[HN Gopher] The lithium revolution has arrived at California's S...
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       The lithium revolution has arrived at California's Salton Sea
        
       Author : DocFeind
       Score  : 45 points
       Date   : 2024-01-25 18:54 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.latimes.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.latimes.com)
        
       | happytiger wrote:
       | I mean let's not pretend that Berkshire Hathaway doesn't own
       | interests in 10 of the 11 lithium projects at this location.
       | 
       | This is a very big money project and it was _always_ going to
       | happen. They kept pretending like there was some debate but it
       | seems mostly just optics management than any reality.
        
         | justrealist wrote:
         | Am I supposed to assume this is a bad thing?
        
       | TSiege wrote:
       | I remember watching a documentary on the Salton Sea and it
       | interviewed some residents who were holding out that eventually
       | there was gonna be a turn around and kept buying real estate in
       | the hope of that. I wonder how they're fairing now with this
       | latest development
       | 
       | Doc in question: Plagues & Pleasures on the Salton Sea
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8TjGAWxL23c
        
         | xen2xen1 wrote:
         | My bet is little to nothing. How much of the land area around
         | the sea will be bought? I seem to recall they were setting up
         | on the north part, which IIRC completely uninhabited. I don't
         | think there will be much trickle down.
        
       | neonate wrote:
       | http://web.archive.org/web/20240125190709/https://www.latime...
       | 
       | https://archive.ph/rRUez
        
       | throwup238 wrote:
       | I'm curious if anyone knows what happened to Rio Tinto's lithium
       | extraction project from their Boron, CA mines [1]. They finished
       | a demonstration years ago that extracted lithium from the brine
       | waste from borax mining but I haven't heard anything about it
       | since.
       | 
       | Even if they couldn't make it economically feasible I figured
       | they'd at least use the same technology/setup for Salton Sea
       | lithium mining.
       | 
       | [1] https://www.riotinto.com/news/releases/2021/Rio-Tinto-
       | achiev...
        
       | akeck wrote:
       | Marketplace's "How We Survive" did an episode on the Salton Sea.
       | 
       | https://www.marketplace.org/shows/how-we-survive/gnarly-brin...
       | 
       | The whole podcast is excellent.
        
       | pfdietz wrote:
       | There's an older geothermal power plant at the Salton Sea where
       | the scale that gets deposited in the pipes is a kind of high
       | grade silver ore, including native silver metal. It's not
       | economically exploitable, but it does provide a model for the
       | formation of actual silver ore bodies.
        
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       (page generated 2024-01-25 23:01 UTC)