Please create an account to participate in the Slashdot moderation system

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
United States

Federal Ruling Approves Construction of North America's Largest Lithium Mine (npr.org) 82

Posted by BeauHD from the red-light-green-light dept.
schwit1 shares a report from NPR: In a blow to tribes, a U.S. appeals court has denied a last ditch legal effort to block construction of what's expected to be the largest lithium mine in North America on federal land in Nevada. In a decision Monday, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the U.S. government did not violate federal environmental laws when it approved Lithium Nevada's Thacker Pass mine in the waning days of the Trump administration. Lithium is a key component of electric vehicle batteries, and despite pressure from west coast Paiute tribes and environmentalists, the Biden administration did not reverse the decision and had continued to advocate for the mine, which would be located on remote federal land near the Nevada-Oregon border.

Several area tribes and environmental groups have tried to block or delay the Thacker Pass mine for more than two years. Among their arguments was that federal land managers fast tracked it without proper consultation with Indian Country. "They rushed this project through during COVID and essentially selected three tribes to talk to instead of the long list of tribes that they had talked to in the past," Rick Eichstaedt, an attorney for the Burns Paiute Tribe, said in an interview late last month. But in their ruling, the Ninth Circuit judges responded that only after the mine was approved by federal land managers did it become known that some tribes consider the land sacred. Full construction of the mine is expected to begin in earnest this summer.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Federal Ruling Approves Construction of North America's Largest Lithium Mine More

Federal Ruling Approves Construction of North America's Largest Lithium Mine

Comments Filter:

  • Would you even need new mines?

    • Re:If you recycled old batteries (Score:4, Insightful)

      by cirby ( 2599 ) on Tuesday July 18, 2023 @09:31PM (#63697876)

      Definitely.

      If we follow the (incredibly optimistic) roadmap to widespread use of electric vehicles, we're going to need a LOT of lithium. And other elements, from nickel to cobalt to the rest of the long list that goes into that sort of tech.

      As in "three or four times as much mined per year as current production."

      So we either open a lot of big lithium mines, or we don't get that many electric cars and trucks any time in your lifetime.

      Of course, if we don't start building even more electric power generation, the cars would be a waste of time...

      • "By 2030, 1.2 million EV batteries will be available for recycling, according to the International Council on Clean Transportation, reaching up to 50 million by 2050."

        Just how many new EVs are you going to build that recycling can't cover it?

        • Re: If you recycled old batteries (Score:4, Informative)

          by ShanghaiBill ( 739463 ) on Tuesday July 18, 2023 @10:08PM (#63697936)

          Just how many new EVs are you going to build that recycling can't cover it?

          Currently, less than 1% of the cars on the road worldwide are EVs.

          So we need to produce a hundred times what recycling can provide.

          • Can you sustainably sell a million new cars with batteries recycled from the previous 10 years?

            • Re: If you recycled old batteries (Score:5, Informative)

              by Xenx ( 2211586 ) on Wednesday July 19, 2023 @12:29AM (#63698160)
              Your question is flawed. For simplicity, I'm looking at the US market. We sell around 15mil cars a year, and ~3%(it's gaining but as of 2021) of that are EV. Lets assume a 10 year lifespan for batteries, and a perfect recovery from recycling. I'm using 10 years as you mentioned it, and the expected lifespan is 10-20 years. A higher lifespan would only decrease the number available for recycling. We'll also assume the number of cars sold per year doesn't change in the next decade. As it hasn't changed too much in the last decade, it'll be close enough for this example.

              In 2031, there will be 450,000 batteries available for recycle from 2021. Rember, they're going to need to keep producing batteries, so yearly production can only calculate for the number that were sold/produced 10 years prior. Projections are estimating over 40% of sales are EV by 2030. So, in 2031, they could sell 6mil EVs. That would mean 7.5% of the batteries produced for 2031 would be from recycled lithium. That leaves another 5.5mil that have to be sourced via mining. Even if you go with a more conservative number, recycled batteries are only going to be a fraction of the total needed.

              • Your answer is excellent, but probably too complex for blue trane, given their question's stupidity.
                So, simplified: You can't create more recycled batteries than you put into the recycling process. Only allowing recycled material, you would produce fewer and fewer batteries over time (because of losses - you never recycle 100% of the material).

        • Re: If you recycled old batteries (Score:4, Informative)

          by Martin Blank ( 154261 ) on Tuesday July 18, 2023 @10:40PM (#63697996) Homepage Journal

          Annual light vehicle sales in the US alone are around 14 million per year over the last 40 years or so. Global sales over the last decade have been around 70 million.

          Then there are semis that are coming, plus light aircraft, some construction equipment, and huge quantities of powered yard gear that are currently mostly ICE that will be replaced with battery versions. Home batteries are taking off, too, and may become a very common thing as solar becomes more widespread, especially if the grid starts to look unreliable.

          • Re: (Score:3)

            by Zak3056 ( 69287 )

            Home batteries are taking off, too, and may become a very common thing

            Unlike the other things on your list, neither weight nor bulk are a big problem for these, so lead-acid or something with less energy density than lithium chemistries would be fine.

            • Sodium-ion batteries are likely to replace Lithium-ion batteries in stationary grid storage and home storage for the following reasons:

              1. Sodium-ion batteries are cheaper than Lithium-ion batteries to manufacture.
              2. Sodium is abundant and readily available.
              3. Sodium-ion batteries are less flammable than Lithium-ion batteries.
              4. Sodium-ion batteries have a 0 to 100% charging range so battery management is simpler than Lithium-ion batteries.

              A downside is that Sodium-ion batteries are bigger and heavier than L

        • Do you have any idea how many ICE vehicles there are? There's more then a quarter billion in operation just in the US and well over a billion worldwide. We're already trending toward electric vehicles being cheaper than internal combustion unless we have some sort of better materials shortage.

        • You seem to be under the UN-realistic expectation that these Lithium Batteries are 100 % recyclable. They are not.
          There is still a lot of waste in the recycling process.
          There is also the price of recycled material. As is typical for this type of thing, it's cheaper to get new.

      • Never argue with environmentali extremists. They'll...fuck it, they're dishonest morons.

      • Re:If you recycled old batteries (Score:4, Interesting)

        by skullandbones99 ( 3478115 ) on Wednesday July 19, 2023 @11:50AM (#63699290)

        Battery technology is evolving. Sodium-ion batteries are starting to be deployed in battery electric vehicles. Sodium-ion batteries could be used in car ranges up to 200 miles so Lithium-ion batteries get displaced to the long range and performance end of the BEV market. Sodium-ion is better for stationary storage than Lithium-ion in terms of cheaper cost, 0 to 100% charging range, better for the environment as Sodium is abundant, and a lower risk of fire.

        This means that Sodium-ion batteries could be dominating over Lithium-ion batteries by 2030.

        Consequently, the projections for Lithium mining drops to a manageable rate this decade. In other words, the current Lithium projections fail to take into account Sodium-ion as a being disruptor to Lithium-ion.

        Moreover, industry will transition to alternative solutions such as Sodium-ion when Lithium-ion becomes non-viable for their applications. A problem becomes an opportunity for industry.

        Of course, if we don't start building even more electric power generation, the cars would be a waste of time...

        Deploying BEV cars and vehicles and grid storage will increase the utilization % rate of existing electricity generators by reducing the daily peak demand and increasing the off-peak demand. Thereby, an existing electricity generator runs longer each day. This is ideal for renewables because the BEV charging can be remotely controlled by the electricity company to match supply against demand (opposite to the traditional demand against supply model).

        The expectation is that electricity grids will need to double in capacity with demand management to match renewable generation.

        • Sodium-ion batteries are starting to be deployed in battery electric vehicles.

          Technically true. It has happened exactly once, in February this year, in China.

          Sodium-ion is better for stationary storage than Lithium-ion in terms of cheaper cost, 0 to 100% charging range, better for the environment as Sodium is abundant, and a lower risk of fire.

          The downfall of sodium-ion batteries since the '70s has been their very poor longevity. Even today, the best they can do is 900 charge cycles before their capacity craters. Lithium-ion tolerates 3500 cycles today, and can be coaxed to last much longer with careful charge management. That same careful charge management is required to achieve 900 cycles with sodium-ion too. If you pursue 0 to 100% it's much worse.

          Sodium-ion b

    • Re:If you recycled old batteries (Score:4, Insightful)

      by omnichad ( 1198475 ) on Tuesday July 18, 2023 @09:34PM (#63697882) Homepage

      If we need more batteries than you have right now, don't forget that recycling will only maintain the current number.

      • How many batteries have we already used?

        • How many beyond a few years back can still be recovered for recycling?

          • Is the mining industry selling you the story that "none" and are you being a good mark, doing no due diligence, just trusting salesmen?

            • Re: If you recycled old batteries (Score:4, Informative)

              by omnichad ( 1198475 ) on Tuesday July 18, 2023 @11:34PM (#63698072) Homepage

              Just personal knowledge. There aren't really any laws in the US regarding lithium battery disposal and a quick Google shows only about 5% of lithium batteries being recycled.

              Vehicles use a lot of battery. It would take recycling 2,000 laptop batteries to make one car battery bank at 100% efficiency. We're not anywhere near that good at recovering materials yet.

              • Right, we aren't never going to make a significant amount of EV batteries from recycled laptops.

                It would have to come from older EVs, and there the battery packs are large and expensive enough that people reuse them as much as possible already. Not to "free market will solve it" but I think companies will start buying them out once there's a decent amount of old batteries available. If not, it could be mandated of course for manufacturers to recycle their stuff.

    • The recycling myth (Score:4, Insightful)

      by thesjaakspoiler ( 4782965 ) on Tuesday July 18, 2023 @10:31PM (#63697974)

      Just as you can't convert back lumber into trees, recycling can't get you all the precious metals back in their raw form without making another huge environmental mess of it's own.

      • Could you recycle Amazon delivery boxes sp you don't need to cut down more trees?

        • Recycling is a myth period. There are very few recycling plants in the US. All that crap was sent to China. China is not taking it in anymore, and if they do, its not being recycled. How is it profitable to send garbage across an ocean, recycle it, and send it back as new material?

  • What a mess (Score:5, Insightful)

    by hdyoung ( 5182939 ) on Tuesday July 18, 2023 @09:29PM (#63697872)
    First off, let me acknowledge that my country signed hundreds of legally binding treaties with various American Indian tribes, and we violated every single one of them. I don’t think that we fully honored a single one of those treaties. Our treatment of them was disgraceful through-and-through. And we’re never going to get better unless we wrestle with our demons.

    But most of that stuff happened in the 1800s. Are there any actual burial grounds in the area? Historically important ruins? Is it the site of an ancient Indian city that was the capitol of a tribal empire? Is there a currently-used holy site there? Or is it just another patch of earth that their religion says is sacred because “the Earth is sacred and we controlled that spot 300 years ago”?

    Maybe that sounds inflammatory. If so, very sorry. I’m just pointing out that the American Indians have a tendency to draw a box around large tracts of land and say “this whole area is holy to us”. With all due respect to their religion, that just isn’t going to work in the current day and age. I’m not defending or justifying it. But it’s the reality.

    • America didn't violate all Indian treaties. We honored our treaty with the Crow Tribe, which was facing a genocidal war of extermination by the Sioux and Cheyenne confederation. They were saved when the American Army arrived on the prairie. They united with the U.S. Army and fought with them against their enemies. Crow warriors fought and died alongside the 7th Cavalry in the Valley of the Little Bighorn. They now have a reservation in Montana that is twice the size of the Pineridge Reservation of the Lakot

      • The Crow reservation is still desperately impoverished. They havent done very well for themselves.

    • It kind of makes me laugh that people mining lithium, silica, etc have to deal with the same hostile environment as people building pipelines, hydro dams, reactors, or any and all other facets of modern human development. Indeed it is hard to believe our society has managed to advance as far as it has with so many people constantly fighting civilization.

    • Re:What a mess (Score:5, Interesting)

      by arglebargle_xiv ( 2212710 ) on Wednesday July 19, 2023 @12:36AM (#63698172)

      Iâ(TM)m just pointing out that the American Indians have a tendency to draw a box around large tracts of land and say âoethis whole area is holy to usâ.

      That's not unique to American Indians, it happens in most countries that had a primitive (stone-age or similar) indigenous society that was colonised at some point. Suddenly every location where someone wants to do something is a sacred site. A common indicator of a sacred site here is that there's a midden on it, which is a trash heap. So what's literally an abandoned garbage dump will turn into a sacred site when it's convenient.

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by thegarbz ( 1787294 )

      Is there a currently-used holy site there?

      No, but I'm sure we'll build a casino there if the mine doesn't go ahead.

  • Not that the judges or the is government cares a whit about anything sacred other than âoedevelopment,â it seems the timing of the âoediscoveryâ (by whom, anyway?) shouldnâ(TM)t matter at all.

  • "Control the coinage and the courts — let the rabble have the rest." Thus the Padishah Emperor advises you. And he tells you; "If you want profits, you must rule." There is truth in these words, but I ask myself: "Who are the rabble and who are the ruled?"
    Muad'Dib's Secret Message to the Landsraad from Arrakis Awakening by the Princess Irulan

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

  • Worth it (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Tuesday July 18, 2023 @10:41PM (#63698000)

    Sorry, but a 'sacred past' isn't worth protecting at the cost of the future. Barring a very near future massive change in battery technology, lithium mining is going to be critical to maintaining a modern standard of living.

    Especially if the land is 'sacred' because the local tribes believe massacres happened there. Anywhere people have lived there's been murder and if we didn't build on the sites of historical battles we'd have to live on rafts in the middle of the ocean.

    • Have you simply substituted lithium as your sacred fetish?

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward
        I'll make a lithium powered car and you make a faith/religious/sacred feelings powered car and let's see which is better.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Jimekai ( 938123 )
      Who controls the past controls the future: who controls the present controls the past. The present is made of light, and when we focus that true cosmic consciousness nightly until 11pm, the past spirals back through dark matter.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Jimekai ( 938123 )
        Or to put it another way: With generational life experiences, a bioengineering student could patent how to describe Ingrid reflections through the hidden variables of one's mind, to produce oscillating facets along millihertz waveforms, centering around the origin of a plasma vortex, and focusing into the past behind its zero point.

  • The mandatory electric future is going to throw a lot of sacred cows under the e-bus, this includes anyone opposed to mining.

    Lots of key minerals are on the cusp of being nationalized and so the government will force mining to be allowed where currently it's not.

    The Indian land is just the start. They are coming for you, East Coast.

  • But in their ruling, the Ninth Circuit judges responded that only after the mine was approved by federal land managers did it become known that some tribes consider the land sacred.

    Normally "But" is contrastive, but this reads as agreement. If the land managers had talked to all of the tribes before approving, they would have had their views before rather than after making their decision.

  • That there will feed us for a bloomin' month. Yes, I know, not a current movie reference and not exactly on par but ultimately, you can't mandate going green and ban every cost-effective avenue to get there. IMHO, every legal mandate should have a nullification clause that states that the law becomes null and void if it can't be implemented within one year and at a lower cost than outsourcing to a foreign country.

Slashdot Top Deals

You are always doing something marginal when the boss drops by your desk.

Close