The lithium revolution has arrived at California's Salton Sea | Hacker News Reader

The lithium revolution has arrived at California's Salton Sea

latimes.com

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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...

I think their project in Serbia was stopped due to environmental concerns. Not sure about California.

https://www.reuters.com/markets/commodities/serbia-wants-tal....

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.

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.

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

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.

Salton sea.

Trickle down.

I see what you did there.

I've been to the Salton Sea, it has to be seen (and smelled) in person to really capture the overwhelming apocalyptic feeling it has. The air when you're dozens of miles away becomes acrid and starts stinging your eyes and nose. It's just a total wasteland, I feel terrible for the people trapped there.

Hearing your description really makes me want to visit and experience the...dread? Similarly was a motorcycle ride I took through the Searles Valley and the town of Trona, much further north of there and near Death Valley. What an unreal setting that place is.

Yeah it's worth a trip I think. Palm Springs/Mount San Jacinto is also on the way (from LA) you can knock it all out in a single day.

It's never turning around. Salton Sea is literally a looming national ecological/toxic disaster with a series of triggers, one of which is potentially time-based.

Had to take it seriously as an ecological disaster when it is just returning to its natural state of a dry lake bed.

I didn't expect it to turn around. More like selling mining rights, but reading this article it seems like the mining footprint of this project is particularly small

http://web.archive.org/web/20240125190709/https://www.latime...

https://archive.ph/rRUez

Well, since the Salton Sea is otherwise useless, this is a step forward.

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.

Am I supposed to assume this is a bad thing?

I think he's suggesting that thinking of it as a "bad thing" or "good thing" is misguided.

With any new large scale project that impacts the environment comes new responsibilities and new duties in oversight. Historically, it's best to have a tempered outlook when it comes to these "revolutions."

That’s pretty spot on to what I was trying to say. This is a very complex project, with a lot of unproven technology, and a lot of very well connected politicians pushing for it.

There are a LOT of articles coming out that are very positive, and while the project is probably necessary, we should be aware as the public that it’s not all roses and sunshine.

Worth reading if you want more of an idea:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohnsman/2022/08/31/californ...

I feel like I could envision an opposition to eventual sodium ion battery technology form these larger companies (that have oil ties) with their expensive new investments that they would want to protect, but maybe I am misguided or jaded. Either way that would be the potential thread I see in this being an issue.

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