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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

#111
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I think they used impressive colloquially. I guess more fitting would be "interesting/amusing" Although, I think yours is a far bigger offence: being intentionally ignorant for the purpose of being an asshole online

i'm genuinely curious what about their comment makes them an asshole. the comment is a bit dismissive, but hardly assholish

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

#113
post #46

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)

The good part is that it is located in an area that is already planned for iron mining (with LOTS of existingt and past iron mining in the greater area), so the infrastructure needed is mostly there already.

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

#114

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.

It often is as I understand it. But it's also helping reduce pollution through electrification so it's a balance. I (being not far from there) feel it's better to have polluting operations like this in heavily regulated and modern economies where there is a good chance the damage can be minimized at least.

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

#115
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

this is possibly in reference to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doggerland

Unlikely. Thule was supposed to exist in 330 BC, long after Doggerland had disappeared. There are many other candidates which would make more sense and fit better with his descriptions, including Norway.

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

#116
post #90

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.

Gasp! We must preserve the asteroids, none of that human destructiveness over there! /s

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

#117
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think they used impressive colloquially. I guess more fitting would be "interesting/amusing" Although, I think yours is a far bigger offence: being intentionally ignorant for the purpose of being an asshole online

i'm genuinely curious what about their comment makes them an asshole. the comment is a bit dismissive, but hardly assholish

Collapse of the behavioral wave function due to observation?

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

#118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quite impressive that little Sweden has found the second most elements in the world, 19 of them. https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/legac...

[flagged]

Some of those elements they discovered (e.g. chlorine, silicon) hardly require geographic luck to discover, just a beach. Could it be that Sweden just had some enterprising chemists at the right time, rather than just hand-waving their discoveries away as geographic luck?

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

#119
post #59
post #10

Kiruna has a long history about mining incl world war II importance for iron. Also due execessive minig the whole town needed to be moved: “In 2004, it was decided that the present centre of the municipality would have to be relocated to counter mining-related subsidence.[29] The relocation would be made gradually over the coming decade. On January 8, 2007, a new location was proposed, northwest to the foot of the Lu…

Yeah the Swedes helped Nazi Germany immensely selling them high quality iron. There were invasion plans drawn up going from German controlled Narvik to Kiruna, but the Swedes was so accommodating that it wasn't needed.

Interestingly, the Brits had drawn up their own 'preemptive invasion' plans for Norway and Sweden to 'discourage' Germany from doing the same, which was then 'pre-pre-empted' by the German invasion of Norway:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_R_4

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

#120
post #11

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

That's what I was going to ask: can anyone comment as to whether this is a disruptive event? Or is Europe so ordinarily devoid of such metals that it's comparatively little versus world supply?

About 3% of rare earth metals mined globally are mined in Europe currently. About 30% of the global supply is used in Europe tho.

That doesn't really indicate how much is available in the ground, but only what's being actively mined.

Someone else wondered about concentrations of rare earth metals in the ground in this finding, and it's "unusually high: 0.18%"

My source is both paywalled and in Swedish, sorry about that, but here it is: https://www.dn.se/ekonomi/jattefynd-av-sallsynta-jordartsmet...

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