[swalling]

We are also behind in having the minerals necessary to build batteries no matter where the factory is.

“given existing reserves, it is possible for the United States and its key partners to significantly friendshore production. However, given current production in democratic countries, it would require an unprecedented build-out of the mining industry to achieve 2030 clean energy targets.”

https://carnegieendowment.org/2023/05/03/friendshoring-criti...

[tiedieconderoga]

It seems like wealthy nations often leave resources in the ground until they really need them.

Mining, refining, logging, chemical processing...these are dirty businesses. Why muddy up your local communities and reduce your future reserves, if one of your trading partners is willing to do it on their turf?

It does mean short-term pain if capacity and expertise need to be built out quickly, but that's the price of admission.

[jollyllama]

Can you offer any examples? When I think of the wealthy nations like the USA or UK, they mined and extracted much of their resources earlier than anyone. They just often did it in the less wealthy parts.

[zdragnar]

Mines in the US are frequently delayed or prevented from opening entirely due to environmental lobbying pushback. We've got plenty of resources we could be tapping into, but cheap overseas competition plus strict pollution controls and environmental lobbying red tape on top of that makes it a very long, expensive investment to see a return on.

For example, the Interior Department instated a 20-year moratorium on renewing any leases for mining operations near the boundary waters in northern Minnesota. Understandably, the consequences of copper sulfide ore polluting the waters is severe, but the 20 year ban is nonsensical. The dangers won't be any less in 20 years. We aren't exactly 20 years away from magical technology that will make it safe. It's a purely arbitrary number meant to appease environmental groups without having to pay out to buy the land and permanently ban resource extraction.

For what it's worth, I'm not really in favor of the mines, per se, just irked that we keep playing games. Either do environmental reviews and let miners mine when they have leases to do so and appropriate safeguards in place, or don't. A 20 year moratorium just sets up political groups (mining and environmental lobbies) to suck up more cash donations and sets up another political fight down the road.

[yodelshady]

> Mines in the US are frequently delayed or prevented from opening entirely due to environmental lobbying pushback.

They are now, yes. I believe the point is, that's a relatively recent development. (And surely, from an environmental perspective, having all the damage in one area is good? Baotau isn't getting any better. By the same token, it's not getting worse.)

Side note but, with politeness, one enormously frustrating part of arguing with Americans is you really don't realise just how many problems are trivial to solve when you have US-level natural resources at your disposal. The social elements are still there, I'm not claiming every US problem is trivial, but the resource access element just isn't. You go to an electronics conference, you're researching some new PV tech, so are your US colleagues, but they've got hundreds of hectares of land that's perfect for the application and worthless to everyone else. And that happens in almost every field. Good for you, but JFC, that's not a universal experience.

[zdragnar]

If you'd seen my comment history, I have actually advocated for more mining in the US in the past. The particular potential mine I mentioned happens to be next to a geographically massive and pristine watershed, which is also connected to lake Superior. So, a massive source of copper and nickel is available to us, if only we want to risk permanently polluting one of the world's largest freshwater lakes and pristine habitats.

This is in the same state with suburban areas that have water poisoned by water gremlin and 3M, so you might understand that people are a little sensitive to the prospect of a foreign-owned mining company (twin metals) wanting to set up a mine.

We do need to stop relying on cheap, unethical foreign resource extraction, and that means the environmental lobby needs to become more realistic about not trying to stop every single project. By the same token, resource extraction isn't going to get investment if doing it right means nobody will buy the results at a massively inflated price point, so we need to be wary of new operations claiming to do something obviously very hard while competing with cheap overseas stuff.

Unfortunately, as I mentioned at the end of my first post, there is a TON of money flowing into lobbying groups on this topic. So long as the fight exists, they keep getting money. Actually solving the problem in a reasonable way means the money stops flowing to these people.

The only actually easy methods of solving this would violate our government's constitution, so we're left with muddling through.

[jollyllama]

Yes, that's in essence what I was saying. Think back 100, 200 years and the most mined nations were probably the wealthiest.

[tiedieconderoga]

Well, uranium could be an example. The US doesn't mine much of it anymore - instead, they buy most of what they need from Russia. There's still plenty of it out there, but if you ever stumble across an old mine out West, there'll (hopefully) be a lot of signs warning you not to drink the water or spend much time in the area.

There has been a lot of coal and oil extraction, clear-cutting, etc. all around the world. Sometimes because the materials weren't commodities yet, sometimes because it's cheaper to produce locally. But as land and labor get more expensive, so does local production.

[stubish]

Australia is wealthy because it is digging up its coal and iron and gas and exporting it.

[whinenot]

It's already getting built out. The Salton Sea is being rebranded as 'Lithium Valley'. [0]

[0]https://www.cbsnews.com/news/lithium-extraction-california-e...

[pengaru]

Is lithium even the most problematic raw material the batteries need in high volume?

I thought the actual problematic ingredient was in the anode/cathode, not the electrolyte, Cobalt rings a bell.

Edit:

"Lithium is one of the most common elements in the universe, we've got lithium pretty much everywhere" ... "you could get lithium from sea water" ... "it's called lithium ion but that's like the salt in the salad, do you like salt in your salad? sure, but it's not made of salt" - elon musk on jre #1609

[culi]

That's a really silly take. It's like asking why nitrogen is such a limiting growth factor in almost every plant despite being so common in the air.

We're a long ways off from being able to harvest lithium from, e.g., saltwater in a way that doesn't require more energy put into it the energy that's saved by the technologies made with the mineral. There's only a few places where it makes even economic sense to mine lithium and the environmental effects are pretty devastating. Chemicals like hydrochloric acid nearly always contaminate nearby groundwater used by people and more-than-humans alike. Even in Australia where it's mined with more traditional methods from a rock, toxic chemicals are still required to process it into a usable form

[pengaru]

The impression I have is that since lithium is everywhere, this is just a matter of the extraction industries scaling up and maturing for that specific mineral. There will be a lot of players, the price is destined to plummet as long as it continues being the mass-market electrolyte of choice.

Unlike with something like a rare earth metal, which no amount of extraction optimization can put within your borders if your continent is geologically unlucky.

[kccqzy]

Cobalt isn't used any more in mass-market, cheap EVs. Carmakers have begun to switch to lithium iron phosphate rather than lithium nickel manganese cobalt oxides.

[culi]

Yes but this is more of a corner being cut. LFP batteries have lower energy densities and lower operating voltage. Also it's being spearheaded by only a handful of companies. Tesla and BYD alone account for 68% of LFP battery usage

[kccqzy]

That's not a corner being cut. I said it's being targeted at mass-market cheap EVs. It's just market differentiation. People who don't want to pay for "long range" EVs get cheaper batteries; what's wrong with that?

[culi]

Fair enough. My point is that it's still an untested technology. Tesla drivers are reporting stuff like as much as 10% less range due to these batteries

[sidewndr46]

is anyone extracting commercially significant volumes of minerals from the Salton Sea yet?

[whinenot]

Looks like 2024, at the earliest.[0] The relative speed to production is largely due to the fact that they're just refining the waste stream from already established geothermal power plants. As the old saying goes, "one power plant's trash is another refiner's treasure".

[0] https://www.desertsun.com/story/news/2022/05/13/lithium-vall...

[hedora]

I'm guessing that will never happen. This is not the first time people have proposed mining it.

One problem is that, even without mining, it's on track to poising the air of something like 33% of the Los Angelos metropolitan area in the next few decades. So, anyone that touches it will now own that environmental disaster.

This can, and should, be fixed by spending huge amounts of federal money on environmental remediation, and I can imagine using lithium revenues to offset it, but none of that will be politically easy.

[sidewndr46]

wouldn't it be way easier to just put some water in the Salton sea? Even saltwater would work.

[CameronNemo]

Seriously I have no idea why we don't just fill the sink with sea water. It would get less salty.

[sidewndr46]

I'm not sure if this comment is sarcasm or not? But it would get saltier as time goes on. Seawater goes in, water evaporates out. There is more salt at that point . But that is fine. Hypersaline lakes are everywhere. As long as they are kept wet it isn't a big deal.

[tomrod]

I don't think that's accurate -- US and Brazil could join forces for mining where needed. US has about 5% known reserves of China, Brazil about 55%.

https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-c...

[dkjaudyeqooe]

Why Brazil? Australia is the world's biggest producer of lithium minerals and has the second biggest proven reserves. They're also probably the US's closest ally.

https://natural-resources.canada.ca/our-natural-resources/mi...

[contingencies]

And owned by China https://www.smh.com.au/business/companies/wa-lithium-mine-sn...

[dkjaudyeqooe]

Hardly. Chinese companies have some investments in some Australian lithium companies, not all of every company, or even a majority.

[tomrod]

Not lithium, rare earth minerals.

Yeah, lithium is much more plentiful.

[philipkglass]

Lithium ion batteries don't use rare earth minerals (which are the lanthanides plus yttrium and scandium [1]). Nickel metal hydride batteries contain some light lanthanides, but these new battery factories are all for lithium ion batteries.

[1] https://www.usgs.gov/centers/national-minerals-information-c...

[ok_dad]

I don't know if Brazil is eager to "team up" with the USA. Famously, places in South America have not been treated very well by the USA gov. I also believe Brazil is very focused on being self-sufficient and not reliant on others, as evidenced by the large taxes imposed on foreign goods and, for example, their use of Ethanol grown and processed in-country. I believe they could take advantage of the mining opportunities, but I don't think the USA will have any special place in line to buy the mined minerals.

[bee_rider]

We don’t really need a special place in line, right? We’re right here and our economy is biased toward high-value-add applications so we should be a natural partner.

I mean, they might (honestly, reasonably) be inclined to give us an artificially bad place in line, given the fuckery we’ve gotten up to on their continent, but it would probably be a decision to prioritize history and politics over economics. Or they might want to own battery manufacturing as a whole, I’m which case… fine, whatever, it would be nice to manufacture them in the US, but we should be happy with buying from in our general neighborhood.

[ok_dad]

I would guess it would be something like "X% of minerals must go to battery manufacturing locally" and the target would be to produce at least enough batteries to support any electrification needed in Brazil.

If I were in charge, I would want to keep nearly all of that manufacturing and minerals in-country and export battery cells initially, and later full systems that integrate the battery cells, and as the manufacturing capabilities expand I would start to add tarriffs to battery cell exports but ensure the systems that integrate the cells are able to be exported pretty easily. I would ensure to define the "system" as something more than a few battery cells wired together, it would have to be a fully integrated battery pack for a home or commercial building or a car maybe, or some other product that is similar. I would want to focus on vehicular and grid based energy systems, not consumer products because those batteries should eventually get replaced with supercapacitors and battery tech that is less unstable. I would never export minerals for batteries, though, I would just force companies to invest in manufacturing in Brazil.

[hsudvsish]

heh. the high tafifs were explicitly asked for apple in the early 80s.

brazil had 68k and 8080 clones that were sometimes better than the originals. mostly sold to Soviet bloc countries and yoguslavia.

until they decided to also ship full mac clones instead of only the 68k cpus. the lore says jobs pushed for demands to dept of state, and got that brazil both closed the two cpu clone factories and also added a high eletronics tarif to further make inroads into a viable competition harder. the leverage state dpto used was cutting imports of oranges, from brazil, which was provided by most of the farms from corrupt military-politicians in power at the time.

not many sources online https://www.cultofmac.com/266710/meet-unitron-mac-512-worlds...

...those same people now own soy farms, which china buys and usa sells. so guess which way they will align.

[lukas099]

Hopefully Brazil's social systems can handle the influx of extractive wealth, but odds are low.

[bee_rider]

A US-driven, extractive wealth transformation in a South American country… I mean what’s the worst that could happen, right?

[dylan604]

What's the most exported item from South America that does not get snorted?

[Symbiote]

From Brazil, iron ore and soya beans.

https://oec.world/en/profile/country/bra

[seanmcdirmid]

Raw materials. The mining industry in Peru and Chile is huge. I think drugs were ever really exported from Colombia and maybe Bolivia? But Bolivia also has a huge trove of raw materials.

[ethbr0]

Also, Venezuelan oil, before they shot their industry in its foot.

[CameronNemo]

I dunno but Chile exports a ton of copper to China.

[epistasis]

There will undoubtedly be a big buildout in mining, the only question is if it will happen in the short term or the longer term, which is dependent on permitting timeframes.

Last I heard, copper mines took 17 years to permit. But in 17 years time, we will need to increase copper production to 150% to 200% of its current value, ie go from 28M tons/year to ~50M tons/year. (And important to note that only 5M ton/year are from energy transition demand).

And the volume of material needed for the energy transition is small compared to existing mining, and in particular to the amount of material that we move around for fossil fuels, which will all drastically decrease.

This is a big project to solve, sure, but it needs to be compared to the scale and scope of what we currently do, and what would happen even without the energy transition. And when we do that comparison, I think we will find that the energy transition will be far less resource intensive than the expansion of our fossil fuel industries that would happen anyway.

[scythe]

>But in 17 years time, we will need to increase copper production to 150% to 200% of its current value, ie go from 28M tons/year to ~50M tons/year.

Demand elasticity is a funny thing. Some applications, like turbines, really need copper. Others, like the wiring of a house, can in principle get away with aluminum just fine. Currently, houses are built with copper wiring because the thermal expansion of aluminum requires some additional engineering complexity to achieve fire safety. But it's hard to project copper 'needs' when we use so much of it out of 'convenience'.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aluminum_building_wiring

[ebruchez]

My house, from the 1970s, has 100% aluminum wiring. I bought special connectors to connect copper wires to aluminum wires for extra safety when I put new outlets and switches in, as there is a fire concern when the connections are not done properly.

[londons_explore]

Aluminium is crazy for wiring... You can wire up a whole house in aluminium, and it be fine for decades, and then suddenly catch fire.

The cause is that over time, aluminium joints become higher and higher resistance, and get hotter and hotter till one day they fail.

There is some special gunge stuff you can get to put in each joint which supposedly stops this happening. But personally I don't trust the gunge to keep working for the 100+ years the wiring might remain in use.

Particularly if there is a water leak and the gunge is washed away - and then your 10 year timer starts ticking till a deadly fire.

[londons_explore]

Notably, China seems to make use of aluminium wires which are copper plated.

They're cheaper than pure copper, and the plating means they don't have the fire problem - since it is always the copper surface that makes contact in any joint.

I don't know why we don't use them - they would make electrical jobs cheaper, and mean we can afford to upgrade in other ways - like for example having every circuit powerful enough for a dryer rather than needing a special dryer circuit.

[owenversteeg]

I built a boat partially with CCA (copper clad aluminum) wire, disregarding the recommendations to not use it. I didn't give it much thought and naively figured that as copper and aluminum are two of the most "rust-proof" materials that it would be fine. Within two years of using it - and before the boat even made it into the water - it had begun to seriously corrode to the point that resistance was significantly increased. I had to replace all the CCA wiring and terminals connected to it.

Basically, both copper and aluminum are "rust-proof" because they develop a thin, hard layer of oxide immediately upon exposure to air. However, this also means that when a new crack forms (by vibration of the wiring or thermal expansion for example) that crack will be immediately coated by an oxide layer. At the same time, moisture in the air will create a galvanic cell with the copper as cathode and aluminum as anode (because aluminum is more active, more willing to give up electrons, which is because its bond with its electrons is weaker than copper's.) As the electrons leave the aluminum it develops a positive charge, which attracts negatively charged oxygen.

It is this last effect, galvanic corrosion, which I believe to be the chief issue with CCA wiring. Copper and stainless steel, for example, are much closer in the galvanic series than copper and aluminum, so copper and aluminum corrodes significantly faster.

Unfortunately, galvanic corrosion is a tough one, because lots of modern American houses are built with poor ventilation - as you can see by the large number of homes with mold issues. That moisture is exactly what enables galvanic corrosion. I think if we used CCA wiring across America we'd see a number of house fires caused by moisture -> corrosion -> higher resistance -> heat -> fire.

[organsnyder]

I'd be concerned about what happens when the wiring gets nicked up when the connections are being made.

It seems like if we want to achieve the goal you mention, we could switch over to 240v like much of the rest of the world.

[ethbr0]

Isn't a big part of the problem the thermal expansion difference between aluminum and copper? (~20%)

Wouldn't that eventually cause mechanical adherence issues with dissimilar metal plating?

[egberts1]

Actually as one who lives in all aluminum wiring residential unit, that is true about a fire.

but they can be caught early using a cheap $45 IR camera from E-Bay/Amazon. I caught one early and a retightened of a wirenut is all that is needed.

But to go up to 2020 NEC code, you must replace all wirenuts with the purple Alumniconn lug strip.

Purple wirenut is now not to code for permanent jobs; only temporary. For that, all future wiring jobs must be redone with Alumniconn lug strip and tightened to 15 lb/ft

[briHass]

Have a recommendation for a decent, cheap IR camera? I really want a FLIR, but can't justify the price.

[jandrese]

I wouldn't rule out the free market to supply a product that is in demand. Mining is relatively low capex by heavy industry standards as well.

[bequanna]

Permitting is the limiting factor.

In the United States, the current political climate will either support and fast-track or essentially deny/permanently delay all mining permits.

[rootusrootus]

Ha, given the current state of politics in the US, I can't decide which side would be the support, and which the deny.

[qup]

I agree, it could go either way.

It's probably up to whoever replaced Tucker Carlson (who was it? I never heard). The entire right will align with their stance, and the left will rally against whichever stance it is.

[tomcar288]

it's not just the US that is behind in having the minerals necessary: it's the entire world! In order to electrify every car in the world, it would take half the world's known supply of lithium.

[bryanlarsen]

"known reserves" not "known supply". Lithium is a very common element on Earth, so the known supply is many orders of magnitude more than we need. "Known reserves" is defined as those that are currently economically viable to extract. Which is why the amount of known reserves can grow drastically when the price increases slightly or extraction methods get cheaper.