New Lithium Discoveries Can Secure America’s Clean Energy Future

[Elderberry]

The National Interest by Joseph Bouchard 1/24/2024

This development is a goldmine opportunity to reduce America’s economic and energy dependence on foreign states and to create thousands of clean, good-paying middle-class jobs.

On November 28, 2023, the Department of Energy confirmed its discovery of a 3,400-kiloton reserve of lithium in California’s Salton Sea, making it one of the largest exploitable lithium deposits in the world.

In August, American volcanologists and geologists found a large lithium deposit in Nevada’s ancient McDermitt Caldera volcano, which could produce between 20,000 and 40,000 kilotons. If fully exploited, both deposits would be sufficient to fulfill the world’s lithium needs many times over.

Besides minor grants provided to the researchers and companies who discovered these two immense lithium deposits, no efforts have been made to develop the technology, capacity, and infrastructure necessary to exploit these two deposits. These incredible discoveries should be a wake-up call for American investors and lawmakers to stop investing in foreign, unreliable partners and begin an ambitious project to exploit the lithium reserves here at home.

Currently, the United States is almost entirely dependent on foreign countries for all lithium extraction, manufacturing, and production. The largest exploitable lithium reserves are in South America’s Lithium Triangle, which comprises Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina. While Chile has been a productive ally of the United States, Bolivia and Argentina have faced enormous economic, political, and geopolitical barriers to production.

Argentina’s lithium sector is typically marred in scandal and bureaucratic dysfunction. At the same time, Bolivia’s limited technological capacity, complex history and geography, and disruptive politics have made the nation unable to extract its lithium, instead relying on Chinese and Russian state-owned companies.

More: https://archive.is/VYuvD#selection-727.0-733.47

[Free Vulcan]

Time to find an endangered species and make that a National Park!

[DefiantMassRINO]

You can't mine, build, or manufacture anything in America anymore.  American Federal, State, and Municipal governments won't allow it.

What happens to Global security when the Chinese Communist Party takes control of the global lithium industry via influence or coroporate acquisitions?

https://time.com/6294818/lithium-mining-us-maine/
Gem Hunters Found the Lithium America Needs. Maine Won’t Let Them Dig It Up

By Alana Semuels and Kate Cough / Maine Monitor
July 17, 2023 7:00 AM EDT

The world’s richest known lithium deposit lies deep in the woods of western Maine, in a yawning, sparkling mouth of white and brown rocks that looks like a landslide carved into the side of Plumbago Mountain.

Mary Freeman and her husband Gary found the deposit five years ago while hunting for tourmaline, a striking, multi-colored gemstone found in the region.

The Freemans make their living selling lab supplies through the Florida-based company they founded 40 years ago, Awareness Technology. But their true love is digging for gemstones, which has brought them for years to Mary’s home state of Maine, the site of some of the best tourmaline hunting in the world. ...

... Now, the Freemans want to expand this pit, near the town of Newry, Maine, so they can mine spodumene, crystals that contain the lithium the U.S. needs for the clean energy transition. The timing of their discovery, in what has been named Plumbago North, is remarkable; the Freemans have stumbled across one of the only hard-rock sources of lithium in the U.S. at a time when the material is desperately needed for the clean energy transition. By 2040, the world will need at least 1.1 million metric tons of lithium annually, more than ten times what it currently produces, according to projections by the International Energy Agency. Should the Maine deposit be mined, it could be worth as much as $1.5 billion, a huge windfall for the Freemans and a boon to the Biden Administration’s efforts to jumpstart more domestic mining, processing, and recycling of critical minerals such as lithium, cobalt, and rare earth elements to reduce the U.S.’ dependence on China. This is one of the few lithium deposits in the U.S. currently found in hard rock, which means it is higher-quality and faster to process than lithium mined from brine. ...

... But like just about everywhere in the U.S. where new mines have been proposed, there is strong opposition here. Maine has some of the strictest mining and water quality standards in the country, and prohibits digging for metals in open pits larger than three acres. There have not been any active metal mines in the state for decades, and no company has applied for a permit since a particularly strict law passed in 2017. As more companies begin prospecting in Maine and searching for sizable nickel, copper, and silver deposits, towns are beginning to pass their own bans on industrial mining. ...

[GtHawk]

Time to find an endangered species and make that a National Park!

Done and Done!

The Salton Sea is of critical importance to wildlife since it is the stopover area of some endangered or threatened species including the California Brown Pelican, American White Pelican, American Peregrine Falcon and Little Willow Flycatcher.

[Hoodat]

This development is a goldmine opportunity to reduce America’s economic and energy dependence on foreign states

Uh, no.  Lithium is not an energy source.  It will do absolutely zero to reduce America's energy dependence.  If anything, it will increase it since generating electricity is less efficient than directly using the energy sources that electricity is generated from.