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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

#81

Post by robin_reala »

Majestic121 wrote: post #68
rafaelmelhem wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would Thorium be part of that list as well? Edit: I kinda know that because I have some weird passion about the elements of periodic table and because I'm reading "Periodic Tales: A Cultural History of The Elements From Arsenic To Zinc" which I really recommend!

Indeed, good catch : > Thorium was discovered in 1828 by the Norwegian amateur mineralogist Morten Thrane Esmark and identified by the Swedish chemist Jöns Jacob Berzelius, who named it after Thor, the Norse god of thunder. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thorium

There’s also tungsten: “tung” is heavy, and “sten” stone in Swedish.

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

#83

Post by ovi256 »

ciconia wrote: post #69

> "This is good news, not only for LKAB, the region and the Swedish people, but also for Europe and the climate... No, this is not good news. Mining is one of the most polluting human activities there is. In addition, all those machines used for digging and pulverizing the minerals, they run on petrol. In fact, the entire value chain from raw mineral to finished product, be it solar panels, wind turbine, or the lates…

> a whole different approach is needed Why not tell us something about this approach ?

Unless it's doing nothing.

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

#84

Post by ajross »

ciconia wrote: post #69

> "This is good news, not only for LKAB, the region and the Swedish people, but also for Europe and the climate... No, this is not good news. Mining is one of the most polluting human activities there is. In addition, all those machines used for digging and pulverizing the minerals, they run on petrol. In fact, the entire value chain from raw mineral to finished product, be it solar panels, wind turbine, or the lates…

Almost none of that is correct, except in the specious sense that most of those technologies run on electricity and electricity is still made from fossil sources in most areas. In some cases it's sort of laughable: solar panels are just semiconductors, everything about that industry is electrified (most of the power input is in growing the wafer out of molten silicon).

Basically your argument is circular: you're saying that renewable electrification can't happen because electricity is made from carbon. But as electrification proceeds that becomes untrue by definition.

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

#85

Post by dahfizz »

323 wrote: post #73
qwerty456127 wrote: post #62

Isn't rare earth metals mining insanely pollutive? I've heard they can be found all over the world but only China mines them massively because nobody else is willing to destroy their ecology.

One could argue that it's so cold in Sweden there isn't really an ecology there.

This is the town where the deposit was found: https://cdn.britannica.com/85/117985-050-36D70897/Kiruna-Swe...

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

#86

Post by jksk61 »

323 wrote: post #73
qwerty456127 wrote: post #62

Isn't rare earth metals mining insanely pollutive? I've heard they can be found all over the world but only China mines them massively because nobody else is willing to destroy their ecology.

One could argue that it's so cold in Sweden there isn't really an ecology there.

As one could argue that the earth is flat and nothing is real.

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

#87

Post by jeltz »

wodenokoto wrote: post #57
robin_reala wrote: post #48

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

Isn't Thule on Greenland (or are there multiple Thule around?)

Thule comes from a Greek cartographer, Pytheas. Thule was supposed to be an island to the north of Britain, but nobody knows what he referred to or if whatever place he referred to even was real. Some people, especially 19th century Scandinavian nationalists, associate Thule with Scandinavia.

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

#88

Post by bjornsing »

ciconia wrote: post #69

> "This is good news, not only for LKAB, the region and the Swedish people, but also for Europe and the climate... No, this is not good news. Mining is one of the most polluting human activities there is. In addition, all those machines used for digging and pulverizing the minerals, they run on petrol. In fact, the entire value chain from raw mineral to finished product, be it solar panels, wind turbine, or the lates…

But isn’t this a feature of every technological improvement? You need fossil fuel energy to be able to extract renewable energy, yes, but there’s no reason to believe you couldn’t replace it with renewable energy down the line.

It’s sort of like how you bootstrap a compiler: the first version of a new language tool chain needs to be implemented in some other language. But then you can make it “self-hosted” by implementing it in itself.

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

#89

Post by Jensson »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #62

Isn't rare earth metals mining insanely pollutive? I've heard they can be found all over the world but only China mines them massively because nobody else is willing to destroy their ecology.

They say they have a way to do it without being very pollutive, that is why they started looking for large deposits to mine and why they now found this one. Likely they will find many more large deposits in the near future.

> The Norwegian company has developed an innovative and sustainable technology to separate rare earth metals that can compete with China's dominating production of these materials, the LKAB press release reads.

https://www.highnorthnews.com/en/norwegian-swedish-cooperati...

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

#90

Post by mcv »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #62

Isn't rare earth metals mining insanely pollutive? I've heard they can be found all over the world but only China mines them massively because nobody else is willing to destroy their ecology.

This is the main reason I'd like to see asteroid mining take off. Let's tear some uninhabited asteroids apart, instead of the only planet we can live on.
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