Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Why are lithium prices collapsing?

internationalbanker.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

511–520 of 524 posts

Re: Why are lithium prices collapsing?

#511

Post by midoridensha »

grogenaut wrote: post #350
aintgonnatakeit wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same thing happens with the gas stove threads. I can’t believe that actual people are that invested in burning hydrocarbons.

I'm not hugely invested but I do prefer cooking on gas. I've had element stoves, they suck. I then had gas, it's great. I stayed in an Airbnb for a month and a friend's condo for a week with induction, it was better than radiant but worse than gas to me. Also the power goes out at my house about 2x a year when we have windstorms. The stove still works, induction doesn't. So I can still cook and make coffee. My other…

>To me the lesson was maybe cook outdoors. Or figure out how to plumb a vent through an upstairs living space attic and roof to vent outside.

Huh? Why would this be necessary? Just use the range hood that should already be installed and should vent to the outside. Are these not required in your country for some strange reason?

Re: Why are lithium prices collapsing?

#512

Post by midoridensha »

BeFlatXIII wrote: post #247
aintgonnatakeit wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same thing happens with the gas stove threads. I can’t believe that actual people are that invested in burning hydrocarbons.

The gas stove bans are idiotic and petty to defend based on environmentalist principles. The amount of gas burned by those stoves makes roughly zero impact compared with all the other hydrocarbons we burn.

No, the gas stove bans are smart. They're not for reducing carbon pollution, they're to reduce indoor air pollution, and also the danger of having combustible gas plumbed to everyone's home. Houses explode due to gas looks with alarming frequency. Electric is simply safer.

Re: Why are lithium prices collapsing?

#513

Post by anticensor »

diroussel wrote: post #82
rocket_surgeron wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bros treat it like a law of nature. "nah brah it's just rational actors rationally acting with rationality" Supply and demand is a thing the same way the convention of shaking hands upon meeting is a thing.

There are alternatives to shaking hands; no greeting, bowing, classes hands, high five, fist bump etc. If supply and demand is just a convention, they what are the alternatives? I guess I’m ignorant, but central planning is the only one I can think of.

The alternative is planned supply.

Re: Why are lithium prices collapsing?

#514

Post by sdm »

defrost wrote: post #158
anamexis wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would that be a reasonable assumption?

Largest companies digging in the dirt creating the vast bulk of the world's lithium concentrates (prior to refining in Chima | Malaysia) are in Chile and Australia and all are listed on the Canadian Toronto TSX exchange. Minerals and Resources rules for exchange listing are pretty tight with respect filing third party independant reports that assess mineral volumes and estimates, economic feasibility, environmental i…

> all are listed on the Canadian Toronto TSX exchange

Given the history of Canadian mining companies, I wouldn't trust any Canadian mining company listed on the TSX to give to shits about human rights.

Re: Why are lithium prices collapsing?

#516

Post by natnat »

georgeecollins wrote: post #479
m3drano wrote: post #390

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I see plenty of results from Google about this string, from multiple sources and multiple types (video, news and classic links). Unclear about that deterioration.

Right, but Google doesn't show everyone the same results. The earlier poster clearly didn't get a very good search result. If google search is bad for some people or in some cases, it should be a concern for everyone because you would never know when you are getting that poor result.

It basically does show everyone the same results. There's some session-based reranking and ads are heavily personalized, but there's basically no personalization in regular search.

Re: Why are lithium prices collapsing?

#517

Post by Maursault »

Miraste wrote: post #508
Maursault wrote: post #506

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> this issue is that it got caught in a death spiral due to Chernobyl. Nuclear (fission) power's unprofitability predates Chernobyl to the very first reactors and continuing up to this day. The Shippingport Atomic Power Station was the first commercial reactor to come online, and it was a small reactor, cost $78M to construct in 1958. Decommissioning and cleanup 30 years later cost about $100M. Considering the plant…

Yes, it's never been profitable. The first photovoltaic device was built in the 1830's, and mass photovoltaic deployment only became profitable in the last decade. R&D in fission is absolutely not complete. The investment in it has been pathetic since before computer modeling existed, there's no way there aren't efficiencies to find. So much of the field references papers from the 50s and 60s, because that was the la…

> The first photovoltaic device was built in the 1830's, and mass photovoltaic deployment only became profitable in the last decade.

This is a bizarre comparison. The US invested about $1.5T total in developing nuclear power. Almost nothing was invested in developing PV. If only 1% of the money wasted on developing nuclear power had instead been invested in PV, nuclear power would have been dead by 1970. A recently passed bill earmarks $6B to keep nuclear plants open. Compare to recent DoE announcement to spend $82M on PV manufacturing. Even with this nearly two orders of magnitude imbalance of spending, PV is going to beat the pants off nuclear by making tons of money compared to nuclear power losing mind-boggling amounts of it.

R&D can not make nuclear energy cheaper. It is simply commercially unviable. If you can figure out a way to make it profitable, you can have all the nuclear energy you want, but a lot of smart and capable people spanning 4 generations have already tried and failed.

Re: Why are lithium prices collapsing?

#518

Post by diroussel »

anticensor wrote: post #513
diroussel wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are alternatives to shaking hands; no greeting, bowing, classes hands, high five, fist bump etc. If supply and demand is just a convention, they what are the alternatives? I guess I’m ignorant, but central planning is the only one I can think of.

The alternative is planned supply.

How do you plan how much to supply?

Re: Why are lithium prices collapsing?

#519

Post by nuancebydefault »

ericmay wrote: post #503
nuancebydefault wrote: post #422

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry i guess i misunderstood. Okay the incrementalness is not the thing. The thing is more, the injustice, the unevenness so to say. Well, I think we should not try to solve the injustice problem and the environmental problem with the same measures. For every rule, there will be people that break it, does that mean nobody should follow that rule? Also, for every form or quantity of pollution, there are heavier forms…

I get it. But what I’m saying is that when you walk up to someone and say “sorry turn off that gas stove” and then they go and read an article like this [1] you will not just get inaction you’ll get outright action against solving the problem . So yea, we won’t see much in the way of serious action because the general public does not see the justice in making changes or sacrifices even though they should and will bea…

You are right, it is even infuriating. It is also infuriating that rich people are allowed to build a huge machine that is set to self destruct soon after take off, generating multi tons of co2 and other air, water and soil pollution. Still,climate change is a problem worth trying to solve.

Re: Why are lithium prices collapsing?

#520

Post by tetragramaton »

I first saw on HN itself an article on how it’s possible to extract lithium from seawater. Wondering how scalable it is. Seemed to me like a game changer, possibly.

https://electrek.co/2021/06/04/scientists-have-cost-effectiv...

Someone can set up some extractors up in the great eastern garbage patch, and filter plastics ,microplastics, chemicals, etc, whilst extracting lithium.

Post reply on HN