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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

#291

Post by mongol »

hannob wrote: post #261
raspberry1337 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a completely hypothetical process that has 0 proven results and already involved shady deadlings with government, where government officials are chatting with CEO's about how to hide details: ' "As you probably know, it is almost never possible to hide entire documents," she writes apologetically.' [0] [0] https://www.svd.se/a/pQnQaw/hybrit-har-blivit-ett-klagg

The Hybrit pilot plant is already operational and producing steel, although in small quantities. That sounds like a proven result to me, do you disagree? Can you summarize what the linked article (unfortunately paywalled and in swedish) says? I am quite interested in this project.

It is unproven that it can be done profitably at scale.

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

#292

Post by telotortium »

moloch-hai wrote: post #209
telotortium wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's from 2012, are there any further developments?

I misremembered, the new advance is iron/ nitrogen magnets. https://www.nironmagnetics.com https://hackaday.com/2022/09/01/iron-nitrides-powerful-magne...

Thanks! Submitted here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34359383

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

#294

Post by lazyasciiart »

actionfromafar wrote: post #101
tokai wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Also sold ball bearings for the Spitfire to the UK, and trained tens of thousands of Norwegian "police" in exile during the Nazi occupation of Norway. Gotta hedge your bets. (Or make the best of being between a rock and hard place.) Churchill famously quipped when Sweden started to build atomic shelters during the 1950s something along the lines of - "why? who are you going to fight"

That seems pretty short-sighted of him - atomic shelters come in useful if you're trying to survive your neighbors fighting without getting involved!

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

#295

Post by olddustytrail »

defrost wrote: post #27
mupuff1234 wrote: post #24

Rare earth elements aren't actually rare.

Not exactly news. A HN worthy comment might expand on why they're called 'rare' and why they're hard (in the sense of effort and resources) to extract and deliver in a ready to use state. Any ideas?

It seems to be news to a fair number of commentators here. It's a useful comment for every one of these discussions I think.

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

#296

Post by therealdrag0 »

TheRealPomax wrote: post #247
therealdrag0 wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why?

Because we care about the environment a bit more in Europe and Scandinavia than we used to. Part of responsible planet ownership is foregoing short term gain for a nice planet to live on long term.

Is strip mining the only way? Can mining be done responsibly?

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

#297

Post by marvin »

TheRealPomax wrote: post #247
therealdrag0 wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why?

Because we care about the environment a bit more in Europe and Scandinavia than we used to. Part of responsible planet ownership is foregoing short term gain for a nice planet to live on long term.

Mining lots of various minerals is necessary to transition the world to a net-neutral climate gas economy that has similar standard of living as today. Huge increases in production of batteries, wind turbines, solar panels, synthetic fuel production and so on.

And this is necessary because the people of the world are not willing to reduce their standard of living to a level where net neutral climate gas emissions are possible without a similarly huge economic development. Some dream that this is possible, but it's plainly politically impossible. (Or in so many words, the people of less developed nations will kill their leaders if they try to force it on them, democracies will vote their politicians out).

So essentially, the choice is between some local environmental damage due to mining and new industry, or indefinitely continuing climate gas emissions and the corresponding climate change, which will hit poorer people disproportionately and continue causing war and mass extinction.

I'll vote for the local environmental damage.

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

#298

Post by moloch-hai »

aeyes wrote: post #275
moloch-hai wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, says "0.5 kg 'rare-earths'" per vehicle. A biggish camera drone uses more.

What is so special about a drone?

Weight matters. They are all electric. They have electric motors made with permanent magnets.

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

#299

Post by olivermarks »

aeyes wrote: post #287
olivermarks wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/14/electr...

Not one sentence mentions anything close to child labor. And environmental activists are going to be activists wherever you go. What is however completely missing from the article is them to show actual numbers. If you look at SQMs environmental report you get a different picture: https://www.sqmlithium.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/SQM-Re... Much of what is being done to protect the environment isn't voluntary, the…

Africa is where the child labor disaster is, I think everyone who is paying attention knows the methods and issues in Atacama/ Chile are very different to Africa in the coming tsunamai of extraction at the altar of electrification.

https://www.nrdc.org/stories/lithium-mining-leaving-chiles-i...

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

#300

Post by iSnow »

excitom wrote: post #248
hrnnnnnn wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Annoyingly, even though tungsten literally means "heavy stone" in Swedish, the name of the element in Swedish is "volfram".

Thus the chemical symbol W (Wolfram) for tungsten.

But "Wolfram" comes from German, as it was described in the 16th century already. The isolation of pure tungsten then was done by Spanish scientists.
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