Manganese nodules at the bottom of the deep sea contain a wealth of valuable metals that are vital to the electronics and steelmaking industries. Accordingly, these sectors and many countries have pinned their hopes on deep-sea mining to meet the growing demand for raw materials like cobalt and rare-earth elements.
Bremerhaven, Germany (SPX) May 18, 2023 -
Large areas of the ocean floor are covered with polymetallic nodules and crusts. The potato-sized manganese nodules can be found in all oceans, especially in the Pacific Ocean, at water depths betwe
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Manganese nodules at the bottom of the deep sea contain a wealth of valuable metals that are vital to e.g. the electronics and steelmaking industries. Accordingly, these sectors and many countries have pinned their hopes on deep-sea mining to meet the growing demand for raw materials like cobalt and rare-earth elements. In a study just released in the journal Scientific Reports, experts from the Alfred Wegener Institute show that such activities could not only have ecological impacts, but also pose health hazards, e.g. in connection with the industrial mining and processing of the nodules. According to their findings, in some cases e.g. the radioactivity of radium-226 in the nodules exceeds the safe limit defined in the German Strahlenschutzverordnung (Radiation Protection Ordinance) one hundred- to one thousand-fold.