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The Lithium Gold Rush: Inside the Race to Power Electric Vehicles Source: By Ivan Penn and Eric Lipton, photographs by Gabriella Angotti-Jones, New York Times • Posted: Sunday, May 9, 2021
A race is on to produce lithium in the United States, but competing projects are taking very different approaches to extracting the vital raw material. Some might not be very green.
The Salton Sea is one of numerous new mining proposals in a global gold rush to find new sources of metals and minerals needed for electric cars and renewable energy.
Atop a long-dormant volcano in northern Nevada, workers are preparing to start blasting and digging out a giant pit that will serve as the first new large-scale lithium mine in the United States in more than a decade a new domestic supply of an essential ingredient in electric car batteries and renewable energy.
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Atop a long-dormant volcano in northern Nevada, workers are preparing to start blasting and digging out a giant pit that will serve as the first new large-scale lithium mine in the United States in more than a decade a new domestic supply of an essential ingredient in electric car batteries and renewable energy.
The mine, constructed on leased federal lands, could help address the nearly total reliance by the United States on foreign sources of lithium.
But the project, known as Lithium Americas, has drawn protests from members of a Native American tribe, ranchers and environmental groups because it is expected to use billions of gallons of precious groundwater, potentially contaminating some of it for 300 years, while leaving behind a giant mound of waste.
Synopsis
The fight over the Nevada mine is emblematic of a fundamental tension surfacing around the world: Electric cars and renewable energy may not be as green as they appear.
Reuters
Lithium extraction from brine has long been used in Chile, Bolivia and Argentina, where the sun is used over nearly two years to evaporate water from sprawling ponds.
Atop a long-dormant volcano in northern Nevada, workers are preparing to start blasting and digging out a giant pit that will serve as the first new large-scale lithium mine in the United States in more than a decade a new domestic supply of an essential ingredient in electric car batteries and renewable energy.
Image: BMW/Jalopnik
BMW has a lot of problems but microchips aren’t one, the victims of America’s lithium gold rush are coming into focus, and rallying figures to offer a proving ground for sustainable fuels. All that and more in this Friday edition of The Morning Shift for May 7, 2021.
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1st Gear: BMW Must Construct Additional Pylons
While pretty much every automaker on the planet is preoccupied with finding semiconductors, BMW says it’s got that issue mostly sorted. The German automaker says it has another concern: the rising cost of raw materials like rhodium, palladium and steel.