[cogman10]

Yeah, it was my impression the last time I looked into this that cobalt was a rather worthless element. Part of the reason for the terrible mining conditions isn't that cobalt is all that rare, but rather that it's not all that useful so you don't see a lot of need for industrial cobalt mining operations.

Because of it's relative uselessness and worthlessness, cobalt mines were shutdown. It's only semi-recently that there's been talks of turning the lights back on. Like in this mine [1]

[1] https://jervoisidahocobalt.com/