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Earth Transportation

A Quandary as EV Makers Hunt for Metals: Unleash the Deep Sea Robots? (msn.com) 79

Posted by EditorDavid from the sunken-treasure dept.
"As automakers scour the planet for the metals it will take to build tens of millions of electric cars, they are deliberately taking a detour around one of the only places on earth where so much of what they need is laying around and available to be plucked," reports the Washington Post: The deep seabed is teeming with potato-sized rocks packed with the nickel, cobalt, copper and manganese EV manufacturers covet. But efforts by mining companies to harvest the nodules with undersea robots are hitting rough waters. EV manufacturers who need the minerals for their batteries are distancing themselves from the practice as diplomats and scientists sound an alarm over the ecological damage that could be caused by rushing to scrape the sea floor.

The misgivings of the auto companies are hardly assuaged by the messy, contentious deliberations over it all at the headquarters of the United Nations-chartered International Seabed Authority here. The authority, tasked with protecting and guiding development in international waters, has been in turmoil since the small Pacific Island nation of Nauru invoked a clause tucked in the Law of the Sea that could allow mining within months, likely before the full environmental impact is known or regulations are put in place....

More than 700 marine scientists have signed a petition demanding a [mining] moratorium, which is also supported by 13 countries. French President Emmanuel Macron is calling for a permanent ban.... Some car manufacturers, including BMW, Renault, Rivian, Volvo and VW publicly support a moratorium on seabed mining. GM, Ford and Daimler are, for now, keeping deep seabed materials out of their supply chain plans amid corporate concerns about environmental impact.
The Post got an interesting perspective from Ethan Elkind, director of the climate program at UC Berkeley's Center for Law, Energy and the Environment. "Auto companies don't want EV batteries associated with more destruction than they already have been," he tells them. "If ecological damage of these sensitive undersea areas comes to light after mining begins, they don't want to be a part of it."
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A Quandary as EV Makers Hunt for Metals: Unleash the Deep Sea Robots? More

A Quandary as EV Makers Hunt for Metals: Unleash the Deep Sea Robots?

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  • Mandate recycling. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Saturday April 08, 2023 @06:03PM (#63435720)

    It's far easier to ensure you have enough materials by simply recycling what you have already extracted. However, this is purely about cost. These companies don't actually care if they destroy the sea floor and everything in the sea, they just don't want to be associated with it. If they had a way to do it and pin the blame on someone else then they would absolutely go forth with this, no question about it.

    They know what a shitty job everyone has done at making things recyclable and they don't want to have to fix it or change their MO because that's not an optimal way to profit. They don't want to do the right thing, they simply don't want to be blamed for what they want to do: maximize profits at the expense of the environment.

    • Re:Mandate recycling. (Score:5, Informative)

      by NFN_NLN ( 633283 ) on Saturday April 08, 2023 @06:25PM (#63435766)

      > It's far easier to ensure you have enough materials by simply recycling what you have already extracted.

      I thought it was already cheaper to recycle "industrial" metals than it was to mine? Copper, aluminum, iron, silver, platinum are all readily recycled. (Rare earths in chips is another story because the quantities are so low).

      I believe the issue is there simply isn't enough. When you start replacing copper plumbing with plex and copper pennies with zinc it's kind of a tip off that there isn't enough to go around. That is especially the case with lithium that didn't have centuries of build up.

      • I thought it was already cheaper to recycle "industrial" metals than it was to mine?

        Not when you've locked them away inside of batteries that ignite when punctured.

        (Rare earths in chips is another story because the quantities are so low).

        Yes but we should be reusing and recycling ICs as well.

        I believe the issue is there simply isn't enough.

        Then you believe a falsehood. The problem is never the amount of the element needed, it's how easy it is to extract.

      • We need six times more copper than we have available. You can't recycle what never existed in the first place. And that is just one mineral.

        The material intensity of renewable energy is much greater than the fossil fueled version.

        So the foreign policy dilemma of the next thirty years is how to trade cat videos and superhero movies for metals. If we can't mine inside our own borders, and the ocean is off limits, then what?

        • Re:Mandate recycling. (Score:5, Insightful)

          by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Sunday April 09, 2023 @03:33AM (#63436214)

          If we can't mine inside our own borders, and the ocean is off limits, then what?

          The left needs to stand up to the enviro-wackos.

          I consider myself to be a greenie, but I also have a brain. Switching to renewables will require mining metals and building a vast new infrastructure of solar farms, wind farms, and HVDC lines. We can't do that if the NIMBYs and BANANAs have a veto.

          If mining a portion of the ocean floor enables us to avoid burning billions of barrels of oil, then so be it.

          The case for an environmentalism that builds [economist.com]

          • The usual assumption is that we need to replace all ICE by EV. From there, simple calculations show we are shifting the problem from a fossil fuel supply issue, to a mining metals/rare earth supply issue.

            Both ICE and EV emit CO2 anyway (following numbers are for Europe cars, numbers might be bigger for the US as your cars are bigger on average too):
            - ICE ~8 CO2eq tons during manufacturing, ~130g CO2eq/km
            - EV ~12 CO2eq tons during manufacturing, ~6-40g CO2eq/km depending on the energy mix of the country you

            • So even EVs will never be CO2 neutral.

              This presumes that the processes and tools that are used to gather materials and construct EVs must be inherently polluting. There is no reason to believe that is true.

              • This presumes that the processes and tools that are used to gather materials and construct EVs must be inherently polluting. There is no reason to believe that is true.

                I think you have it backward. There is no reason to believe that processes and tools used to gather materials and construct EVs (or anything for that matters) could not be inherently polluting. There is no evidence at all that it could be different, and the past 100 years of industrials processes tend to show it is indeed polluting.

                The burden of proof is on your side, if you want to believe against all observations that we can build EVs in a sustainable way, and at scale...

                • Not at all. What I am saying is that there is no technological limitation preventing these processes from being non-polluting.

                  Electric construction equipment: it's a thing [bigrentz.com]
                  Non-polluting steel smelting: it's real [slashdot.org]
                  IC construction: recently posted [slashdot.org]

                  Is there some part that you think cannot be made to be non-polluting?

                  • Thanks for your links.

                    However, those processes you mentionned are not truly "non-polluting". The transformation part is non-polluting, but if you take steel melting for instance, the mining itself, the chemical components needed to refine the ore, the trucks needed to transport all of that from one place to another... Some of it could be made electric too, like in the first link you provided (electric construction equipment), but can it be done at scale? Nothing proves it, and when you look at everything we

                    • Some of it could be made electric too, like in the first link you provided (electric construction equipment), but can it be done at scale?

                      I just provided the information you insisted upon to support the concept that it could be done without polluting and your response was to move the goal posts.

                      Good day.

                    • I didn't move the goal posts though, as my initial statement/question was:

                      if you want to believe against all observations that we can build EVs in a sustainable way, and at scale...

                      You provided interesting links showing there are some parts that could be non-polluting. Can they be non-polluting, AND at scale? That I am not sure, as you can see from the links I provided in the previous post.

                    • You provided interesting links showing there are some parts that could be non-polluting.

                      Some parts? You must mean that I pointed out that parts that are currently polluting can be non-polluting. I have successfully made my case.

                      Can they be non-polluting, AND at scale?

                      That's a different argument, one which you only brought up because I made the case that the polluting elements of EV production do not have to be polluting. I'm not even going to bother with your "at scale" claim because it's not part of the original claim (thus moving the goalposts) and it's a nebulous concept with no clear requirements. Even if I put forth a hypothet

                    • That's a different argument

                      That was the argument that I made. The fact that you only wanted to focus on one part of it is not my problem. Again, here is my initial argument to which you responded:

                      if you want to believe against all observations that we can build EVs in a sustainable way, and at scale...

                      See the "and at scale" at the end of it? There is a difference between being able to do something in a lab, or for a few thousands of EV, and being able to use it to make enough EVs to actually replace the ICE vehicles usages.

                      This is the problem with talking to people like you, you cannot accept defeat.
                      Don't bother with a response as I will not read it.

                      If this is what makes you feel better. It is funny how we often accuse others of behaviors that we exhibit ourselves.

          • The left needs to stand up to the enviro-wackos.

            I agree. There are many people who deeply fear things that can be highly helpful like nuclear power.

            If mining a portion of the ocean floor enables us to avoid burning billions of barrels of oil, then so be it.

            I don't disagree with mining the ocean floor, I merely object to the extremely destructive fashion in which they plan to do it. Frankly, they are putting "economic concerns" (we're not maximizing profit) before ecological concerns... which is idiotic considering the reason for the mining in the first place.

            I'm not saying, they shouldn't take billions of tons of material out of the ground, I'm saying they sho

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        I believe the issue is there simply isn't enough. When you start replacing copper plumbing with plex and copper pennies with zinc it's kind of a tip off that there isn't enough to go around. That is especially the case with lithium that didn't have centuries of build up.

        No, we have enough, but it started getting expensive.

        Copper got expensive because it was a useful as a conductor and our obsession with technology means we're using more wire than ever before. Copper prices soared, and copper plumbing starte

    • Re:Mandate recycling. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Smidge204 ( 605297 ) on Saturday April 08, 2023 @10:00PM (#63435980) Journal

      The problem with recycling as a solution to a shortage of materials, is it doesn't actually create more materials.

      If you're putting things like copper and cobalt and nickel into your products, you can't recycle those materials until those products reach end of life. If those products have a service life of say, 10-15 years, then you have 10-15 years until you have a chance to get that material back. In the meantime you'll need more material so you can keep building stuff.

      Automobiles are already one of the most recycled products on the planet, and electric cars are no exception. That's not going to help until enough EVs are reaching end of life and ready to be recycled though, is it?
      =Smidge=

      • The real issue with recycling is politics.

        It's very energy intensive to mine rare earth metals. But, that's not the consumer's problem because it's mined in developing countries and countries that don't care, like China. Recycling rare earths is even more energy intensive, and it has to happen where the electronics are discared; developed countries where people do care. So the problem of extraction is out of sight, out of mind, whereas recycling the developing countries would have to pay for it and r

        • The real issue with recycling is politics.

          The real issue with recycling is economics.

          Most recycling doesn't make much sense and often consumes more resources than are saved.

          When recycling makes sense, there is no need for politics since profit-seeking capitalists will do it on their own.

          • Most recycling doesn't make much sense and often consumes more resources than are saved.

            In an open system, yes. However, if we close the system so that they are responsible for the costs incurred for expensive to recycle products, you suddenly get a different answer.

            When recycling makes sense, there is no need for politics since profit-seeking capitalists will do it on their own.

            You are thinking about the problem backwards, paying for recycling at the end of a product's life. If you want to correct the problem in a market friendly manner then it would be logical to charge the cost of recycling at the time of purchase of a material or device. More difficult to recycle products will be less competitive than

      • The problem with recycling as a solution to a shortage of materials, is it doesn't actually create more materials.

        It doesn't but ensures the amount we're extracting currently is sufficient.

        If you're putting things like copper and cobalt and nickel into your products,

        Literally none of those are RE elements. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
        What we're really talking about is Neodymium.

        If those products have a service life of say, 10-15 years, then you have 10-15 years until you have a chance to get that material back.

        That 10-15 year window for EVs is just coming into view now.

        • > It doesn't but ensures the amount we're extracting currently is sufficient.

          No, it doesn't, and I just explained why it doesn't.

          > What we're really talking about is Neodymium.

          What you are talking about might be neodymium. Nobody else has mentioned it. But we don't need neodymium to build an electric car, and indeed many of them don't use any of this element at all. In fact some manufacturers have made it a point to minimize/avoid strategic materials like cobalt and rare earth materials that could bec

          • What you are talking about might be neodymium.

            That's because seafloor mining would only be cheaper if they are mining REs. We have shitloads of copper, nickel, and lithium left to mine on land.

            Exactly, which is why the waste stream barely exists to be recycled. And since the number of EVs produced today is orders of magnitude more that what was produced ten years ago, there isn't sufficient material in circulation now even if we had perfect recycling... so we need to extract more.

            We have massively improved efficiency because like you said, "minimize/avoid strategic materials" which includes both lithium, cobalt, REs and even copper. This means we can make more with the recycled older cars. Will we need more, yes and that is why we have increased mining for these materials on land. There isn't a shortage, these corporations are simply it

    • It's far easier to ensure you have enough materials by simply recycling what you have already extracted.

      Two thoughts.

      One, some greedy capitalist will figure this out and will crush the mining operations into financial oblivion while making bank. If it were the case, it largely will already have happened. If it hasn't, perhaps recycling isn't quite as easy or cost effective as you think?

      Two, we need new supplies. Even if you recycled 100% of the rare earths we've already used, that's not nearly enough for all the electric motors we're going to need. Recycling won't be adequate.

      • If it hasn't, perhaps recycling isn't quite as easy or cost effective as you think?

        LOL! Reading is fundamental.

        They know what a shitty job everyone has done at making things recyclable and they don't want to have to fix it or change their MO because that's not an optimal way to profit. They don't want to do the right thing, they simply don't want to be blamed for what they want to do: maximize profits at the expense of the environment.

    • If we want to transition to green energy, then we need orders of magnitude more batteries than we have now. But yes, I'm sure we can expand our battery capacity by properly recycling existing ones. /s

      • For EVs, we need more lithium but not for "green energy". The only thing needed from battery storage is for it to be cheap to construct and work reasonably well, not even really well. We are already mining far more lithium than before so it only makes sense to recycle that which we have already extracted.

        You may have been homeschooled but you should try grow out of it.

    • Let's actually recycle stuff instead of saying "We are recycling" yet doing nothing more than dumping it in a 3rd world country...that are now refusing that waste.

      There was a great Reuters investigation a few months back into "the recycling of sneakers" ("trainers" for the Queen's subjects out there). Reuters proved that recycling was nothing but gaslighting, a sham, a lie.

      Reuters found shoes that they planted into the recycling system were not recycling. They were reintroduced into the secondary ("used")

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by amorsen ( 7485 )

      It's far easier to ensure you have enough materials by simply recycling what you have already extracted.

      This only works once you are in steady-state, where a similar amount of batteries/motors/generators is scrapped and created.

      We are VERY far from such a state. Recycling will only cover a small fraction of the market, even if we recycle 100%.

  • We could ... (Score:4, Funny)

    by PPH ( 736903 ) on Saturday April 08, 2023 @06:12PM (#63435738)

    ... launch sea floor mining operations with a cover story that we are only recovering sunken Russian subs.

    • I can't believe this isn't +5 already!

      The modern-day analog to Howard Hughes is arguably Elon Musk. Perhaps he's already acting as the cover story for something :)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by k6mfw ( 1182893 )
      Story goes when Howard Hughes "proposed sea floor mining" with Glomar Explorer, many investors put their money into other such ventures. They figured Hughes the richest man in the world and the aviation visionary may be on to the next big thing. And man o man were these investors pissed when they found out Hughes had nothing to do with Glomar Explorer and never intended sea floor mining.

  • lack of regulation (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Chalex ( 71702 ) on Saturday April 08, 2023 @06:23PM (#63435760) Homepage

    The real issue is that the costs of dealing with various politics of regulation are very different from place to place.

    For example, there is lots of lithium in the middle of the desert in Nevada USA, but dealing with the rules around how to mine there might make it easier to instead go out in the middle of the ocean and mine from 10 miles below the water.

    For example, for EV charger installations in the US, it is now typical to have 50%+ of the costs be "soft costs", meaning costs of permitting and paperwork with the local municipality, not the "hard" costs of trenching and pouring the concrete, etc.

  • The biggest, and barely addressed, blocker of human progress and quality of life is the lack of adequate robotics to replace physical labor. We dont even have decent walking robots, let alone robots with good hand/finger dexerity. "Humanoid" robots walk with bent knees like they have a stick up their ass. We can't even make a cellphone without human labor and that's just a circuit board in a case. The day products can be made, from mining to finished products .. with minimal or zero human interaction the be

  • If it was as easy (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Saturday April 08, 2023 @06:46PM (#63435796)

    If it's a case of having robots delicately harvest promising rocks, I say go to it.

    What we need to stop is wholesale scraping the ocean floor like a giant open-pit mine.

  • But now I know they are rocks packed with the nickel, cobalt, copper and manganese

  • Best to leave those nodules alone

  • Kind of a fascinating story (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Whateverthisis ( 7004192 ) on Saturday April 08, 2023 @07:03PM (#63435836)
    So there's all sorts of interesting layers to this story.

    Geologic activity combined with oceanic activity creates these polymettalic nodules all over the world, and notably near more underwater volcanically active areas. Forgive the Nature article paywall describing this (unless you have a subscription) but you can see the figures [nature.com] which includes a map of where you can find these things. These things are just lying around [geologyin.com]; you don't really have to dig them up, but you do have to go underwater and it does of course disturb deep sea life, particularly bottom dwelling life. The GAO did a good report [gao.gov] on how this works and the cost/benefits.

    Then you get into some of the international politics here. Most island nations have very few options for economic development, but one thing they do have is a 200 mile Exclusive Economic Zone. 8 of these nations banded together into an organization called the Nauru Agreement [wikipedia.org]; they act like OPEC but for Pacific Oceanic resources; combined they control 30% of the global tuna fishing industry and are quickly moving into undersea mining. When you band together their EEZs, they cover about 40% of the entire Pacific Ocean, although given they are island nations much of the parts they cover are more productive; the parts of the ocean they don't cover are so deep as to not be useful. So these countries have a good lock on this, and is why Nauru basically forced the hand [cescube.com] of the ISA [isa.org.jm] so they can start mining this year; it's too much potential revenue for a country with limited options.

    Not much more to add; I just find this fascinating. These tiny little nations basically build their economies entirely on the back of controlling ocean resources, and the mining of these nodules is the next step for them. With a drone submarine, these things would be relatively easy to collect but it's still extremely unknown. Quite frankly I think they should move forward with it; it might force scientists to move more quickly and start developing more understanding of the oceanic floor, even though the environmental damage is a real risk.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Temkin ( 112574 )

      Small problem with this... In some cases, seafloor Manganese nodules have some really annoying properties that you don't want small countries like Nauru dealing with. The nodules "grow" and accrete the material available to them, mostly Manganese and Iron hydroxides, but other stuff gets included, and it's really dependent on what's available in the region. Unfortunately, in some cases they accrete traces of radioactive materials like Radium & Thorium. This has been known since W.S. Moore's paper in

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Dantoo ( 176555 )

        Beach sands are also radioactive as they contain thorium and uranium. Nobody gives a shit about lieing down on a beach though. And....there is no reason to give a shit either.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Temkin ( 112574 )

          Beach sands are also radioactive as they contain thorium and uranium. Nobody gives a shit about lieing down on a beach though. And....there is no reason to give a shit either.

          And half your lifetime exposure to radiation will come from the potassium-40 within your own body. Go figure...

          But we're taking about tiny island countries collecting manganese nodules and presumably refining them. The unwanted mine tailing's will stay as close to the point of origin as possible. They do not have anything like the resources to deal with this.

          • No one's talking about refining them in Nauru or any polynesian state. It's simply license fees they'll charge to others to operate mining ships in their EEZ. They'd already be on a ship at that point, the ship can take it anywhere like South America where there's already people skilled at this stuff there.

    • What with the runaway effects likely to be caused by methane release, those might be the only areas that successfully harbor complex life through the end of the current great (anthropomorphic) extinction. Fucking them up now is just humanity acting as a great filter, I guess.

  • sensible mining (Score:4, Informative)

    by ZipNada ( 10152669 ) on Saturday April 08, 2023 @11:37PM (#63436066)

    The mining rigs I've seen roll along the ocean floor and vacuum up the nodules along with whatever substrate they may have been sitting on. The solid is filtered out and piped to the surface, the rest gets flushed out the rear as a big plume of sediment. Pretty crude and highly destructive.

    The nodules appear to be just sitting exposed on the sea floor. It doesn't seem all that far-fetched to make a bot that would cruise along and pluck them without disturbing the surrounding bed of muck. I mean vital eco-environment.

  • Are the class rates located in the same place as the manganese nodules?
    And if the metals mining disturbs the methane or brings it up as by catch, how much methane will be released into the atmosphere?

  • Tesla is developing EV motor that doesn't need any rare earths.

    Even batteries that use common nontoxic elements rather than Lithium are in prototype and some have much better performance though with other issues being worked out

    Sounds like better idea to mae our stuff out of common elements that arfe easy to recycle or harmless if disposed of.

  • cover story for an effort to recover a sunken Soviet submarine:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]

    Are they looking for an excuse to blow up more pipelines, or start cutting undersea cables now?

  • Nothing is good enough for these jackasses. Stop lending them credence they don't deserve.

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