and run a lithium mine - we do. We may not have refining capabilities (not sure - haven’t researched) but that’ll come online once we have significant mining operations. At the end of the day, you don’t want to mine too aggressively because you’ll shoot yourself in the foot economically. The US has some of the largest lithium reserves in the world. This mine alone would represent 25% of the world’s current production capacity. Ignoring environmental damage from mining (which is quite considerable), if you bring it online too quickly you’ll lose out on a lot of money which is probably a larger factor than anything else.
wardedVibe 3y ago
Because battery tech is evolving fast, and lithium could quickly become far less valuable...

mihaic 3y ago

Sitting on it makes sense when something could go up in price long-term. This is probably modern government inaction though.

s1artibartfast 3y ago
>Sitting on it makes sense when something could go up in price long-term. It could make sense in some very specific situations, but that really depends on the details.

RobRivera 3y ago

Wouldnt you want to have a motherlode hoarded when supplies dry up 100 years from now, a commodity that fuels advanced avionics?

teaearlgraycold 3y ago
What do you mean? If you’re referring to lithium battery powered aircraft my understanding is that will never be viable for anything but the smallest aircraft.
- rnk 3y ago
  What does small mean? We have puddle jumpers (few miles between islands) already in service, like 5-10 miles. I expect it to creep up over time as efficiency slight increases but battery energy increases at the battery moore's law like rate it has. Prices go down and capacity/weight goes up. I agree it will have limits, I doubt I'll see long flights like 200 miles. But I see no reason it can't improve by 10% a year just like the batteries. I believe the ones in service are using lfp batteries, which are safer than lithium batteries, but also have lower energy density - and these have gone up over time too in energy density.
93po 3y ago
There is virtually no way we will ever run out of lithium. It is massively abundant. It's just a matter of how much it costs to extract it. And we'll surely have fusion energy/abundant energy in 100 years and it will make the cost of extraction very close to zero.
- wkat4242 3y ago
  Yeah it's called a rare earth mineral because the concentration in ore is so low not because there's little of it in total. It does unfortunately mean that you need to excavate a lot to mine it which is not great for the environment either (even though lithium is currently key to most renewable technologies)
  - 3y ago

scythe 3y ago

Lithium deposits come in various grades and have different associated costs for extraction. The famous deposits in Bolivia are considered cheap to exploit. The geothermal brines in England as well. Other rock sources might be harder.

iteria 3y ago

IIRC, they aren't sitting on it. They're investigating the environmental impact. Lithium is the worst because it needs a lot of water to mine, but it's only found in arid places. NV rightly asked for an investigation to see what thr impact on the water supplu would be

VintageCool 3y ago

Construction of the lithium mine at Thacker Pass began in June, and it is expected to start producing lithium by 2026. There is a (super nutty) environmentalist group and some Native Americans protesting and trying to delay the mine, but it looks like they have so far been unsuccessful at convincing judges, and blockers have been getting cleared out. I consider myself an environmentalist, so I'm a bit sensitive about descriptions like "nutty environmentalist", but... the group protesting the Thacker Pass mine is weird and I think largely repudiated by other environmentalists. I mean, they're trying to stop the transition to clean energy. These guys advocate for total deindustrialization, return to a pre-agriculture way of life, only as many humans as the hunter-and-gatherer lifestyle can support, and they're... deeply anti-trans?

lucubratory 3y ago
Is this Deep Green Resistance? If it is, the anti-trans thing is a combination of things, one of them being that they view hormone replacement therapy as an unnatural "big pharma" thing that can't survive in their idyllic future where the Earth has a population of 100,000, just like insulin for diabetics. The other is just that they had significant factional splits with thin voting margins, and the faction that kept the name was fighting against another faction that had some transgender members, so "Transgender people are industrialised freaks and/or rapists" was a convenient way to try to expel enough voting members of the opposing faction to seize control of the faction. A lot of the time when you see a random extreme political organisation that's nominally left-wing have a strongly anti-transgender stance, it's because at some point in their organisational past transgender people were casualties in some larger factional dispute.
bufferoverflow 3y ago
> only as many humans as the hunter-and-gatherer lifestyle can support They should start reducing the population with themselves, obviously