According to Belgian geologist Anouk Borst, if a forecast pans out, the unexpected availability of American lithium (the element sought after by electric car manufacturers) might have worldwide repercussions.
The electric car sector benefits significantly from discovering a lithium deposit in a volcano crater on the Nevada–Oregon boundary, which might contain as much as 40 million metric tons of the rare metal.
Science Advances published a study revealing researchers’ belief that a 20 to 40-million metric-ton deposit may be hidden below the McDermitt Caldera. This would be almost twice the existing record of roughly 23 million metric tons discovered during the summer beneath a salt flat in Bolivia.
This deposit would significantly increase lithium reserves in the U.S., which were thought to be a million metric tons.
Partnering with those who can provide us with lithium in the form we need is essential, as Paul A. Jacobson, the CFO of General Motors, put it.
President Biden’s clean energy program accelerated the push to buy electric vehicles, which aims to have EVs account for half of all new vehicle sales by 2030.
The government has advocated spending $7.4 billion on electric vehicle charging infrastructure.
Lithium Americas Corporation geologist and new research co-author Thomas Benson estimates mining at the McDermitt Caldera can commence that year.
The explosions that occurred 16 million years ago in the McDermitt Caldera, according to researchers from the Lithium Americas Corporation, GNS Science, and Oregon Situation University, established the optimum situation for forming lithium-rich particles.
Nevada has a lot of lithium reserves, but environmentalists, Native Americans, and even NASA have been trying to stop mining there.
The McDermitt Caldera mine is close to Thacker Pass, which has been the subject of three years of legal battles from the local Paiutes community.
The unaltered status of the Railroad Valley tabletop flat is essential to calibrating the measurements of hundreds of satellites circling the Earth, which is why NASA has spoken out against mining there in June.
