[HN Gopher] The Metals Company subsidiary lifts over 3000T of no...
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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...
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