Posted on 01/12/2023 10:29:14 PM PST by blueplum
The beginning of the end of Europe’s dependency on China for precious rare earth materials may lie buried deep under the rugged reaches of northern Sweden, well above the Arctic Circle.
Sweden’s iron-ore miner LKAB said Thursday it has identified "significant deposits" in Lapland of rare earth elements that are essential for the manufacture of smartphones, electric vehicles and wind turbines.
The government-owned company that mines iron ore at Kiruna, almost 1,000 kilometers north of Stockholm, said there are more than 1 million tons of rare earth oxides....
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Does Sweden still manufacture steel?
Sweden’s steel industry produced 4.4Mt of crude steel (3.4Mt of finished steel) in 2020
https://www.steeltimesint.com/news/sweden-a-pioneer-in-green-steel-production
The rare earth was never about deposits.
Everyone knows, even if not yet found, there are deposits all over the world and it was never exclusive to China. Heck the US has plenty of these deposits.
The issue is that extracting them from the ground usually does damage to the local environment, and up to this point, China is the rare country that is willing to complete pollute their environment for a few bucks, and hence they were one of the few countries producing it. The other countries find it easier to buy from China, then deal with environmentalists protesting etc to produce it themselves.
If China tries to hold the rest of the world hostage over this, I’m sure the other countries if they get desperate enough will find ways to produce what they need elsewhere.
China owns Volvo.
It’s really too bad that SuperCapacitors haven’t worked out.
Santa owns Lapland :)
https://www.tourstolapland.com/travel-guide/reindeer-experience-lapland
Excellent news!
They are called 'Rare Earths'. They are not particularly rare.
If REMs are in the Arctic Circle I give it a month before the Moscow talking heads decide that it’s on their turf. And if it isn’t on their turf YET, it oughta be their turf.
Great! Now that Sweden will have a deep hole in it visible to the naked eye from the moon it will be great place to dispose of those fiberglass blades on windmills. Air dropped from electric planes of course.
Rare Earths are not really rare. But, the refining process requires they be dissolved in acids and precipitated over and over again. Over 20 acid baths are necessary.
Nobody wants to do that kind of refining because of the potential for acids getting released in the environment.
As I was traveling I passed a few blades going own the highway.
It looked like the first 20 feet or so from the base could be made into some type of living quarters.
Many of the rare earth elements are named after locations in Scandinavia (where they were first discovered).
"If we look at how other permit processes have worked within our industry, it will be at least 10-15 years before we can actually begin mining and deliver raw materials to the market," LKAB CEO Jan Moström said. "We must change the permit processes to ensure increased mining of this type of raw material in Europe."
Their own enviro whackos will block these mines from opening.
I was going to post just that. Good observation.
The Greta Thunberg and other Swedish NIMBY types will in ensure that this will never be mined. If you want this technology, share the pain, and not just African, Asian, and other”brown peoples” pay the price for your clean environment.
Here in the US a large lithium deposit was found in western Maine. The laws of the state impede the mining of that deposit and I assume this will not be mined for many years like in the Sweden find.
Trump should have bought Greenland from the Danes when the fantasy was floated.
Probably lots of undiscovered solutions buried there as well.
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