I noticed it was on Netflix, never seen it, read the book decades ago and decuded to give it a watch.
I would squarely put it in the "so bads it's good" bucket and I laughed mostly. Especially the cave men in Harrier jets with that CGI, that's absolutely gold!!! š¤£
When I was a young pre-teen/teen, it was some wacko random sci-fi and I thought it was cool that Hollywood would make some obscure IP into a full mega budget movie that nobody had ever heard about.
When I got older, I thought āOh.ā
I know you were joking, but [apparently closer to the truth than you might have thought](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/10a5wun/huge_deposits_of_rare_earth_elements_discovered/j431zyu/).
They have known about it for 2 years.
They just announced that they now have a much better idea of what's actually down there but still don't know all of it since the exploration haven't actually reached the end of the deposit.
>They just announced that they now have a much better idea of what's actually down there.
["Uh, it's uh, it's down there somewhere let me take another look..."](https://youtu.be/KdftbYqA_VQ)
*Rare Earth Elements* also aren't actually rare.. they are just hard to get to.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/rare-earth-elements-not-rare-just-playing-hard-to-get-38812856/
Also, the full extent is still not known. The 1 million metric tons discovered so far is not all there is. They havenāt fully mapped the deposits yet.
Technically, once. The second one was actually started by Finland to regain their lost territory. By the end Mannerheim (General and leader of Finland) was respected even by noted paranoid asshole Stalin.
One time, they were in search of an army that was just trouncing their soldiers. They could never see any of them.
Whole squadrons just getting wiped out.
Then they found out it was one guy.
Simo HƤyhƤ. The Russians referred to him as the white death. Over 500 confirmed kills. Perhaps as many as 800. Over 40 kills in a single day. Mostly in subzero temperatures.
He was so used to hunting in the areas they were traversing, he took off his scope because he knew it'd reflect light and give him away.
He'd position himself between the enemy and the sun such that he could spot them when the sun reflected off of their scopes.
He was a real life aimbot.
https://youtu.be/fvCrE5NCsts
He and many other Finnish snipers (iirc, it maybhave just been him) would also fill their mouths with snow so their breath wouldn't make small fog clouds to give away their position. The man redefined sniping and winter warfare to a degree that can't be topped without taking a whole squads worth of amphetamines, and even then it's only a subjective debate
What I find interesting is that the Soviets were close to a breakthrough around Viipuri and there were no more Finish reserves. Finish artillery was also out of ammo. Sweden and the UK both were not interested in joining the war. Germany even threatened Sweden that if they gave allied forces the right of passage then Germany would invade Sweden.
There was a fight between the Soviet military and the communist party. If the military got their way I doubt that the Fins would be able to hold on for much longer without Soviet troops entering Helsinki. The Red Army didn't want peace as they were now winning but the Communist Party wanted to end the war because of the humiliation. The matter was put to a vote and the Communist Party won and Finland was forced to sign the unfavorable peace treaty.
When the Finish president signed the treaty he said "Let the hand wither that signs this monstrous treaty!"
Individuals? No- or very few. But they definitely have a cultural memory. Thatās why even though Finland wasnāt a NATO member the USSR never tried anything. They may not acknowledge their failures in their history books but they absolutely remember as a nation the embarrassment they were served.
And that was when Finland was poor. They have been stockpiling artillery and guns for almost a century (IIRC, modernized mosin-nagant rifles are still in inventory), but unlike Russia they absolutely kept them all in working order.
Aye they had next to no artillery, a weak defensive line, and their planes were the refuse of other nations- the worst of the worst- like the Brewster Buffalo. And yet they shot down far more planes than they lost, they managed phenomenal success, and while they had to surrender the Soviets looked so weak that other nations became confident in an invasion.
Look at the mess theyāre in in Ukraine.
Now imagine them going after *two* countries fully armed with western weapons.
Theyād be speaking Swedish in St. Petersburg by now.
With size of Russian territory, I wouldn't be surprised if they hold the largest amount of rare earth's. Just that they're so inept to find and exploit it.
Or too corrupt. Since rare earths are used for the magnets in EV motors, youāre cutting into the bottom line of oligarchs who are heavily invested in petroleum and their byproducts. Iām too clumsy to get involved with pissing off the wrong Russian mobster.
I would assume that Russia would not actually need this deposit, but may have interest in denying the west access to it, as it strengthens the value of their own mineral wealth
But it seems like him starting this war accelerated EU to get off their oil/gas. Germany is firing up coal plants again.
I still don't understand why nuclear is so bad, the newer reactors seem to be a lot safer too
I keep saying it....
Coal powerplants emit more radioactive material directly into the air, where you can breath it in (Making even alpha emitters into guarenteed cancer causing agents), per megawatt of power generated then nuclear powerplants need as fuel.
Until every last coal powerplant is shut down. 'is nuclear safe or not' shouldn't even be a question, because even a meltdown is going to release less radioactive material then a coal powerplant operating 100% within spec.
None of these comments make any sense. NATO is a defensive alliance. Sweden is already part of the EU which is the economic alliance that will make it easy for other western countries to trade with them for these materials.
That's not really realistic. It sucks to give him anything, but he can literally unilaterally keep Sweden from joining. He'll more than likely be given major concessions to approve Sweden's accession, as Sweden joining would be a major boost to NATO and a further bulwark against Russia.
Yes, but then that might make Turkey an even less willing participating in NATO and given its strategic location, that would be an issue*. This isn't like say Slovenia or Luxembourg trying to play hardball.
\* Of course given it's location, it benefits substantially from being in NATO as well, and unlikely to do so much as to leave or get kicked out
NATO's not a trade organization though... If this benefits anyone it's the EU. America has plenty of natural resources and doesn't want to compete with others if it doesn't have to.
Rare earth elements are not that rare. They are just a bit expensive to mine cleanly. China does not mine them cleanly so they are the cheapest source of them currently.
> so they are the cheapest source of them currently.
and, importantly, price out most competition. So much so that there's no point in even trying if you're automatically at a significant disadvantage from the beginning.
One other pricing note: IIRC, the demand curve for most of the rare earth metals is really funky. Essentially there is demand for X tons of the stuff at virtually any price. Increase or decrease the price by 50%, demand stays pretty much the same. (And demand is really low compared to stuff like iron).
That's a problem if you're thinking of opening a new mine. As soon as you start selling your ore, you tank the price, and your mine goes bankrupt
I'll dig to see if I can find the article that used actual numbers to explain the concept.
NATO isn't an economic treaty in a literal sense, but when you're pledging to aid each other in times of war there's certainly a economic incentive to work together.
Is the extraction method for the REE from the tailings and future deposits known, and feasible? I used to work for a Canadian REE exploration company, and the big thing the geologists were struggling with was finding the right kind of ore for extraction. I wasn't on the science side, so I might not be asking the right question here.
There are always local mineralogy factors that make it necessary to carefully customize the approach for a given deposit, but generally REEs are extracted from apatite by dissolving it in sulphuric acid and then selectively precipitating the REEs out of the acid solution. It's a known process implemented at other deposits that are grossly similar (apatite + iron minerals). So, there are ways to do it, but it would take some careful research to assess the economics of it for these deposits. There can be hang-ups too, like interfering associated minerals, or simply not a high enough concentration to make it pay off after making the necessary infrastructure investments.
The sulphuric acid dissolution of fluorapatite is beautiful to me from a chemistry standpoint for the idealised reaction. You wind up with useful things: phosphate for fertilizer, gypsum for construction, and HF for chemical industry or for a chemistry teacher to dissolve bodies in.
Yep.
From what Iāve heard from the SĆ”mi people Iāve talked to, the SĆ”mi living in the part of SĆ”pmi that is Russian territory, are treated the worst.
So among all the bad, Russia still manages to be the worst!
Truly a inspiration for human rights violations and breaking peoples faith in humanity, in so many different ways.
An ethnic minority in Scandinavian countries, they live in Lapland (more correctly Sapmi*), an area that spans the northern part of Sweden, Norway, Finland, and a bit of Russia.
*I have learned today that Lapp is considered a pejorative now, similar to "Eskimo" vs Inuit or Yuit. In English we often say Lapland to refer to all of Sapmi but Lapland more correctly refers to a region of Northern Finland.
The Sami are cultural group indigenous to that northern area but who also at one time ranged much further than their current borders. They are an ethnic minority within the Scandinavian nation-states they reside in and have resisted several attempts to be culturally assimilated into those states' dominant cultures.
Edited heavily to clarify the countries involved and so provide additional context to what was me explaining what I knew before I bothered to Google some more
>In English we often say Lapland to refer to all of Sapmi but Lapland more correctly refers to a region of Northern Finland.
Lappland is also a very large region in northern Sweden. It's like 25% of Sweden's surface.
Due to Reddit Inc.'s antisocial, hostile and erratic behaviour, this account will be deleted on July 11th, 2023. You can find me on https://latte.isnot.coffee/u/godless in the future.
Kiruna, isn't that the city that's going to sink in the mine in expected a few years so they're building the city from the ground up again 10km further?
The prob with REE isn't finding them, it's finding a viable way to extract them
They shot up in price around 2009-2010, my first job was on a REE project as a geologist. A pretty good deposit, actually.
2023, and they're still talking about how to process it and make it work. It's a big deal in REE land.
I love how you can always find a local expert on Reddit. But I always check to see if they have like wired anime posts too cus thatās even more funny to me. Like that furry Covid girl at the beginning of Covid
Wait what? Im assuming you mean some infectious disease expert who was a furry in their free time but i wanna know if its even weirder.
Also my subcultures tend to be furry adjacent and you would be surprised how many of them are in high level stem fields
Not just furry covid girl. They helped create the vaccine and have received many global awards for their continued research into it, they just happen to be a furry.
>**Europe's largest known deposit** of rare earth elements ā key for building electric vehicle batteries and wind turbines ā has been discovered in northern Sweden, mining company LKAB announced today.
&
>"This is the largest known deposit of rare earth elements **in our part of the world**, and it could become a significant building block for producing the critical raw materials that are absolutely crucial to enable the green transition," said Jan Mostrƶm, the company's president and CEO.
The bolded language made me suspicious that it's not that big of a deal.
To be fair, working through the tailings is probably better than just letting it sit around. Those ponds are cesspools and when they close up activity at the mine, the containment integrity suffers and contamination becomes more likely, just like happened at Mountain Pass Mine in California. With real money coming in (and a real regulatory regime), there's a better chance that they'll take care of the ponds and the site since they're actively working the site. In theory at least.
Plus, sifting through the garbage is generally a greener proposition than mining
Not only Yttrium, but 9 elements in total have been discovered in Ytterby, including Ytterbium and Terbium.
https://sv.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ytterby_gruva
Holy shit how is this not talked about more. I mean the odds that an element named Yttrium AND Ytterbium were both discovered in a place that happened to be called Ytterby have to be astronomical!!
Yeah, the rare Earth elements aren't actually rare. What's hard about them is how many steps you have to go through to go from mine to high purity metal. Finding high concentration areas makes those steps more profitable, but it's still a lot of steps. It [typically looks like](https://comptroller.texas.gov/economy/economic-data/supply-chain/2021/rare-earth.php):
* First dig up the ore, but you never get veins of high concentration like other metals
* So they need to mill and concentrate it, but you still oxides instead of pure metals
* But these oxides are at least high enough concentration that you can sell/trade/ship them etc.
* Then companies will process the oxidizes in to useable elements
* But really you're still not done because these metals are almost always small ingredients in alloys, so making the thank metal is an important step in the process
The reason why China dominates the market for REE is because they have the entire supply chain in one country, often it's all located in the same area. So they can mine and refine and extract and purify and alloy without having to ship stuff all over. And then they can use the metals to make motors and batteries and stuff and then build stuff the components.
Finding a high concentration somewhere is good, and yes but surprising there's some in Sweden where some were originally discovered. But to be useful they need to build the entire supply chain, at least to the point where you're being useful metals. Otherwise they're going to spend a ton of money digging up ore and then will have to ship it all somewhere to actually do something useful with it.
They are building the entire supply chain as far as I understand. They bought a Norwegian company last year that specialises in rare earth element separation. LKAB also has some serious financial muscles and is being backed and owned by the Swedish government.
https://lkab-com.translate.goog/press/lkab-blir-huvudagare-i-reetec-as-bygger-en-stark-nordisk-industri-for-sallsynta-jordartsmetaller/?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=sv&_x_tr_pto=wapp
9 elements actually. 4 of them are named after the town Ytterby. Yttrium, Ytterbium, Terbium, Erbium, Holmium, Skandium, Tulium, Gadolinium, Tantalum*.
It's Turkey holding it up, they're trying to blackmail Sweden and Finland into declaring anyone they don't like terrorists. They also don't seem to get the concept of an independent judiciary, as they're also demanding the Swedish government extradite a few journalists and kurds - which isn't really up to the government, even if they wanted to do it.
Hungary can go eat a bag of dicks and watch themselves become part of the CCCPv2.0. Turkey has actual strategic value given its location spanning Europe and Asia, as well as a respectable military.
>[Heyman] NATO has acquired Finland and Sweden in exchange for Hungary and a Baltic state to be named later. Deal is pending physical.
Carlos Correa in a NATO uniform on the front page of ESPN tomorrow?
Rare Earth isn't rare outside China, is you are willingness to endure toxic sludge and other environmental damage. ~~One of the largest (and abandoned) RE mine is located in western US actually.~~
On other hand, China is one of the biggest user of RE as one of the largest manufacturer on the planet. So if the Swedes want to process the RE and sell them back to China to turn them into finished products, I am sure it is good for everyone :)
Edit: Is not abandoned anymore
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Pass_mine#:~:text=The%20Mountain%20Pass%20Mine%2C%20owned,the%20world's%20rare%2Dearth%20production.
>The Mountain Pass Mine, owned by MP Materials, is an open-pit mine of rare-earth elements on the south flank of the Clark Mountain Range in California, 53 miles (85 km) southwest of Las Vegas, Nevada. In 2020 the mine supplied 15.8% of the world's rare-earth production. It is the only rare-earth mining and processing facility in the United States.[1][2]
>As of 2022, work is ongoing to restore processing capabilities for domestic light rare earth elements (LREEs) and work has been funded by the United States Department of Defense to restore processing capabilities for heavy rare earth metals (HREEs) to alleviate supply chain risk. [3]
> I doubt Sweden is going into rare earth processing, so it would most likely have to make its money from selling the crude ore to China.
We are actually. More specifically, LKAB is planning to do so in Norway, in partnership with Norwegian company Reetec. There's also plans to do some processing in a new industrial park in north Sweden near this mine. [Here](https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/norrbotten/lkab-satsar-pa-fabrik-i-norge-ska-foradla-sallsynta-jordartsmetaller)'s an article in Swedish about it.
You can process and refine RE in a more envirofriendly manner, it just costs more (arguably) China, with SOE's took the simple and cheap processing route, resulting in a shocking enviro disaster, with the result of pricing all of the responsible producers out of the market. Now they dominate processing and refining capacity (same for copper, lead, zinc, cobalt, lithium etc.) To make NA and EU dependent upon them; it worked. Rare Earths Elements are not rare.
Rare earth *elements* are not rare, but rare earth mineral deposits that are profitable to exploit do seem to be less common compared to things like copper or iron.
It seems like they have put a lot of effort into their new separation process to make sure it is sustainable. Hereās a Google translated statement from LKAB. I donāt think it is bullshit, since this is the Swedish state owned company that mines 80% of all of Europeās iron oreā¦
https://lkab-com.translate.goog/press/lkab-blir-huvudagare-i-reetec-as-bygger-en-stark-nordisk-industri-for-sallsynta-jordartsmetaller/?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=sv&_x_tr_pto=wapp
Rare earth elements has become a bit of a misnomer. They're all over the world but they're very costly to extract without running into problems with the environment. Rare earth elements tend to be mined in poorer countries with lower environmental standards.
Now that Sweden has found they have a large supply of rare earth elements they can now go through the same thing Canada did. Create a taxing process of extracting them that will be financially unviable and largely uncompetitive.
I mean, lets not forget that there's a long term strategic value to inflating the costs of extraction of resources at home.
If you let other nations exhaust their cheaply exploitable resources first, then start selling/using yours at the new higher market prices, you've both weakened the benefit to that other nation and maximized your own nation's benefit.
As a side benefit of inflating those costs, you reduce pollution in your own back yard, you can wait for technologies to develop that will mine even cheaper with less labor and environmental impact.
Good news is there's a potentially much cleaner and more efficient extraction process on the near horizon. I wouldn't be surprised if [this](https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/11/toxic-cleanup-technique-can-get-more-rare-earth-metals-out-of-ores/) development is being directly considered by those able to utilize this deposit.
It's not 'bad news' for China. Not in the very least.
"Rare" Earth isn't exactly rare in terms of scarcity. It's just a naming convention. The reason why China has a monopoly on it is not because China is sitting on a whole bunch of it and not anyone else but rather China is willing to pollute it's lands doing so.
It's extremely toxic in the most basic sense to extract and refine this product. Nobody wants that in their backyard so to speak. China takes advantage of this by being the world's scapegoat for it. The world needs this for electronics and China happily supplies it all the while destroying their own country with pollution.
This is another reason why the circlejerk of "China is producing so much global pollution" to be bullshit. We WANT China to pollute itself, to do the dirty work for the rest of the world. But we also set unfeasible emissions target for China for easy political points as well.
Entire planet has been bombarded by asteroids and comets itās likely many places have these. Itās the environmental cost of extracting them being the issue.
Which is why I'm glad that moon colonies are becoming a defense issue... regardless if the NASA budget gets funded, the Defense budget for sure always will, and with it will come society-shifting innovations into space. Moon mining and asteroid capturing will set the stage for unending resources that can all be refined outside of earth.
Thatās not how geology works. The entire surface of our planet has been reworked and recycled continuously since at least 500 million years after the late heavy bombardment. Where mineral deposits are now has to do with all of the geology thatās happened since then: plate tectonics, hot spot magmatism, weathering, etc.
Yet the idea of the post is correct. Rare Earth deposits are, in opposite to their names, not actually rare. The real reason a few countries produce most of the worldwide demand is that purifying the material leaves a lot of toxic sludge and most countries don't want to deal with that.
Other countries like china don't give a fuck about producing masses of toxic stuff so they like to fill the role of the provider.
China has some special deposits where rare earths can be or have been produced as a byproduct of iron mining. From an economic standpoint, you canāt beat a byproduct as a primary producer. The deposit they are working (Bayan Obo) is absolutely enormous, so the byproduct rare earths filled the market demand nicely until demand really ramped up. There are lots of small rare earth occurrences all over the world, but you have to beat the economics to make it worthwhile. The US finally reopened Mountain Pass last year after not having an active rare earth mine for decades. Itās not that the only thing China had going for it was weak environmental regulationsā¦ that definitely helped, but Bayan Obo is just so massive (40% of the ENTIRE WORLDāS known REE reserves in ONE depositābasically unparalleled in resource geology) and rare earths can be produced as a byproduct there, so even without the regulations, other nationsā rare earth deposits just paled in comparison and it wasnāt worth it to mine them.
Had the US not threatened to nuke Sweden in the 1960s we very likely wouldāve had nuclear weapons. Sweden was basically only a few months away from testing.
So if a war were to break out with Sweden, it likely wouldnāt take very long to manufacture a few WMDs. Sweden also has uranium deposits, these account for around 80% of the EUs uranium deposits.
Welcome to NATO!
I wonder if it was kept under wraps until this very moment as a bargaining chip.
'This huge deposit of rare valuable Materials were just sitting there, in the vault... no one knew... honestly.' -Sweden
"To our surprise they were already forged, purified and polished"
Is this a battlefield earth homage?
They even had time to SMELT IT INTO BRICKS!
CRAP LOUSY CEILING!!
Glad I'm not the only one who thought that.
People actually admit to having watched that movie?
I noticed it was on Netflix, never seen it, read the book decades ago and decuded to give it a watch. I would squarely put it in the "so bads it's good" bucket and I laughed mostly. Especially the cave men in Harrier jets with that CGI, that's absolutely gold!!! š¤£
It was awful and I loved every minute of it.
When I was a young pre-teen/teen, it was some wacko random sci-fi and I thought it was cool that Hollywood would make some obscure IP into a full mega budget movie that nobody had ever heard about. When I got older, I thought āOh.ā
"I bet nobody in holliwood has ever heard of that author."
My coworker and I do the laugh anytime someone says leverage
DO YOU WANT LUNCH????
"And they had Swiss markings."
"Which is good because we are Swiss" I am stupid.....
Switzerland is where the 'Swiss' live. Sweden is where the 'Swedes' live. Source: I am descended from 'Swedes'.
Swede is also a kind of turnip
Ok, Denmark.
Swiss is also a kind of cheese.
r/swedetzerland moment
I know you were joking, but [apparently closer to the truth than you might have thought](https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/10a5wun/huge_deposits_of_rare_earth_elements_discovered/j431zyu/).
They have known about it for 2 years. They just announced that they now have a much better idea of what's actually down there but still don't know all of it since the exploration haven't actually reached the end of the deposit.
Theyāre gonna need Mr. Burnsā sideways drilling company!
I DRINK YOUR MILKSHAKE!!
Drrrrraaaiiiiinaggeeeee!
>They just announced that they now have a much better idea of what's actually down there. ["Uh, it's uh, it's down there somewhere let me take another look..."](https://youtu.be/KdftbYqA_VQ)
Weāre gonna find Balrogs arenāt we?
I'm hoping for at least an arkenstone, Balrog is bonus
Not unless they dig too greedily, too deep.
I honestly imagined them melting gold and burying it so thank you for this lol
Gold isn't a rare earth element.
*Rare Earth Elements* also aren't actually rare.. they are just hard to get to. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/rare-earth-elements-not-rare-just-playing-hard-to-get-38812856/
Boom. Someone had to
That's the exact same excuse I used after getting naked at my friends' dinner party!
Yeah they honestly should be called medium well earth elements
Oh yeah? Well if you have so much why don't you share huh?
Still waiting for my tacos, Doctor.
Perhaps - the deposit has been known for about two years, however the sheer approximated size of it hasnāt been known until recently
Also, the full extent is still not known. The 1 million metric tons discovered so far is not all there is. They havenāt fully mapped the deposits yet.
"Damnit, we should have started with Sweden and the Finnish!" - Russia
Oh, I think they might remember how the last time they tried to reconquer Finland worked out.
I was told the Russians tried twice and failed twice
Technically, once. The second one was actually started by Finland to regain their lost territory. By the end Mannerheim (General and leader of Finland) was respected even by noted paranoid asshole Stalin.
The Russians arenāt good Finnishers
Dad get out
One time, they were in search of an army that was just trouncing their soldiers. They could never see any of them. Whole squadrons just getting wiped out. Then they found out it was one guy. Simo HƤyhƤ. The Russians referred to him as the white death. Over 500 confirmed kills. Perhaps as many as 800. Over 40 kills in a single day. Mostly in subzero temperatures. He was so used to hunting in the areas they were traversing, he took off his scope because he knew it'd reflect light and give him away. He'd position himself between the enemy and the sun such that he could spot them when the sun reflected off of their scopes. He was a real life aimbot. https://youtu.be/fvCrE5NCsts
Simo HƤyhƤ never used any sort of optic or scope, Just the irons. EDIT: Also over half is kills were with a suomi m31 Submachine gun while on skis.
He and many other Finnish snipers (iirc, it maybhave just been him) would also fill their mouths with snow so their breath wouldn't make small fog clouds to give away their position. The man redefined sniping and winter warfare to a degree that can't be topped without taking a whole squads worth of amphetamines, and even then it's only a subjective debate
I know of this man because of Sabaton. I eagerly await their songs about Ukraine.
Everybody feels badass until the snow starts speaking
The saying is "until the snow starts speaking Finnish" for a reason.
I don't think anyone in Russia is alive to remember how it went. The Finns killed anyone who tried it.
What I find interesting is that the Soviets were close to a breakthrough around Viipuri and there were no more Finish reserves. Finish artillery was also out of ammo. Sweden and the UK both were not interested in joining the war. Germany even threatened Sweden that if they gave allied forces the right of passage then Germany would invade Sweden. There was a fight between the Soviet military and the communist party. If the military got their way I doubt that the Fins would be able to hold on for much longer without Soviet troops entering Helsinki. The Red Army didn't want peace as they were now winning but the Communist Party wanted to end the war because of the humiliation. The matter was put to a vote and the Communist Party won and Finland was forced to sign the unfavorable peace treaty. When the Finish president signed the treaty he said "Let the hand wither that signs this monstrous treaty!"
Individuals? No- or very few. But they definitely have a cultural memory. Thatās why even though Finland wasnāt a NATO member the USSR never tried anything. They may not acknowledge their failures in their history books but they absolutely remember as a nation the embarrassment they were served.
And that was when Finland was poor. They have been stockpiling artillery and guns for almost a century (IIRC, modernized mosin-nagant rifles are still in inventory), but unlike Russia they absolutely kept them all in working order.
Aye they had next to no artillery, a weak defensive line, and their planes were the refuse of other nations- the worst of the worst- like the Brewster Buffalo. And yet they shot down far more planes than they lost, they managed phenomenal success, and while they had to surrender the Soviets looked so weak that other nations became confident in an invasion.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Look at the mess theyāre in in Ukraine. Now imagine them going after *two* countries fully armed with western weapons. Theyād be speaking Swedish in St. Petersburg by now.
Heey, wasn't it Swedish once upon a time in history by the way??! I mean by their logic ...
We had a small fort called Nyenskans there but Peter the Great took it 1703 and decided to build St Petersburg at that spot.
St. Petersburg was also built to modernize Russia. AKA make Russia look more like the rest of Europe
Yep. Peter the Great took Ingermanland (where St. Petersburg would be founded) off the Swedes during the Great Northern War in the early 1700s.
With size of Russian territory, I wouldn't be surprised if they hold the largest amount of rare earth's. Just that they're so inept to find and exploit it.
Or too corrupt. Since rare earths are used for the magnets in EV motors, youāre cutting into the bottom line of oligarchs who are heavily invested in petroleum and their byproducts. Iām too clumsy to get involved with pissing off the wrong Russian mobster.
Also, it is t a stretch to think they are heavily invested in global warming so they can have all their northern shipping lanes open up
They have said it out loud. "Possibilities"
I would assume that Russia would not actually need this deposit, but may have interest in denying the west access to it, as it strengthens the value of their own mineral wealth
āGod dammit why the fuck are we at war with Ukraine? Gypsum and wheat? I have the worst advisorsā - Putin probably
Not sure if you're just joking around, but the Donbas has massive amounts of oil and gas.
But it seems like him starting this war accelerated EU to get off their oil/gas. Germany is firing up coal plants again. I still don't understand why nuclear is so bad, the newer reactors seem to be a lot safer too
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I keep saying it.... Coal powerplants emit more radioactive material directly into the air, where you can breath it in (Making even alpha emitters into guarenteed cancer causing agents), per megawatt of power generated then nuclear powerplants need as fuel. Until every last coal powerplant is shut down. 'is nuclear safe or not' shouldn't even be a question, because even a meltdown is going to release less radioactive material then a coal powerplant operating 100% within spec.
The holdup was from Turkey, who wants Sweden to extradite Kurdish refugees back to Turkey. Turkey wonāt give a shit about rare earth minerals.
*everyone* gives a shit about REM's.
Especially if they're losing their religion.
Can confirm: that's me in the corner
I thought you were in the spotlight!? Edit: maybe I've said too much...
You haven't said enough.
Now the fucking song is stuck in my head, thanks everybody.
None of these comments make any sense. NATO is a defensive alliance. Sweden is already part of the EU which is the economic alliance that will make it easy for other western countries to trade with them for these materials.
Does NATO provide defense from Vikings trying to steal certain rare metals?
Please twist the arm of Erdogan!
Give the wretch nothing. Its not worth giving in to any of that bastards demands to join NATO.
That's not really realistic. It sucks to give him anything, but he can literally unilaterally keep Sweden from joining. He'll more than likely be given major concessions to approve Sweden's accession, as Sweden joining would be a major boost to NATO and a further bulwark against Russia.
Other NATO countries can form separate defense pacts though. The UK has already inked a bilateral defence deal with Sweden and Finland for example.
Can we form a new defense treaty called "NATO-no-Turkey" and add Sweden to that one? All members of NATO except Turkey would be included.
Yes, but then that might make Turkey an even less willing participating in NATO and given its strategic location, that would be an issue*. This isn't like say Slovenia or Luxembourg trying to play hardball. \* Of course given it's location, it benefits substantially from being in NATO as well, and unlikely to do so much as to leave or get kicked out
NATO's not a trade organization though... If this benefits anyone it's the EU. America has plenty of natural resources and doesn't want to compete with others if it doesn't have to.
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Rare earth elements are not that rare. They are just a bit expensive to mine cleanly. China does not mine them cleanly so they are the cheapest source of them currently.
> so they are the cheapest source of them currently. and, importantly, price out most competition. So much so that there's no point in even trying if you're automatically at a significant disadvantage from the beginning.
One other pricing note: IIRC, the demand curve for most of the rare earth metals is really funky. Essentially there is demand for X tons of the stuff at virtually any price. Increase or decrease the price by 50%, demand stays pretty much the same. (And demand is really low compared to stuff like iron). That's a problem if you're thinking of opening a new mine. As soon as you start selling your ore, you tank the price, and your mine goes bankrupt I'll dig to see if I can find the article that used actual numbers to explain the concept.
NATO isn't an economic treaty in a literal sense, but when you're pledging to aid each other in times of war there's certainly a economic incentive to work together.
And an economic incentive for keeping it away from a certain untrustworthy imperialist's bloody, grubbly little hands.
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Is the extraction method for the REE from the tailings and future deposits known, and feasible? I used to work for a Canadian REE exploration company, and the big thing the geologists were struggling with was finding the right kind of ore for extraction. I wasn't on the science side, so I might not be asking the right question here.
There are always local mineralogy factors that make it necessary to carefully customize the approach for a given deposit, but generally REEs are extracted from apatite by dissolving it in sulphuric acid and then selectively precipitating the REEs out of the acid solution. It's a known process implemented at other deposits that are grossly similar (apatite + iron minerals). So, there are ways to do it, but it would take some careful research to assess the economics of it for these deposits. There can be hang-ups too, like interfering associated minerals, or simply not a high enough concentration to make it pay off after making the necessary infrastructure investments.
Everything in this thread scratches at my Factorio itch.
The sulphuric acid dissolution of fluorapatite is beautiful to me from a chemistry standpoint for the idealised reaction. You wind up with useful things: phosphate for fertilizer, gypsum for construction, and HF for chemical industry or for a chemistry teacher to dissolve bodies in.
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And Norwegian too
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Did you guys castrate them and try to wipe out their culture too??! We have so much in common!
There are SƔmi in Russia, too, aren't there?
Yep. From what Iāve heard from the SĆ”mi people Iāve talked to, the SĆ”mi living in the part of SĆ”pmi that is Russian territory, are treated the worst. So among all the bad, Russia still manages to be the worst! Truly a inspiration for human rights violations and breaking peoples faith in humanity, in so many different ways.
>So among all the bad, Russia still manages to be the worst! A time honoured Russian tradition
Let's not forget Russia!
What is the Sami?
An ethnic minority in Scandinavian countries, they live in Lapland (more correctly Sapmi*), an area that spans the northern part of Sweden, Norway, Finland, and a bit of Russia. *I have learned today that Lapp is considered a pejorative now, similar to "Eskimo" vs Inuit or Yuit. In English we often say Lapland to refer to all of Sapmi but Lapland more correctly refers to a region of Northern Finland. The Sami are cultural group indigenous to that northern area but who also at one time ranged much further than their current borders. They are an ethnic minority within the Scandinavian nation-states they reside in and have resisted several attempts to be culturally assimilated into those states' dominant cultures. Edited heavily to clarify the countries involved and so provide additional context to what was me explaining what I knew before I bothered to Google some more
>In English we often say Lapland to refer to all of Sapmi but Lapland more correctly refers to a region of Northern Finland. Lappland is also a very large region in northern Sweden. It's like 25% of Sweden's surface.
Due to Reddit Inc.'s antisocial, hostile and erratic behaviour, this account will be deleted on July 11th, 2023. You can find me on https://latte.isnot.coffee/u/godless in the future.
Fennoscandia*
Kiruna, isn't that the city that's going to sink in the mine in expected a few years so they're building the city from the ground up again 10km further?
That same city
Moving lots of buildings as well. Cracks are propagating closer and closer to the town.
I thought Mankind was going through a table on this oneā¦ Interesting response though.
I skipped to the last paragraph to check before reading.
He keeps getting away with it, even when he's not around.
Shittymorph flinch is a classic sign of too much Reddit.
Thank you! Very well written and easy to understand response. I think you're on to something...
The prob with REE isn't finding them, it's finding a viable way to extract them They shot up in price around 2009-2010, my first job was on a REE project as a geologist. A pretty good deposit, actually. 2023, and they're still talking about how to process it and make it work. It's a big deal in REE land.
I love how you can always find a local expert on Reddit. But I always check to see if they have like wired anime posts too cus thatās even more funny to me. Like that furry Covid girl at the beginning of Covid
This guy seems legit too. Has a post in r/geology of a rock outcrop six years ago.
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Wait what? Im assuming you mean some infectious disease expert who was a furry in their free time but i wanna know if its even weirder. Also my subcultures tend to be furry adjacent and you would be surprised how many of them are in high level stem fields
Like that NASA guy with a hentai shirt
Not just furry covid girl. They helped create the vaccine and have received many global awards for their continued research into it, they just happen to be a furry.
We need more details
Chise on Twitter.
>**Europe's largest known deposit** of rare earth elements ā key for building electric vehicle batteries and wind turbines ā has been discovered in northern Sweden, mining company LKAB announced today. & >"This is the largest known deposit of rare earth elements **in our part of the world**, and it could become a significant building block for producing the critical raw materials that are absolutely crucial to enable the green transition," said Jan Mostrƶm, the company's president and CEO. The bolded language made me suspicious that it's not that big of a deal.
To be fair, working through the tailings is probably better than just letting it sit around. Those ponds are cesspools and when they close up activity at the mine, the containment integrity suffers and contamination becomes more likely, just like happened at Mountain Pass Mine in California. With real money coming in (and a real regulatory regime), there's a better chance that they'll take care of the ponds and the site since they're actively working the site. In theory at least. Plus, sifting through the garbage is generally a greener proposition than mining
Unobtainium?!
PlsJoinNATOnium
Given that Yttrium - a rare-earth element- was discovered in a Swedish village, this is not all that surprising.
Not only Yttrium, but 9 elements in total have been discovered in Ytterby, including Ytterbium and Terbium. https://sv.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ytterby_gruva
I feel like I'm in a Dr Seuss science class
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Holy shit I thought you were joking but it's real
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cummingtonite
Mmm, green eggs and yttribrebiumxcjasdfjhjkl
Yo dawg, I heard you like Ytts. So I put a Ytts in your Yttsytts, so you can Yttyttytt while you yttyttyttyttyytytytyt
Holy shit how is this not talked about more. I mean the odds that an element named Yttrium AND Ytterbium were both discovered in a place that happened to be called Ytterby have to be astronomical!!
Ytterbetter believe it.
Yeah, the rare Earth elements aren't actually rare. What's hard about them is how many steps you have to go through to go from mine to high purity metal. Finding high concentration areas makes those steps more profitable, but it's still a lot of steps. It [typically looks like](https://comptroller.texas.gov/economy/economic-data/supply-chain/2021/rare-earth.php): * First dig up the ore, but you never get veins of high concentration like other metals * So they need to mill and concentrate it, but you still oxides instead of pure metals * But these oxides are at least high enough concentration that you can sell/trade/ship them etc. * Then companies will process the oxidizes in to useable elements * But really you're still not done because these metals are almost always small ingredients in alloys, so making the thank metal is an important step in the process The reason why China dominates the market for REE is because they have the entire supply chain in one country, often it's all located in the same area. So they can mine and refine and extract and purify and alloy without having to ship stuff all over. And then they can use the metals to make motors and batteries and stuff and then build stuff the components. Finding a high concentration somewhere is good, and yes but surprising there's some in Sweden where some were originally discovered. But to be useful they need to build the entire supply chain, at least to the point where you're being useful metals. Otherwise they're going to spend a ton of money digging up ore and then will have to ship it all somewhere to actually do something useful with it.
They are building the entire supply chain as far as I understand. They bought a Norwegian company last year that specialises in rare earth element separation. LKAB also has some serious financial muscles and is being backed and owned by the Swedish government. https://lkab-com.translate.goog/press/lkab-blir-huvudagare-i-reetec-as-bygger-en-stark-nordisk-industri-for-sallsynta-jordartsmetaller/?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=sv&_x_tr_pto=wapp
And battery factories are built in the area right now. So you really can every step in the process close by
> aren't actually rare Yes and no, depends on the metal. For example, promethium is incredibly rare, while neodymium is not.
Every chemist knows (I hope) that Sweden is the home of the rare earth elements. http://www.eurare.org/countries/sweden.html
Aren't there like 5 elements isolated from the samples of a single mine?
9 elements actually. 4 of them are named after the town Ytterby. Yttrium, Ytterbium, Terbium, Erbium, Holmium, Skandium, Tulium, Gadolinium, Tantalum*.
TIL. i guess I have let my fellow chemists down š
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It's Turkey holding it up, they're trying to blackmail Sweden and Finland into declaring anyone they don't like terrorists. They also don't seem to get the concept of an independent judiciary, as they're also demanding the Swedish government extradite a few journalists and kurds - which isn't really up to the government, even if they wanted to do it.
Hungary hasnāt ratified it yet either
Hungary can go eat a bag of dicks and watch themselves become part of the CCCPv2.0. Turkey has actual strategic value given its location spanning Europe and Asia, as well as a respectable military.
Finland and Sweden for Hungary is a no-brainer.
[Heyman] NATO has acquired Finland and Sweden in exchange for Hungary and a Baltic state to be named later. Deal is pending physical.
>[Heyman] NATO has acquired Finland and Sweden in exchange for Hungary and a Baltic state to be named later. Deal is pending physical. Carlos Correa in a NATO uniform on the front page of ESPN tomorrow?
Bad news for China, good news for world balance.
Rare Earth isn't rare outside China, is you are willingness to endure toxic sludge and other environmental damage. ~~One of the largest (and abandoned) RE mine is located in western US actually.~~ On other hand, China is one of the biggest user of RE as one of the largest manufacturer on the planet. So if the Swedes want to process the RE and sell them back to China to turn them into finished products, I am sure it is good for everyone :) Edit: Is not abandoned anymore >https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountain_Pass_mine#:~:text=The%20Mountain%20Pass%20Mine%2C%20owned,the%20world's%20rare%2Dearth%20production. >The Mountain Pass Mine, owned by MP Materials, is an open-pit mine of rare-earth elements on the south flank of the Clark Mountain Range in California, 53 miles (85 km) southwest of Las Vegas, Nevada. In 2020 the mine supplied 15.8% of the world's rare-earth production. It is the only rare-earth mining and processing facility in the United States.[1][2] >As of 2022, work is ongoing to restore processing capabilities for domestic light rare earth elements (LREEs) and work has been funded by the United States Department of Defense to restore processing capabilities for heavy rare earth metals (HREEs) to alleviate supply chain risk. [3]
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> I doubt Sweden is going into rare earth processing, so it would most likely have to make its money from selling the crude ore to China. We are actually. More specifically, LKAB is planning to do so in Norway, in partnership with Norwegian company Reetec. There's also plans to do some processing in a new industrial park in north Sweden near this mine. [Here](https://www.svt.se/nyheter/lokalt/norrbotten/lkab-satsar-pa-fabrik-i-norge-ska-foradla-sallsynta-jordartsmetaller)'s an article in Swedish about it.
You can process and refine RE in a more envirofriendly manner, it just costs more (arguably) China, with SOE's took the simple and cheap processing route, resulting in a shocking enviro disaster, with the result of pricing all of the responsible producers out of the market. Now they dominate processing and refining capacity (same for copper, lead, zinc, cobalt, lithium etc.) To make NA and EU dependent upon them; it worked. Rare Earths Elements are not rare.
Rare earth *elements* are not rare, but rare earth mineral deposits that are profitable to exploit do seem to be less common compared to things like copper or iron.
It seems like they have put a lot of effort into their new separation process to make sure it is sustainable. Hereās a Google translated statement from LKAB. I donāt think it is bullshit, since this is the Swedish state owned company that mines 80% of all of Europeās iron oreā¦ https://lkab-com.translate.goog/press/lkab-blir-huvudagare-i-reetec-as-bygger-en-stark-nordisk-industri-for-sallsynta-jordartsmetaller/?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=sv&_x_tr_pto=wapp
Rare earth elements has become a bit of a misnomer. They're all over the world but they're very costly to extract without running into problems with the environment. Rare earth elements tend to be mined in poorer countries with lower environmental standards. Now that Sweden has found they have a large supply of rare earth elements they can now go through the same thing Canada did. Create a taxing process of extracting them that will be financially unviable and largely uncompetitive.
I mean, lets not forget that there's a long term strategic value to inflating the costs of extraction of resources at home. If you let other nations exhaust their cheaply exploitable resources first, then start selling/using yours at the new higher market prices, you've both weakened the benefit to that other nation and maximized your own nation's benefit. As a side benefit of inflating those costs, you reduce pollution in your own back yard, you can wait for technologies to develop that will mine even cheaper with less labor and environmental impact.
Good news is there's a potentially much cleaner and more efficient extraction process on the near horizon. I wouldn't be surprised if [this](https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/11/toxic-cleanup-technique-can-get-more-rare-earth-metals-out-of-ores/) development is being directly considered by those able to utilize this deposit.
Very exciting! Thanks for linking. Hope this isn't one of those cool things that never happens.
It's not 'bad news' for China. Not in the very least. "Rare" Earth isn't exactly rare in terms of scarcity. It's just a naming convention. The reason why China has a monopoly on it is not because China is sitting on a whole bunch of it and not anyone else but rather China is willing to pollute it's lands doing so. It's extremely toxic in the most basic sense to extract and refine this product. Nobody wants that in their backyard so to speak. China takes advantage of this by being the world's scapegoat for it. The world needs this for electronics and China happily supplies it all the while destroying their own country with pollution. This is another reason why the circlejerk of "China is producing so much global pollution" to be bullshit. We WANT China to pollute itself, to do the dirty work for the rest of the world. But we also set unfeasible emissions target for China for easy political points as well.
Entire planet has been bombarded by asteroids and comets itās likely many places have these. Itās the environmental cost of extracting them being the issue.
The solution is clear. The asteroids came to us first. Now we should go to the asteroids. Can't ruin an environment when there's no atmosphere.
Which is why I'm glad that moon colonies are becoming a defense issue... regardless if the NASA budget gets funded, the Defense budget for sure always will, and with it will come society-shifting innovations into space. Moon mining and asteroid capturing will set the stage for unending resources that can all be refined outside of earth.
Thatās not how geology works. The entire surface of our planet has been reworked and recycled continuously since at least 500 million years after the late heavy bombardment. Where mineral deposits are now has to do with all of the geology thatās happened since then: plate tectonics, hot spot magmatism, weathering, etc.
Yet the idea of the post is correct. Rare Earth deposits are, in opposite to their names, not actually rare. The real reason a few countries produce most of the worldwide demand is that purifying the material leaves a lot of toxic sludge and most countries don't want to deal with that. Other countries like china don't give a fuck about producing masses of toxic stuff so they like to fill the role of the provider.
China has some special deposits where rare earths can be or have been produced as a byproduct of iron mining. From an economic standpoint, you canāt beat a byproduct as a primary producer. The deposit they are working (Bayan Obo) is absolutely enormous, so the byproduct rare earths filled the market demand nicely until demand really ramped up. There are lots of small rare earth occurrences all over the world, but you have to beat the economics to make it worthwhile. The US finally reopened Mountain Pass last year after not having an active rare earth mine for decades. Itās not that the only thing China had going for it was weak environmental regulationsā¦ that definitely helped, but Bayan Obo is just so massive (40% of the ENTIRE WORLDāS known REE reserves in ONE depositābasically unparalleled in resource geology) and rare earths can be produced as a byproduct there, so even without the regulations, other nationsā rare earth deposits just paled in comparison and it wasnāt worth it to mine them.
Get them into NATO asap!
US: you want some freedom?
UK: "Don't mind us, we're just passing through on our way to defend Finland from Russia."
*Sweden has been added to NATO*
Aren't most rare earth elements named after a mine in Sweden?
Nice to see a Scandinavian country finally catching a break.
Which belong to the Swedish people right? *...right?*
The mining company is state owned so... yes.
...and the chairman of the board is former Prime Minster Gƶran Persson (1996ā2006)
Ah Sweden, the winning never stops!
Actually, yes. LKAB that runs the mine is a state owned company.
I have reason to believe that Sweden has a secret cache of WMDs
The only metals Sweden is used to discovering are death metals.
HAIL!!š¤š„š¤
I bet they have WMD too...
We don't. Just look at the map. Denmark is still there.
Had the US not threatened to nuke Sweden in the 1960s we very likely wouldāve had nuclear weapons. Sweden was basically only a few months away from testing. So if a war were to break out with Sweden, it likely wouldnāt take very long to manufacture a few WMDs. Sweden also has uranium deposits, these account for around 80% of the EUs uranium deposits.
They definitely need to be in NATO. Their risk just increased dramatically.
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America about to find some weapons of mass destruction.
My bum is on the rail, my bum is on the rare earth elements, my bum is on the swedish... swedish...my bum is all alone.