- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmit.online
- cross-posted to:
- technology@lemmit.online
You must log in or # to comment.
Abundance of critical minerals and lack of democracy. Very dangerous combination, deploy military democracy enforcement!
Really bizarre to write or post an article saying this deposit was ‘discovered’. This is decade old news. I saw the headline and thought ‘oh nice that’s like a whole other Thacker Pass’ but it literally is just Thacker Pass.
Somebody needs to figure out a way to prevent people from upvoting headlines of articles they haven’t read because as far as I can tell there is absolutely no reason to post or upvote this.
but it literally is just Thacker Pass.
This isn’t Thacker Pass.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thacker_Pass_lithium_mine
The Thacker Pass lithium mine is a lithium clay mining development project in Humboldt County, Nevada
The location being discussed:
McDermitt Caldera in Oregon
It looks like there was some discussion that there might be lithium there a bit back, like in 2023, but this is not decade-old news.
Thacker Pass is inside the McDermitt Caldera, it’s the same deposit.
How much you wanna bet that Trump will somehow cause the entire deposit to catch fire?
Good, the children yearn for the lithium mines. /s
Maybe I should re-train from computer programmer to lithium miner?
I don’t think the people in power care for those sort of miners
The current ones definitely do.
They’re saying they like minors
I had just woken up, I’ll leave it.
Malheur County, Oregon
Beautiful part of the world
Before the mines
Oh, oh god, oh fuck shit
Thank you
thanks
wow MONEY and VALUE for STONES for SOMEONE upstream from the LABOR
RARE EARTH METALS ARE NOT RARE!
Lithium is the 25th most abundant element in Earth’s crust!
we see these head lines all the time because it is everywhere, the problem has never been finding it, it’s been refining it, and china has a Monopoly on the refining techniques and refuses to do business with anyone who tries to adopt the technology and restricts travel of the people with the knowledge to do so.
Lithium isn’t a rare earth
All true, but lithium is not a rare earth metal.
Lithium is literally named after stone. No one ever claimed it is rare.
When an X deposit is found, it means that a place has been found where an unusual concentration of a material in an easy/cheap-to-extract form has been found.
There are thousands of tons of gold in the ocean water. But no one would call the ocean a gold deposit. Because it would require a ton of effort/money to extract a tiny amount of gold from the ocean.
The federal government invades that state for “peace and freedom”
And “truth”. Don’t forget “truth”.
Lithium will run out lol. Any time now.
It’s like discovering another Elon Musk!
That site is unreadable on mobile.
Seems fine to me
lucky you. Nothing but ads for me.
That is only by not using firefox and ublock.
That works on mobile? Looks like I’m changing if true.
On android it does. On iPhone Firefox it will not work.
Sorry. Yes Android
I find this perspective funny nowadays, and I want more people to question it, really question it. It’s valued at over $1.5 trillion? No, it’s worth nothing if it just sits there doing nothing. If you worded it as “Could be worth…” then I’d give it a pass. But don’t let yourself be fooled, that lithium has absolutely no real value if it’s not mined and put towards something that someone can use to improve their quality of life.
That’s… That’s what “valued at” means…
No it’s not, I don’t value it at all because I can’t actually use it for anything right now.
But that’s how people use it though? It’s used to mean “we’re think it’s about this much”
A trip to wiktionary will inform you that value has multiple meanings. And honestly a random persons opinions don’t really matter in the mining world which is pretty small and doesn’t really care about general society.
“I’m homeless right now, so future affordable housing is worth nothing to me.”
If you’re homeless then at your current time it’s valueless. It’s like being told “there’s an abundance of food being grown… in 5 years” and you die of starvation.
Right but you’re not a billion dollar company that will excavate the minerals and sell them for a profit
How do you know they’ll do that? What if it just sits in the ground for a million years, does it have any value then?
technically, it enhances the value of the land it’s under. as in if you own that land, and someone wants to buy it for mineral extraction, the value got whole lot higher knowing there is lithium there.
Like to make it completely clear, I could value the moon at $5 trillion, it doesn’t matter because I can’t actually get to the moon.
I can get to my house, and I can value it at 5 trillion €. That doesn’t make it worth 5 trillion €.
If an actual person/company that values things for a living, does an analysis on the value of my house, and it is valued by X€, then it is probably valued at X€. If someone says “pff just because they say so? I’ll buy your house for 5€”. Then a lot of people will come and say “5€? That’s a steal, if you’re gonna give it for such a low price, I’ll get it for 6€”, and it will probably go on until it reaches an amount very close to X€. If it ends up way below X€, the ones that did the analysis would probably want to buy it themselves, because they actually think they can make a lot of profit on that.
I don’t know why I have to explain this. This is very basic economics.
False analogy, a house isn’t a raw material in the ground that no one has touched.
Let’s do one with raw material in the ground:
There is a mountain that is 99% made of solid gold, but none bothered to check. Some random dude has the mineral rights for that mountain.
Suddenly one day, that dude wanders in his mountain and makes a 1m deep hole and finds the gold. He has not yet extracted a single gram of gold.
So you say that mountain has no value?
Or has the analogy have to be lithium now?
The mountain gold itself has no value until extraction begins and the gold is applied to help benefit someone’s life. The value of something is derived from a human directly benefiting from it. Only until the lithium is mined and used to do something that helps improve someone’s quality of life then it hasn’t realized its value yet.
So if you are that dude with the mining rights, you would sell them at the same price before and after discovering the gold right? Since the discovery of gold hasn’t changed its value.
Oh good, more earth to pillage.
Brighter note, to date is still the best way to make batteries, we need it to build storage capabilities for a grid based on renewable energy.
Unfortunately we’ll probably end up using it for disposable vapes instead
That Donut Labs weight test will come any day now.
Sodium ion batteries would be better for grid storage. They’re cheaper, more durable, and work in a wider range of temperatures. Plus they’re going to market within the year
My understanding is these come with density issues. Basically they need significantly more space. Definently should be scalable for most utilities. Although some in more urban contexts may struggle to find the space initially. Maybe old fossil fuel plants can be refitted.
Not useful for at home systems either, but I hope they continue to improve to that point
Density issues for grid storage is fairly negligible compared to cars and handheld electronica
Yeah plus less risk of fires makes it even more worth it.
They need about 30-50% more space that Lithium Ion, yes. Of course, people love to compare this even though lithium ion isn’t used anyway for the same application because it only lasts for 500 charge cycles where first gen sodium already lasted for 3000.
But in a country where data centers the size of major cities are being put everywhere, space is literally a non-issue.
But that is comparing them to lithium ion and LiPo. They have a ton of advantages over lithium ion.
They are really competing against lithium iron phosphate which are EV and grid storage batteries. There, the very first gen still has like 20% less density than them but 2nd gen batteries are looking at exactly thr same density as lithium iron phospate. Now they are both fire-safe (sodium even better) and the difference is essentially cost (big sodium win), temperature performance (big sodium win, and discharge rate (LiFePO win over first gen) because they both have very high battery life.
The only reason sodium ion wasn’t picking up (and I mean the only) is because lithium prices crashed and 90% of the companies developing it were startups, so of course the venture capitalist parasites rug pulled the funding because they are so incredibly short sighted that they can’t stand not having immediate maximum profit (even though lithium prices will go back up eventually at a much, much, much faster rate than sodium and is significantly more harmful to mine)
Not useful for at home systems either
No, they’re perfectly fine for home systems
Iirc if proper safety is employed for lithium ion, the density difference is negligible.
I see so many of those disposed of on the street near a vape store and it drives me nuts.
Why is it never in MY yard???
You own the mineral rights of your backyard?
I’d like to say yes, but I’m not going to check. Too much effort to look through all my documents.
Let me give you some bad news: that’s no way in hell
Simple trick to claim the mineral rights of your own backyard. You just need to flip own yard and house upside down! Then the minerals are not under your yard but above it! Checkmate lawyers.
Of course, you’ll also need to sign a writ of mineralis claimies with your signature written in a patriotic crossword. Then include a stamp of George Washington where you have drew him a sensible toupee. Make sure to use red ink or the blood of goblin to draw the toupee, goblin preferred.
Have you tried planting greener grass?
I would if I could buy a house. 40k in the bank. Good credit. 7 years at my current job. Still can’t get a 155k house.
The 75k townhouse won’t sell, and won’t tell me why. Been trying to buy a house for 5 years. Now I’m being told I need to wait another year.
So this past month I’ve just given up. Nothing matters.
Uhhh what? You should easily be able to get a house with that much down. There’s something you’re not telling us.
Agreed. I bought a $300k house with half that guys down-payment. I kicked myself because I easily could have bought sooner and got much more house for my money.
and got much more house for my money.
And have way more debt as well
No, i would have been able to buy a bigger home for nearly the same price due to the rapid increase in home prices. My neighbor had sold their home just a year or two prior for about $15k more than we wound up paying for ours, but the home is almost double the square footage.
Still happy with our purchase overall as even apartment rentals in the area are higher than what we’re paying in the few years since we bought.
As someone who has 30k in the bank and qualified for multiple 350k loans with the lenders implying I’d be good for more, this mames no sense.
As someone who has 30k in the bank and qualified for multiple 350k loans
Don’t trust those lenders. They want you in more debt than you should take on because it makes them more money
They’re reputable local credit unions, not predatory lenders, and 30k is more than a 5% down payment, even after closing costs.
I suppose the unknown here is income, as in my current position making 100kUSD/yr, I’d have absolutely no problem making payments on a 20 year or even a 15 year loan, even if I do end up with a house near the top of my budget, which I’d rather stay well under of course. That said, A $150k house seems like it’d be no problem for that commenter based on their savings making up a >20% down payment.
If it makes you feel better, I’m 100k in the hole on the one I bought in 2021, and can’t even afford to sell it.
You’re saying you don’t qualify for a mortgage?
I qualify for a mortgage, but they want to capme out around 100k.
And the houses in this area were built in the 1800s-1930s. So a 100k house is going to have massive repairs needed that you’ll easily spend another 200k on.
Literally every house I’ve been shown has been “well this one needs an all new roof, and foundation” before you even see the property.
Where in the US is there a 155k house??
The midwest.
Crackton, Detroit.
Just install an industrial military complex in your backyard, then use it to extract lithium or oil from all the sources. Its a tried and tested method.
Trump: “So the oil is under the lithium? How does this work?”
It’s more like his cronies will claim it’s under federal jurisdiction then sell all rights to one of trump’s sons for a button.
