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Europe's largest deposit of rare earth metals discovered in Sweden

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Re: Europe's largest deposit of rare earth metals discovered in Sweden

#41

Post by smcl »

wuiheerfoj wrote: post #4

‚metals which are essential for, among other applications, the manufacture of electric vehicles and wind turbines‘ Great way to frame mining as eco-friendly haha. Is my take too skeptical? Are these very specific metals to eco-friendly production?

I think they're more trying to say that this is good for the local economy, since these will be growth industries. However yeah it's a bit of an unfortunate conundrum that we end up doing a bit more of some "bad" things to do good or at least better things

Re: Europe's largest deposit of rare earth metals discovered in Sweden

#42

Post by Someone »

kzrdude wrote: post #37
Mrdarknezz wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The company that owns the mine LKAB are together with swedish Steel producer SSAB producing fossilfree steel. They are working with Volvo to build their electric cars with this steel https://www.ssab.com/en/news/2021/08/the-worlds-first-fossil...

LKAB is 100% owned by the Swedish state. 2021 the dividend was pretty large and apparently around 1000 SEK per swede. Well if it would have been paid that way, it's going into the govt balance sheet of course.

For reference: 1000 SEK is about €90/$95

Re: Europe's largest deposit of rare earth metals discovered in Sweden

#43

Post by fl_ciq »

bradhe wrote: post #11

Wonder what the practical implications of a million tonnes is? For industry, is a million tonnes really that much?

Rare earths aren't really that rare, so probably not. Everyone has lots of rare earths, the rare thing is an environmental policy that allows them to be mined economically.

Re: Europe's largest deposit of rare earth metals discovered in Sweden

#44

Post by loxdalen »

londons_explore wrote: post #20

> If we look at how other permit processes have worked within our industry, it will be at least 10-15 years... When it takes 15 years simply to get permission to do something, you know that your country will never be competitive globally. Either the benefits outweigh the downsides, or vice versa. A group of 10 of the right experts ought to be able to decide that in a week. Spending 15 years paper-pushing, doing court…

There is also the sami peoples reindeer herding, safety, environmental impact, relocating, buying land. You could not decide things like this in a week if you have a system where human and ecological rights are respected.

Re: Europe's largest deposit of rare earth metals discovered in Sweden

#45

Post by Jensson »

fl_ciq wrote: post #43
bradhe wrote: post #11

Wonder what the practical implications of a million tonnes is? For industry, is a million tonnes really that much?

Rare earths aren't really that rare, so probably not. Everyone has lots of rare earths, the rare thing is an environmental policy that allows them to be mined economically.

Not everyone has lots of rare earths... USA for example has just 1.8 million tonnes, and Europe currently has no significant rare earth mines. Rare earths are everywhere, true, but it is very rare to find them in high enough concentrations to be worth mining.

https://investingnews.com/daily/resource-investing/critical-...

Re: Europe's largest deposit of rare earth metals discovered in Sweden

#46

Post by rmm »

Looks promising but still only a mineral resource as opposed to a mineral reserve. Which means it may not be economical to mine amongst other the things.

Lot easier to publish/announce resources and most don’t go anywhere. (Been a mining/mech engineer for a while now)

Re: Europe's largest deposit of rare earth metals discovered in Sweden

#47

Post by londons_explore »

chmod775 wrote: post #31
londons_explore wrote: post #20

> If we look at how other permit processes have worked within our industry, it will be at least 10-15 years... When it takes 15 years simply to get permission to do something, you know that your country will never be competitive globally. Either the benefits outweigh the downsides, or vice versa. A group of 10 of the right experts ought to be able to decide that in a week. Spending 15 years paper-pushing, doing court…

You are aware we're talking about a large scale mining operation here? That doesn't just mean surveying and analysis, but may also involve such things as resettling people, planning new routes for existing rivers and other water, as well as figuring out externalities that will remain after mining is done, but still should be accounted for.

Doing those things will take time, sure.

But making the decision whether those things should be done should not take long.

Re: Europe's largest deposit of rare earth metals discovered in Sweden

#48

Post by robin_reala »

Not exactly surprising that it’s in Sweden, as many rare earth metals were first discovered here and are named after Swedish things:

- Scandium from Scandinavia

- Yttrium, Terbium, Erbium and Ytterbium from the village of Ytterby

- Holmium from Stockholm

- Thulium from Thule

Re: Europe's largest deposit of rare earth metals discovered in Sweden

#49

Post by littlestymaar »

defrost wrote: post #38
littlestymaar wrote: post #34

I find it suprising that two posts talking about this topic are currently on the front page, although it's not the typical HN material. Maybe it's just a coincidence, or maybe there's something worth investigating for dang.

HN cares about IT and there being conditions suitable for IT. This means an interest in metals for electronics and suitable for climate related tech. Ergo you'll see news about copper, rare earths, battery technology advances, hydrogen, etc all hit the front page and often rise.

Why not, as many other niches, but 2 different links on the same topic, in a 5 minutes interval it's the kind of things that doesn't occurs that frequently, and it's usually for big news (either general world events or programming/tech world announcements).

It could be a coincidence of course, but I find it suspicious nonetheless.

Re: Europe's largest deposit of rare earth metals discovered in Sweden

#50

Post by defrost »

bradhe wrote: post #11

Wonder what the practical implications of a million tonnes is? For industry, is a million tonnes really that much?

It's a guesstimated million tonne of rare earth oxides .. it doesn't say in what kind of volume that million tonnes is diffused through (ie. how much has to be removed and sorted through) and then the oxides need to be processed to extract the actual rare earth elements.

What you won't see for a few years yet is an industry standard Economic Feasibility Technical Report - which outlines over a thousand pages or so the model of the ore, the exploration techniques used to create that model, various alternative costed plans to extract that target ore (and the value of any other material also extracted) and the expected value of the ore over the lifetime of the mining operation.

The key to this report is whether or not it's actually worth while to extract or whether it would cost more in earth movin and processing than the value of the result.

As for the tonnage;

> In 2019, Kiruna produced 14.7Mt of iron ore products [1]

this is the adjacent current mine and the location from which a drift is being driven. Iron ore would be the co-product.

For comparison;

> Western Australia's iron ore output for 2020–21 was 838.7 million tonnes, the second-highest figure after 2017–18.

ie: big iron regions (all of WA iron mines are in the Pilbara) produce ~ 57x the mass.

Bear in mind that this million tonne of rare earth oxides would extracted over a decade or more, it's not going to be a fast hit all in a year.

[1] https://www.mining-technology.com/projects/kiruna/

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