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Lithium discovery in US volcano could be biggest deposit ever found
(www.chemistryworld.com)
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this post was submitted on 10 Sep 2023
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The volcanic crater is found along the Nevada-Oregon border.
The Lithium Americas Corporation “expects to begin mining in 2026. It will remove clay with water and then separate out the small lithium-bearing grains from larger minerals by centrifuging. The clay will then be leached in vats of sulfuric acid to extract lithium.”
All subsequent waste products will then be released into local waterways via "unfortunate accident" on a regular schedule, to maximize shareholder profits.
Sigh.
Sulfuric acid is one of the few chemicals that is bad to have around and can be controlled. The very first wet scrubbers to be designed (per WW2 tech here) were for dealing with it. Add water plus a calcium base like Diatomaceous earth and you get harmless sulfur-calcium salts. There are almost no local waterways and mining is very regulated.
Maybe be happy for once that more mining will be happening in a country that bothers to regulate environmental stuff and is closer to the consumer market.
I legitimately am, this is a win, especially since the deposit is in an entirely different economic and political sphere of influence from where all the other lithium is.
It's just so easy to assume the worst when it happens so often.
It doesn't happen often. You hear about it happening often. Observation bias. No one reads an article "everything fine at the mine". No, they read an article about a disaster from the 1970s caused by a scumbag.
A lot of freaken work and regulations has gone into make sure chemical plants don't explode and mining doesn't mess things up for decades. And no one gets credit for that. Any site this big is going to have at least monthly inspections there from the local DEP. Taking soil samples, reviewing logs, checking for the very things you mentioned like getting into waterways. Which again, desert.
The biggest environmental dangers I am betting they are going to have is a fight over city water and of course the normal greenhouse gas emissions that all of us are going to ignore.
On the bright side, that area is an endoheric basin, so at least it won't go all the way downriver to the ocean. It'll just, uh, build up in salt flats/dry lake beds instead, which obviously won't cause any problem at all.
Well, that's good news 🤣
Like a mini Aral Sea.
LoL. I'm so glad it will be accidental