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USGS uses machine learning to show large lithium potential in Arkansas

(www.usgs.gov)
280 points antidnan | 7 comments | 22 Oct 24 17:05 UTC | HN request time: 0.001s | source | bottom
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Animats ◴[22 Oct 24 21:33 UTC] No.41918949[source]▶
There's also a big lithium deposit in Nevada, and preparations for mining are underway there.[1] General Motors put in $650 million for guaranteed access to the output of this Thacker Mine.

It's in a caldera in a mountain that I-80 bypassed to go through Winnemuca, Nevada. Nearest town is Mill City, NV, which is listed as a ghost town, despite being next to I-80 and a main line railroad track. The mine site is about 12km from Mill City on a dirt road not tracked by Google Street View.

Google Earth shows signs of development near Mill City. Looks like a trailer park and a truck stop. The road to the mine looks freshly graded. Nothing at the mine site yet.

It's a good place for a mine. There are no neighbors for at least 10km, but within 15km, there's good road and rail access.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thacker_Pass_lithium_mine

replies(2): >>41919099 #>>41921563 #
1. diggernet ◴[22 Oct 24 21:51 UTC] No.41919099[source]▶
Your description of the location of this mine doesn't match your Wikipedia link.

Searching in Google Maps, Thacker Mine comes up as 40.58448942010599, -117.8912129833345. As you say, that is near I-80 and Mill City, and there is nothing there.

But Wikipedia says it's at 41.70850912415866, -118.05475061324945 in the McDermitt Caldera, nowhere near Mill City or I-80.

I'm thinking probably don't trust Google on this one. :)

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2. Animats ◴[22 Oct 24 22:48 UTC] No.41919511[source]▶
Right. The Nevada Appeal, which actually has people on the ground, has far more info.[1] North of Thacker Pass is the area to look. The mine is building their own rail yard west of Winnemuca. The mine will be an open-pit mine like a coal mine. Sawtooth Mining division of North American Coal will do the mining. Dig down 350 feet, take out clay with lithium, process, put back clay without lithium. The processing plant will be at Thacker Pass. Big plant, maybe 1800 people. Lithium in clay is a new thing - the usual input is brine. Also a sulfuric acid plant, a power plant, housing, etc. Project assumes a loan of US$2.3 billion from the U.S. Department of Energy.

"Lithium Americas will contract with a bus company to drive workers an hour to the site for 10-hour work shifts, he added. An additional two hours will be added for transportation time. If you go to work on our project, you will have free room and board and free transportation to the site every day. You would get three free meals a day." If you're an unemployed coal miner in West Virginia, that might look good.

[1] https://www.nevadaappeal.com/news/2024/oct/12/nevada-operati...

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3. mjrpes ◴[22 Oct 24 22:56 UTC] No.41919580[source]▶
Looks like Google got "Thacker Pass Lithium Mine" in the McDermitt Caldera confused with an old gold mine called "Thacker Placer Mine" that was southeast of Mill City: https://westernmininghistory.com/mine-detail/10042614/
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4. ◴[22 Oct 24 23:30 UTC] No.41919843[source]▶
5. jeffbee ◴[23 Oct 24 00:21 UTC] No.41920182[source]▶
Yeah I asked Google Gemini to make a map showing the three principle lithium developments of Nevada and it pinned the historical Thacker Mine, not the new Thacker Pass Mine.

Then I asked chatgpt and it refused to make a map but said that I should just look on the map for Thacker Pass, which is almost right but it also said I should look northeast of Winnemucca, which isn't correct. It's north and west.

Zero for two, for robots.

6. CSSer ◴[23 Oct 24 01:35 UTC] No.41920770[source]▶
And they can all visit us at Burning Man every year!
7. Dylan16807 ◴[23 Oct 24 07:32 UTC] No.41922708[source]▶
I don't trust latitudes and longitudes that are precise down to the nanometer. :)

4-5 digits should be enough for any use outside of surveying, that's a precision of 10 meters and 1 meter respectively.

Even Wikipedia is making me suspicious by using hundredths of arc seconds, despite linking the document that came from. How do you localize a mining site down to a single foot?