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Comment by wuiheerfoj | Hacker News Reader

‚metals which are essential for, among other applications, the manufacture of electric vehicles and wind turbines‘

Great way to frame mining as eco-friendly haha. Is my take too skeptical? Are these very specific metals to eco-friendly production?

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The company that owns the mine LKAB are together with swedish Steel producer SSAB producing fossilfree steel. They are working with Volvo to build their electric cars with this steel https://www.ssab.com/en/news/2021/08/the-worlds-first-fossil...

LKAB is 100% owned by the Swedish state. 2021 the dividend was pretty large and apparently around 1000 SEK per swede. Well if it would have been paid that way, it's going into the govt balance sheet of course.

For reference: 1000 SEK is about €90/$95

It's a completely hypothetical process that has 0 proven results and already involved shady deadlings with government, where government officials are chatting with CEO's about how to hide details:

'"As you probably know, it is almost never possible to hide entire documents," she writes apologetically.' [0]

[0]https://www.svd.se/a/pQnQaw/hybrit-har-blivit-ett-klagg

The Hybrit pilot plant is already operational and producing steel, although in small quantities. That sounds like a proven result to me, do you disagree?

Can you summarize what the linked article (unfortunately paywalled and in swedish) says? I am quite interested in this project.

It is unproven that it can be done profitably at scale.

Yeah but that does not equate to "process that has 0 proven results"

You can mine to produce nice stuff, or you can mine to produce bad stuff. But mining you do, and you will for the rest of the life of the universe

Funny, for me it's exactly the opposite. I feel it frames eco-friendly technologies as something dirty, polluting.

> Great way to frame mining as eco-friendly

What's the alternative? If we want to electrify, it means more resource discovery and mining than we're already doing, plus likely mining more non-renewable fuels to power the intermediate infrastructure we will need to mine or recycle metals for renewables or EVs.

> What's the alternative?

Degrowth, using less of everything, only keeping what we truly need instead of producing insane amount of next to useless junk, stop shipping bananas to the other side of the planet to have half of them end up in a trash anyways, &c. Basic common sense stuff that we won't do because we need that sweet sweet "growth" at all cost.

Producing less and electrifying a grid are not mutually exclusive, ideally we will do both. Even in a "degrowth" future, we have to power critical infrastructure, which means large infrastructural changes and a bunch of raw materials.

One use of rare earths is for permanent magnet motors. Induction motors don't use permanent magnets, but they tend to be significantly less efficient.

Permanent magnets can also be made without rare earths, but I expect the result would be a physically larger/heavier and/or less powerful motor. So, it's a trade-off.

I think they're more trying to say that this is good for the local economy, since these will be growth industries. However yeah it's a bit of an unfortunate conundrum that we end up doing a bit more of some "bad" things to do good or at least better things

"Rare-earths" are essential neither for electric vehicle batteries nor wind turbines. (Nor solar panels, either.)

Though it's a popular lie.

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