Oil, gas and mining

The 'white gold rush': Inside a lithium mine, where stores of recyclable energy lie | Nightline



Lithium powers many of our devices as well as electric vehicles. Western states are believed to hold an immense amount of the metal and some say it could help the U.S. reach its climate goals.

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35 Comments

  1. Bunch of BS over 85% of the lithium and cobalt comes from mining operations in Third World countries where they use child slaves in the mine chefs. I guess if that's the kind of trade-off you're looking for you can sell your soul for a walk conscience.

  2. So just HOW is Biden going to cut our greenhouse gas emissions by 50% in just eight years???? Crash the economy of course. Close up shop.

  3. This is exactly the mentality that has allowed China to monopilise all the critical minerals needed for our energy and national defense needs. We have people more concerned with a little plant than all the damage that fossil fuels are doing to the rest of the world.

    Nor is the method of extracting the lithium from the ponds very effective or efficient. It need to be dumped into much smaller pools where the water can be heated with solar concentrating mirrors with glass domed roofs on top of the pools collecting all the desalinated steam/condensation and using what was useless salt water deep in the ground into now clean/desalinated water for other purposes. That would speed up the rocess a thousand fold and is a win-win for all.

  4. They use unlimited amounts of water to mine lithium, we won’t have much water by 2050 do to people storing it all to many people wasting to much and now mining lithium with it

  5. @5:35 she asks how long do they have ? He replies they have estimated 10 years to strip mine the area and were left with a giant hole in the ground with a pit of toxic lake water…. That seems to be good for the environment 👍🏼

  6. I've learned of way too many white materials/etc. now and now I'm afraid I need to learn how to test something white to see what kind of substance it is. There are drugs that are white. Salt. Baking Powders. Now this Lithium. There are probably even more white grainy and powdery substances too and that is going to become way too confusing to discern easily with just looking at them all. I'm also concerned about this area and what it looks like, how desolate it is there. No structures built to provide shade. How do the workers survive in that no man's land? I wouldn't put up with that crap and I'd make sure they construct some survival structures around there before starting a work life in that area.

  7. America Lithium also is starting a mine in Peru where there are very few environmental protections. They are a publicly traded company too on the NYSE, with investors, relying on this mine to meet their bottom line.

    Still, with no appropriate environmental protections, 100 wells plus more are confirmed to have already been completed according to the company’s July, 2022 shareholder meeting, on a video posted on you tube – check out around minute 33:33 and see what the CEO says, pretty much, that we could be using Sodium Ion batteries instead of Lithium. Sodium Ion batteries use salt and graphite, not Lithium, I’m pretty sure no Cobalt, either. SO, why is this Lithium being pushed on everyone, just like in the past with other industries…

    What green plan??? This is not green!!!

  8. Wouldn't the cleanest way to output less carbon be to have less humans on the planet? If everyone is so hell bent on climate change and carbon emissions, have less of what's the root cause of the carbon emissions in the first place.

  9. Big error in this report.

    Lithium batteries does not produce power to charge our phones. What it does do is store electricity produced elsewhere via coal, gas, hydro, nuclear, solar, wind, etc.

  10. Had to laugh when reporter said should we do it properly here in US rather than getting it from Australia.
    If she bothered to do her research properly she would have known that Ioneer is an Australian company.

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