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Earth

The World Wants Greenland's Minerals, but Greenlanders Are Wary (nytimes.com) 73

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
The island has rare elements needed for electric cars and wind turbines. But protesters are blocking one project, signaling that mining companies must tread carefully. From a report: This huge, remote and barely habited island is known for frozen landscapes, remote fjords and glaciers that heave giant sheets of ice into the sea. But increasingly Greenland is known for something else: rare minerals. It's all because of climate change and the world's mad dash to accelerate the development of green technology. As global warming melts the ice that covers 80 percent of the island, it has spurred demand for Greenland's potentially abundant reserves of hard-to-find minerals with names like neodymium and dysprosium. These so-called rare earths, used in wind turbines, electric motors and many other electronic devices, are essential raw materials as the world tries to break its addiction to fossil fuels.

China has a near monopoly on these minerals. The realization that Greenland could be a rival supplier has set off a modern gold rush. Global superpowers are jostling for influence. Billionaire investors are making big bets. Mining companies have staked claims throughout the island in a quest that also includes nickel, cobalt, titanium and, yes, gold. But those expecting to exploit the island's riches will have to contend with Mariane Paviasen and the predominantly Indigenous residents of the village of Narsaq. Until she was elected to Greenland's Parliament in April, Ms. Paviasen was manager of a heliport that provided one of the few ways to get to Narsaq, a village at the mouth of a fjord on the island's southwest coast. The forces reshaping the planet -- extreme weather caused by rising temperatures, and rising demand for electric vehicles and other green technology that require bits of rare metals -- converge at Narsaq, where fishing is the main industry and most people live in brightly colored wooden houses with tar paper roofs.
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The World Wants Greenland's Minerals, but Greenlanders Are Wary More

The World Wants Greenland's Minerals, but Greenlanders Are Wary

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  • Alaska (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Alaska is an extremely rich source for minerals.

  • Rare earths are no so rare and if you have one you can process it into the others.
    The reason the PRC has a near monopoly on them is because refining them generates an immense amount of pollution.
    Since Mao can mandate that the sky is blue and the air is pure this has never been an issue for the CPC.

    • If so what does that tell us will happen to Greenland? Be kind of ironic using dirty means for "green" initiatives.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mark-t ( 151149 )

      if you have one you can process it into the others

      Yeah... through a process called fusion... and for elements with those kinds of proton counts, only during supernova explosions.

      • if you have one you can process it into the others

        Yeah... through a process called fusion... and for elements with those kinds of proton counts, only during supernova explosions.

        I think he's confused with the fact that (if I have this right) the ore tends to contain all of them, because they're chemically similar and tend to accumulate together. So ore that is rich enough in one to make it worth mining can usually also be processed to extract some of the others if the later become of sufficient value to pu

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Rei ( 128717 )

          Mountain Pass is actually back open. Main constraint is still processing. They're not expected to have a full supply chain - from ore to various processing stages all the way to magnet production - until 2025. There are other projects like Round Top which are codeveloping processing with mining. It's clear that at this point in time, just having a mine isn't enough.

        • Re:Not so much (Score:5, Interesting)

          by MacMann ( 7518492 ) on Monday October 04, 2021 @05:04PM (#61861117)

          Though the US has quite a bit of them and had some mines, the cost of meeting environmental regulations has made them unprofitable and shut them down.

          The problem as I understand it is that there's no good way to deal with the thorium. Rare earth elements tend to be in ores that are also rich in thorium, and because under federal law thorium is considered "weapon grade material" if above a certain concentration the mining tails would have to be treated like it was plutonium. That means we can't just pile up for later like China does with their thorium. In the USA it would have to be trucked off to a government radioactive waste site and put in a hole there, and guarded like it was plutonium.

          China is piling up thorium with the intent to use it for nuclear reactor fuel, something the USA should be doing too. There's nothing wrong with piling up thorium, it's not going to go critical like plutonium. It's not water soluble, and it's quite dense so it's not like it will just blow away.

          The regulations are quite stupid and there are people lobbying to get them fixed so we can mine rare earth elements in the USA at a price people would be willing to pay.

          There's a few good videos on REEs and the "thorium problem" at Gordon McDowell's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/gord... [youtube.com]

    • Rare earths are no so rare and if you have one you can process it into the others.

      Really? Oh well then.

  • Preservation over profits & consumerism? Blasphemy! What's this world coming to?

  • Like many things... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by hdyoung ( 5182939 ) on Monday October 04, 2021 @01:41PM (#61860147)
    The media hysteria is really far overblown. No, China does NOT have a near monopoly on rare earths. China simply sells rare earths 3 cents cheaper per kilogram than anywhere else. Because they don't amortize the environmental and safety costs related to the mining and refining. Rare earth refining is VERY dirty. In any case, all the businesses wring their hands and say "oh so sad there's NO WAY I could buy them ANYWHERE ELSE".

    Meanwhile, here's a map of known rare earth deposits:

    https://mrdata.usgs.gov/catalo... [usgs.gov]

    I certainly don't see any Chinese monopoly there. Do you? Anyone?

    Stop whining, cough up a few extra bucks per kilo so the refinery workers don't die immediately of heavy metal poisoning or cancer, and suddenly all those mines in civilized countries will be viable. The issue will become a non-issue.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by JBMcB ( 73720 )

      The media hysteria is really far overblown. No, China does NOT have a near monopoly on rare earths. China simply sells rare earths 3 cents cheaper per kilogram than anywhere else. Because they don't amortize the environmental and safety costs related to the mining and refining. Rare earth refining is VERY dirty. In any case, all the businesses wring their hands and say "oh so sad there's NO WAY I could buy them ANYWHERE ELSE".

      You seem to think geographic diversity matters here. See all those mines in Africa? Guess who owns, leases, runs, or has exclusive contracts with most of them?

      https://www.ide.go.jp/English/... [ide.go.jp]

      • I hear Afghanistan represents a growth opportunity. [theconversation.com] Get in before the Chinese do.

      • The world is bigger than Africa and China, last time I checked. Yes, its not quite that simple, but no China does not have a lock on rare earths. People just dont want to pay a bit extra. Boo hoo.

        • Re: (Score:3)

          by Rei ( 128717 )

          It's not about where they are; it's about who's outfitted to process them. The fact that the US could produce them (and is indeed working towards rare earth independence) doesn't mean that it has that capability now, at the moment; they're still several years away.

      • Of course China "owns" lots of stuff in Africa. But, China's owner ship rights might not be recognized by the next government that comes into power in Africa.

        China is basically doing what UK did to India. Lay railroads from cotton growing areas, mineral ores to the port, ship all raw materials out and import value added goods and just devastate the local economy completely.

        When UK did that, the Indian Maharajahs were clueless, they were fighting among themselves, they did not realize what is really goi

  • Pretty close, not so many glaciers. I'd be surprised if there weren't a commercial quantity there. But then again, Canada has a bunch of environmental laws to get through before a new mine can be started. So much that companies don't bother much with opening new mines in Canada anymore. I wonder how that would crash with Prime Minister Sock Boy's environmental narratives.

    But here is another interesting point (for some). The only country in the world that completely recognizes Canada's ownership of the far n

      • The Northwest Passage is a shipping channel, not a trading empire. There is no trade involved. There is no money for Canada unless it can monetize it.

        From 13:30 in the video this is well discussed.

        But to add to it, given that ships from nations will eventually be able to travel through it, it actually means that there would be a bigger argument that Canada doesn't own the area exclusively. Especially given that no significant Canadian communities (other than a few Innuit villages) along the route. And Canad

        • Note also that the US is sharing nuclear submarine technology with Australia now. Canada should be replacing our troubled and tiny sub fleet with something state of the art as well, but you can be sure with the Liberals in charge they (maybe, eventually) be replaced with something overpriced, unreliable, and ineffective if history is any guide.
  • Mostly idle curiosity here, but I wonder what amount of (refined/processed) rare earth minerals have been simply dumped in a "hole in the ground" without plan or any clear indication of what went where?

    As a species, we've been using landfills to manage large-volume waste since the days of the Industrial Revolution. Now obviously, it's only been as we've seen technology move towards widespread adoption of rechargeable devices that some of the rare earth minerals have become important... but at the same ti

    • Going through a landfill is like any other mining operation. You'll have to figure out how to separate the junk into components you might want, and that assumes crap that is water soluble hasn't filtered into the water table to parts unknown.

      • It is actually quite different from any other mining operation. Mines normally exploit mineral deposits that develop naturally and have well understood compositions based on how they developed. The predictable chemistry and patterns of occurrence are used to establish processing systems that use fairly simple chemical processes to concentrate the desired elements.

        The predictability of landfill composition is more limited and you must deal with an enormous array of stuff. Also, for most stuff you might want

        • Agreed that the "ore" is of low quality. And yes there is variance. But sufficient study of landfill strata based on date of disposal should yield some fairly accurate predictions about composition of landfill material. You know there's going to be methane pockets, for example.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Rei ( 128717 )

      rechargeable devices that some of the rare earth minerals have become important.

      Rare earths are used in magnets, not batteries.

  • Data point (Score:3)

    by ElizabethGreene ( 1185405 ) on Monday October 04, 2021 @03:30PM (#61860657)

    China has a near monopoly on these ...

    A slight elaboration on this is in order.

    China has a near monopoly on extracting these minerals. Deposits do exist in other countries, but mining is messy. China is the only country willing to extract them at large scale.

    example: There is an abundant rare earth mineral deposit in the middle of the Sheephole Valley Wilderness area [usgs.gov] in California.

  • Switch maps (Score:3)

    by Subm ( 79417 ) on Monday October 04, 2021 @04:15PM (#61860867)

    Greenland should get the world to stop using Mercator projection maps. They'll see there's less to plunder and leave them alone.

  • Greenland has already quite a few invasive installations that have become environmental disasters, or are at risk of becoming even worse.

    These include a few mines, but most of all: US military bases that USA has refused to clean up.
    There are fears of there being abandoned nuclear installations under the ice that are at risk of getting exposed as the warming progresses.
    (and the warming is faster in the Arctic than the global average)

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