[HN Gopher] The Metals Company subsidiary lifts over 3000T of no... ___________________________________________________________________ The Metals Company subsidiary lifts over 3000T of nodules to sea surface Author : bill38 Score : 72 points Date : 2022-12-14 19:40 UTC (3 hours ago) (HTM) web link (investors.metals.co) (TXT) w3m dump (investors.metals.co) | spqr0a1 wrote: | Unfortunately this sort of mining has long-term impacts on deep | sea ecology. It causes substantial loss of species diversity and | activity even 26 years later, with this paper estimating recovery | will take at least 50 years for a small test patch. | https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aaz5922 | elil17 wrote: | Things are a little more complicated than that. | | 1. Surface mining also has environmental consequences which | have to be weighed against the costs of deep sea mining. An | area impacted by surface mining can recover in just a decade, | but it takes intensive environmental restoration efforts on the | part of humans (https://news.ucsc.edu/2021/05/mine- | remediation.html). If similar techniques could be developed for | deep sea applications, it could reduce the impact of deep sea | mining. | | 2. Researchers are developing robots with advanced propulsion | systems which could dramatically reduce the disturbance to sea- | floor sediment by mimicking the ways that rays move. | (https://interestingengineering.com/culture/new-autonomous- | su...) Of course, this is still an active area of research, and | it would probably take regulation to force deep sea mining | companies to adopt these measures. | | 3. Nodules are much easier to process, reducing the carbon | footprint of deep sea mining vs. surface mining by up to 80% | for some metals. (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article | /pii/S095965262...) This study even tries to account for the | secondary effects of mining such as the different impacts that | surface and deep sea mining have on carbon sequestered in the | ecosystem. | | 4. Surface mining is more harmful to humans than deep sea | mining is because it can leach dangerous chemicals into fresh | water supplies. (https://www.usgs.gov/special-topics/water- | science-school/sci...) | | The effects of deep-sea mining on ocean ecology are much less | well understood than the effects of surface mining. While I do | think there's good reason to be optimistic about the benefits | of deep-sea mining, especially if it can displace surface | mining, we shouldn't assume we understand what will happen. I | hope the industry continuous to be forced by regulators to move | forward cautiously and allow time for environmental studies to | take place. | | edit: These people are trying to build a deep sea miner that | doesn't destroy the seafloor: https://impossiblemetals.com/ | cgh wrote: | Point 4 is mostly confined to old abandoned sites, as | mentioned in your link. Modern tailings aren't left to leach | acid all over the place, at least not in North American | mines. I get that all bets are off in eg Africa, however. | elil17 wrote: | Sure, but a lot of surface exploitation is planned | globally. Africa and Asia are certainly going to be seeing | new mines opening due to demand for solar/batteries. | cgh wrote: | For sure, I was taking issue with the absoluteness of the | assertion that all terrestrial mines are leaching from | their tailings piles/ponds. It's not true of many (most?) | modern mines. | elil17 wrote: | I didn't mean it as an absolute assertion, but I can see | that I didn't make that clear. | orbital-decay wrote: | _> Surface mining also has environmental consequences which | have to be weighed against the costs of deep sea mining._ | | What will actually happen is both types will be happily used | at the same time, so there's little point in weighting one | against the other. | | Any other rationalization misses the fact that this is an | extremely poorly understood environment (especially if we do | compare with surface mining). It's never a good idea to | tinker with unknown at scale without understanding it first, | let alone commercializing it. Mining history is practically | written in mistakes like that. | culi wrote: | Right. Especially as we ramp up our reliance on solar | panels (and therefore batteries). These operations are now | heavily subsidized and we'll likely be making 100% use of | every avenue available to mine as much as possible as soon | as possible | | _sigh_. If only we put this much funding into solving our | exploding e-waste crisis which could also help alleviate | the problems of rare metals | jeffbee wrote: | We don't need weird elements to support solar with | batteries. Grid stabilization can do fine with lead-acid | batteries. Both lead and sulfur are readily available. | There are also iron batteries and other emerging battery | chemistries, as well as non-battery storage like pumped | liquids or pressurized gases. | arcticbull wrote: | Or you can reduce your need for batteries with by | combining clean, green, safe nuclear reactors - and smart | grids capable of varying their demand instead of us | trying desperately to adjust supply. | | As more folks move to electric cars, a smart grid would | allow chargers to charge less at periods of intense | demand. | | We've really focused exclusively on adjusting supply to | meet demand - which is clearly very difficult - but we | instead (or in addition) adjust aspects of the demand | curve to smooth out variability in loading conditions. | This should be easier and significantly cheaper. | Robotbeat wrote: | Don't need manganese or any rare minerals for batteries. | Lithium iron phosphate batteries are used in the least | expensive Teslas (base Model 3 and Y), and although | lithium is very abundant, you can even substitute it for | the even more abundant Sodium with only a slight weight | increase. That's superior to Lead based batteries in | nearly every way. | elil17 wrote: | I don't think it's true that both will be used at once - | if deep sea mining is cheap enough, it could make surface | mining non-viable. A carbon tax could certainly eliminate | surface mining because smelting surface minerals uses so | much more energy compared to smelting nodules. | | We actually put much more funding into e-waste recycling. | Allseas most recent funding round was $150m, and they're | the only major player in the deep sea mining space. But | Redwood materials, one of many e-waste recycling | startups, has raised $700m in their most recent round. | ulrashida wrote: | Sea floor mining is widely ridiculed by both environmental | and mining professionals as having more risk than equivalent | and better understood efforts on land. At least its close | cousin, space mining, has the benefit of taking place off | planet. I hope we never see this activity occur commercially | in our lifetimes: we barely have gotten a handle on surface | and underground mining, why do we run off to scrape the ocean | as well? | | On 1: The study you have referenced refers to the | difficulties of remediating historical abandoned sites, often | run under inadequate regulations typically in the 1850's - | 1960's. Modern sites are no joke to remediate, but regulators | are beginning to pick up on what causes problems to occur and | how to ensure these costs are factored into the mining | operation. The difficulty of applying effective regulations | to international undersea areas is enormous. | | On 2: That's great -- lots of things could happen to improve | technology in both terrestrial and submarine mining. | | On 3: Carbon footprint is not everything when determining the | appropriateness of mining. The study cited by the Science | article assumes tailings deposition at sea -- mines are not | permitted to do this. The article also swans repeatedly over | how "high grade" nodules are, but makes no direct reference | to their actual grade. The underlying paper suggests a grade | of 1.3-1.4 weight percent which is on the bottom end of mid- | grade. | | On 4: This point can not be concluded without further study. | While terrestrial mining has had more historical impacts to | humans, this does not allow for comparison on future | terrestrial mining vs. a relatively unknown ecosystem impact | from aquatic mining. Mining is also not assessed on purely | anthropocentric impacts. We've begun to appreciate that | systems are interconnected and humans are only one receptor. | Enormous caution is required, certainly more than "lower | emissions = good". | elil17 wrote: | I'm not sure that sea floor mining is widely ridiculed. | I've seen it taken about as seriously by grantmakers as | other emerging technologies. That said I'm not in the | mining space. | | I'm don't disagree with your points - there's a lot of | uncertainty around all of this research. But, from what I | can see, regulators are doing the right thing and being | very cautious to do environmental studies at each step of | the way. Maybe I'm way off about that. | AceJohnny2 wrote: | An opposite take of the validity of deep sea mining was covered | on Real Engineering's youtube channel a couple months ago: | | https://youtu.be/73mXXJpEjRI | zoklet-enjoyer wrote: | Oh, I thought this type of mining didn't even exist and was just | a cover for that nuclear submarine retrieval | atlasunshrugged wrote: | It used to be and actually helped to spark the industry because | the Intel folks paid for studies and the like to cover their | tracks which actually helped contribute to opening up the | field! | janee wrote: | Article aside, the interface shown top left in the control room | pic looks quite polished. | | Couldn't make out what the program is called...was expecting a | more win xp looking UI haha | oxyboy wrote: | Disturbing that the wall of monitors seems to be blocking the | exit out of that control room or it's some really tight crawl | space! | jez wrote: | I enjoyed this 3-minute video from The Metals Company YouTube | channel a bit better than this press announcement for learning | about what this company is and what they're trying to do: | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ib4azYzQY9k | Thoreandan wrote: | Hadn't heard of this, found concerns about the environmental | impact & the CEO's previous company Nautilus Minerals: | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Metals_Company | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manganese_nodule | | (2021-Jun) https://www.wsj.com/articles/environmental-investing- | frenzy-... | cstross wrote: | Just as a reminder, the idea of mining deep sea manganese nodules | was developed by Howard Hughes' Glomar subsidiary in the 1970s as | a cover story for the CIA's Project AZORIAN, a project to build a | "deep sea mining ship" (the Hughes Glomar Explorer) that would | deploy a sub-surface barge (the HMB-1) with a giant grapple to | raise the sunken Soviet nuclear missile submarine K-129. | | As such the scheme had to be "sufficiently plausible bullshit" to | withstand scrutiny, while not necessarily needing to be | economically feasible. | | (No, I'm not making this up.) | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Azorian | AceJohnny2 wrote: | For context, above commenter wrote a wonderful James Bond | pastiche novel inspired by Project Azorian, because how | couldn't he: | | https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/14150.The_Jennifer_Morgu... | ethbr0 wrote: | When you're going to reply "And there was that Laundry | reference too," and then notice that cstross was the "above | commenter"... | gpderetta wrote: | I came to this thread to post a laundry reference, but | cstross beat me to it. Can't complain :) | cstross wrote: | I'm not the only SF writer to have gone there, either: Harry | Turtledove published one just this year! | | https://www.amazon.com/Three-Miles-Down-Harry-Turtledove- | ebo... | mherdeg wrote: | Last year I read a pretty good sf short story about deep-sea | polymetallic nodule mining and went out and bought $34 of | warrants on TMC, now worth $1.69. Ah well, I guess reading sf | is not due diligence. | | I cannot for the life of me remember what the story was though | -- I don't think it was Arula Ratnakar's "Submergence". Hmmm. | Maybe it was "The Little Shepherdess"? | ethbr0 wrote: | Something's good-ideaness is independent of both its current | equity-price and its financials. | | A great investment is a good idea (rare) that _also_ happens | to be undervalued (relative to the market) and possess strong | financials (ability to fund itself in the current macro | climate). | Something1234 wrote: | Wait what is TMC? Is this like futures trading, but with less | liquidity? | [deleted] | [deleted] | isquaredr wrote: | Abbreviation for "The Metals Company" which is the subject | of the article | yardie wrote: | I had science books in middle school that when showing an | example of manganese (for the chemical elements section), they | included a shot of the Glomar Explorer mining it from the sea | floor. That's how thorough the plausibility was to make it into | public school textbooks. | EdwardDiego wrote: | > Project Azorian (also called "Jennifer" by the press after | its Top Secret Security Compartment) | | Ahhhh, hence The Jennifer Morgue. | proee wrote: | Makes you wonder what companies are being used for cover | stories today? | oldgradstudent wrote: | According to a book on project Azorian whose name I forgot | claimed that the CIA hype on deep sea mining was so strong that | some universities opened deep sea mining programs and recruited | quite few students who were very surprised to discover that | they spent years of study as part of the CIA cover story. | _tom_ wrote: | They did the same for modern art. | | https://daily.jstor.org/was-modern-art-really-a-cia-psy-op/ | | With similar results. | Guthur wrote: | Lol, this is going to be so much better for the environment, | right? | zeristor wrote: | In the 80s on UK's Channel 4, there was a series of four films, | Oceanus Ecumenicus, that talked about mining ocean floor nodules, | Ocean Thermal Energy (OTEC), Saudi Arabia mining silver from the | bottom of the Red Sea, I can't remember what the fourth one was | but since the series was sponsored by British Gas I could make a | guess. | | I'd love to see that again, but it doesn't seem to have found | it's way to YouTube yet. | sklargh wrote: | I feel pretty torn about this. Deep sea mining's impacts are | largely unknowable. Assuming they resemble issues created by on- | land open face mining it's pretty clear that they will be | enormously destructive to ecosystems. Do the ecosystems at an | ocean's bottom matter to humans materially, unknown. | | But on-land mines are definitely worse with our current data. My | guess is this turns into a giant disaster but I'm inclined to | noodle forward. | devindotcom wrote: | Not that I have a better solution, but won't this suck up and | kill seabottom creatures and denude their habitat? | sp332 wrote: | Yes, but the alternative is having fewer batteries. | mrguyorama wrote: | No, the alternative is manufacturers paying a dollar more for | a battery made using more careful mining processes. Obviously | that's a no go, because then I can't sell $3 "one time use" | lithium ion battery packs as a "quick charge on the go" and | literally throw away a reusable product. | bglazer wrote: | Not only that, it also creates an enormous amount of underwater | noise which distresses whales and dolphins. Further, it creates | plumes of silt and tailings. All of this in a very poorly | understood ecosystem. We have no idea what consequences this | activity will have. | UncleOxidant wrote: | These deep sea species tend to be very slow growing. It could | take centuries for a mined section to recover. | eloff wrote: | Doesn't surface mining also do that? | SECProto wrote: | > Doesn't surface mining also do that? | | No, surface mining doesn't "suck up and kill seabottom | creatures". :) | | More sympathetically: yes, surface mining can have habitat | loss issues (i.e. land use changes), but the bigger issue | erosion and sediment control, the management of which is a | major component of any modern mine in a well regulated | country. Maybe there are ways to mitigate subsea sediment | migration, but they definitely haven't been studied to nearly | the same extent as surface issues and mitigations | eloff wrote: | The sediment migration was part of what was being studied | here, so maybe they will mitigate it somewhat. I'm not | super optimistic given our mining record on land. Still the | deep ocean is mostly a desert, and it's massive, so I think | we can afford to damage it a little. The alternative is | land mining, which is also damaging. | Darkphibre wrote: | The metric of "hauling 40 Tesla Model S vehicles up every sixty | minutes." is a strange one. A '93 Honda Accord would be divisible | to the minute (60/hr). Or even 52lbs/second... Though I suppose | those don't sound as flashy. | | Alternatively, I'd be curious how many tesla _batteries_ in raw | materials that equated to per hour. | grapescheesee wrote: | I can't help but think, more and more often; how destructive and | short sighted human technology has become. I find it fascinating | to watch how ingenious we are, but equally or more terrifying. | The ocean is our single life sustaining force. | Darkphibre wrote: | I found the book Rama Revealed by Arthur C. Clarke and Gentry | Lee to be an unbelievable and depressing outlook on the short | sidedness of man's assault on limited resources. | | And then I was driving through Phoenix Arizona, looking out at | the concrete landscape and concrete riverways, and realized | just how right he was. | vwoolf wrote: | A large part of the reason Phoenix (the greater metro area) | is as large as it is is because most of California restricts | new housing construction so severely. I'd not live here if it | weren't so much more affordable than California. | | The parking-lot sprawl is appalling, and should be reversed, | but California policies (like those in New York, Boston, | etc.) have a lot to do with the growth of the Phoenix-to- | Florida area. | aporetics wrote: | Interesting, but that's just a proximal cause. | | The question is what will it take for us all, collectively, | to refrain from using whatever is it hand for whatever we | happen to desire. Out of respect for what? | | Most of the time this kind of self restraint does not | really seem conceivable. Instead, in debates like this, | we'll defer to emissions and sequestration data, without | ever confronting what what it is that led us to blithely | create and deploy machines like this and shrug off the | damage. | zokier wrote: | > I can't help but think, more and more often; how destructive | and short sighted human technology has become | | I'd say the attitudes 50 or 100 years were dramatically more | short sighted than today; destructiveness is bit debatable but | lets not kid ourselves that the past was some gentle setting. | Also take into account the fact that human population has | quadrupled in the past 100ish years, and industrialized | population growth has been even more dramatic; I don't know if | you can say technology has become much more destructive when | there are just so much more people partaking in that | destruction. | grapescheesee wrote: | Yes, that is interesting, and it is exacerbating the visible | negatives. It is true, in general the expectations of first | world quality of life; insofar as the current daily drivers. | I do believe regardless of the scale, technology has become | more destructive. The root cause has become far more nuanced, | yet at the center is the idea. Human curiosity to see and | prove, which itself isn't bad. The capital to prove the idea, | and advance; is when the damage starts. I am not able to | refute this cycle, it is just how the cutting edge of | industry works. | | So it might appear you are correct. | [deleted] | themgt wrote: | Just found this article with some research from earlier | polymetallic nodule mining finding significantly decreased carbon | sequestration in the mined areas. Won't be great news if mining | the "Planet's Largest Deposit of Battery Metals" winds up | worsening global warming. | | https://ceramics.org/ceramic-tech-today/environment/explorin... | devindotcom wrote: | Ceramics.org vs Metals.co, how surreal. | elil17 wrote: | This study (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S | 095965262...) looked at what the actual impact of that carbon | release would be. Even if deep sea mining completely destroyed | the ability of the sea floor to sequester carbon and it took | 100 years to recover, it would only release 0.025 gigatons of | CO2. | | In contrast, if we wanted to get the same metals from the land, | it would release 0.065 gigatons of CO2. | | While there's a good bit of uncertainty in these estimates. | Regardless, the impact is dwarfed by the savings from more | efficient smelting processes enabled by deep sea nodules, which | could save about 1 gigaton of carbon. | culi wrote: | That's releasing, but what about the impact of the ability to | sequester more CO2? Most of soil sequestration estimates are | based on some really shaky soil science,[^0] but the oceans | are known to be a much more effective means of sequestering | carbon | | [^0]: | https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/07/soil- | rev... | elil17 wrote: | Oceans are great at sequestering carbon, but that's via | dissolved CO2 and ecosystems near the surface (which are | not impacted by deep sea mining). The seabed ecosystem | plays an ancillary role. | | Meanwhile, I'm not aware of any proposals to sequester | carbon in seabed ecosystems. | | I'm certainly not qualified to analyze the accuracy of a | soil science study or the field as a whole. As someone not | in that specialty, the figure that jumps out at me is the | 40x difference between the impact from ecosystem damage vs. | other impacts. Generally that tells me that the potential | for ecosystem impacts to nix the climate benefits of deep | sea mining is low - it would require that soil science be | so wrong that they missed over 90% of the carbon content of | the seabed. | opwieurposiu wrote: | It is crazy that there are trillions of dollars worth of these | nodules laying around just waiting for someone to pick them up. | | Congrats to the team that made this work. | 09bjb wrote: | Fantastic work by the team in taking the wonderful things | mining has done for the planet and expanding it to the oceans! | I'm sure once we've had our way with the ocean and left almost | nothing to live that we can find a way to live harmoniously | with what remains. | reaperducer wrote: | There truly is nowhere left for nature to hide. | politician wrote: | How do you feel about asteroid mining? | Arrath wrote: | A matter of time until someone (whether negligently or | maliciously) screws up the orbital insertion of a packet of | minerals or a whole-ass asteroid. "Oops" | mrguyorama wrote: | And it will undoubtedly happen because an american | company, after lobbying for fewer regulations, will fail | to do the right or necessary thing like "testing their | systems" or "being fail safe" | pugworthy wrote: | If this was 1974, it would be "..much of it packed into a Soviet | submarine..." | | It's crazy how as a child in that era, I totally bought into the | Glomar Explorer being this amazing thing. | | And 45-50 years later, here we are. | Mizza wrote: | What happened to the common heritage of all mankind?[1] How come | these fuckers can go and grab them for themselves? | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_heritage_of_humanity | thehappypm wrote: | They have a permit issued by an international body | georgeecollins wrote: | I couldn't figure out from this article what a "nodule collection | system" is? A submarine, a robot, a big bucket? | | That's the part I am really curious about if anyone knows. | jpm_sd wrote: | There's a thumbnail in the article that links to a bigger photo | of the "collector vehicle". It appears to be a Giant Roomba. | | https://ml.globenewswire.com/Resource/Download/f4344afd-acde... ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2022-12-14 23:00 UTC)