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Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium

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Re: Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium

#181

Post by FrustratedMonky »

ClumsyPilot wrote: post #176
FrustratedMonky wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that was kind of bad luck in timing. They started shutting down nuclear, to make switch to wind/solar, before Russia invaded. (or at least being very trusting of Russian supply, so that is error in hindsight). You could make argument that the switch to wind/solar should have been more gradual, or with more ability to roll back. But don't think it is a good argument to not switch to wind/solar. Just about how to d…

Nah, it was actual stupidity. The same wind turbine in the scotland produces 3 to five times more power than in Germany The same solar panel produces 3 times more power in Spanish winter than in German winter. This is basic information available to anyone https://globalwindatlas.info/ https://globalsolaratlas.info/ But fine, you decided to do energy transition inefficiently. At least don’t switch of nuclear while you…

Yes. I agree. That is better way to put it. Sure, switch to wind/solar. But at least mothball nuclear so they could be ramped back up (i'm not sure if that is possible with nuclear like with other power plants).

But yes, have a better fall back position.

Re: Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium

#182

Post by rayiner »

whimsicalism wrote: post #165
rayiner wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you want to be dependent on other countries if you didn’t have to be?

Because comparative advantage means that we all get richer collectively? Like - the basic principle driving better living standards over the last 80 years?

Define “better living standards.” Obviously has been great for third world countries. But folks in the west don’t seem to happy about the situation. I don’t think the widespread availability of cheap Chinese crap offsets the downside of hollowing out the industrial base and non-college jobs.

Re: Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium

#184

Post by genman »

maliker wrote: post #17

Looks like existing worldwide reserves are 26M tons [0], so this is a big find. [0] https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2023/mcs2023-lithium.pd...

The confusion comes from wrong vocabulary. There are two different words in use: resources and reserves. Resources is what ever there is in (or in some cases on) the ground. Reserves is what can be viably extracted.

World lithium resources are close to 100M tons, but usable part, reserves, is about 1/4 of it.

Notice how it is also stated in the article: “We are trying to find out how much can we use from the resources we found. It takes time,” Rudklao told The Nation.

So they don't know how big are the reserves.

Re: Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium

#185

Post by politician »

pi-e-sigma wrote: post #161
jon_richards wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Soft power. “European countries are estimated to have spent additional 792 billion euros in the last year just on the status quo system to protect consumers from the effects of the energy crisis introduced by the Russian invasion into Ukraine” Honestly I think building solar and wind farms in Europe would do more for America’s military power than more tanks.

You have a flaw in your reasoning. More solar and wind farms in Europe make it more independent from both Russia and the US.

The EU is dependent on the US for nuclear deterrence, so the dependency relationship will continue even after they choose to use less imported US LNG.

That’s probably a long time from now though, as they are expanding LNG regasification terminals (6 projects that I’m aware of) since the pipelines from Russia became unavailable.

Re: Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium

#186

Post by herdrick »

laweijfmvo wrote: post #45

I'm assuming it's not a giant 15M ton chunk of (highly reactive) metal in the ground, but rather they took a bucket of dirt, analyzed it, and extrapolated how much lithium is available in the ground. My question is, how much "earth" do they need to dig up and refine to extract this amount of lithium?

Normally an announcement like this would be based on a program of drilling. But yes there would be a lot of interpolation and I think some extrapolation.

Re: Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium

#187

Post by FrustratedMonky »

whimsicalism wrote: post #165
rayiner wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would you want to be dependent on other countries if you didn’t have to be?

Because comparative advantage means that we all get richer collectively? Like - the basic principle driving better living standards over the last 80 years?

Ah. I see.

You are going back to old Adam Smith.

Let places/people that can make things more efficiently, do them.

Example: Don't give subsidies to car companies in countries that aren't good at making cars, it is inefficient. Better to focus on what you are good at.

There are exceptions:

National Security. See Energy, Semi-conductors.

or

To protect an industry while it grows, gets up to speed. Japan didn't become industrial power house out of nothing, they were very protectionist. Now they are dominant, but they aren't dominant because they let anybody at all come in and compete. They subsidized and protected their industry until they could stand on their own.

Re: Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium

#188

Post by tim333 »

maliker wrote: post #17

Looks like existing worldwide reserves are 26M tons [0], so this is a big find. [0] https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2023/mcs2023-lithium.pd...

Reserves are very different from resources though. In mining jargon the resource is how much you think is out there, a reserve is ore that you drilled, analysed, mapped out and shown to be profitable extractable, so a lot less.

Because turning resources into reserves is expensive only a limited amount is done before it is mined.

Re: Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium

#189

Post by hughesjj »

SoftTalker wrote: post #129
sheepdestroyer wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not taking the extreme and unprecedented rate of temperature change into account is either ignorance or disingenuity. https://xkcd.com/1732/ It's probable that very few species will be able to adapt to such an abrupt change.

Adaptation happens when it's forced to happen.

They also happen when they're not forced to (competition), and sometimes they don't happen when they're forced to (extinction).

Re: Thailand discovers nearly 15M tonnes of lithium

#190

Post by Accujack »

whynotmaybe wrote: post #37
wnevets wrote: post #22

How more stories do we need about finding lithium and "rare" earth metals being found before people realize they're not all that rare and we can stop reporting on it as if it's special?

Lithium is so 'not' rare that you can find it in the geothermal water in... Belgium. https://www.thinkgeoenergy.com/geothermal-developer-hita-see...

Or under the Salton Sea.
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