161–170 of 341 posts
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.
Very important to start mining these to get away from dependence on questionable activities in China and Kongo. We just have to hope that the "greens" don't stand in the way as they usually do.
> The Kiruna mine is the largest and most modern underground iron ore mine in the world. The mine is located in Kiruna in Norrbotten County, Lapland, Sweden Sweden's possibly the country most serious about the environment, but money talks.
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.
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They will be made to allow it. And hopefully that guys reign is nearing its end.
>"They will be made to allow it." I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse.
I don't think Erdogan is even that opposed, I think he wants to be seen as a player.
"Rare" earth metals are actually not that rare. The reason we (in the west) don't mine much is that they are very dirty to refine. We don't want pools of toxic waste left over from refining all over the place but China etc will tolerate those. Given the ore itself is (ironically) quite common, all the mining happens where the refining happens because why would you bother shipping tonnes of ore there when is so common…
No, that's not the only reason. It's also just currently a lot cheaper in China, so European mines can't afford to operate (I believe due to the very low density of deposits), so we keep the closed in reserve. There's awareness that this is probably a strategic mistake but as far as I know nobody's doing anything about that yet.
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
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...
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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
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There's also Gadolinium after Johan Gadolin
But he was Finnish
From wikipedia:
"Johan Gadolin was born in Åbo (Finnish name Turku), Finland (then a part of Sweden)." [0]
"In 1779 Gadolin moved to Uppsala University."
Uppsala is in Sweden.
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There’s also tungsten: “tung” is heavy, and “sten” stone in Swedish.
Which interestingly is called Volfram in Swedish.