Riding our ebikes through Colorado’s old mining districts with a battery of questions.
It’s an ebike perspective on the paradigm shift from internal combustion engines (ICE) and fossil fuels to the 21st century electrification of recreational vehicles, automobiles, trucks, buses, planes and the rest of the economy. Where will all that raw material come from and how will it impact the environment? From our seat post we can see the history and impact of mining, and how previous generations fed the machine; certainly, we have learned something in the last millennia, or two, right?
Tesla’s Elon Musk (the world’s most consequential man?) is talking about new ways to mine the essential metals needed for an electric future and specifically about applying those ideas and practices in the nickel mines of Micronesia, for starters. And whether you like Mr. Musk, or not, we’re going to have to find new ways to extract and process metals. Without those kinds of paradigm shifting pursuits, the net effect of electrification will be muted and diluted so whatever gains are made at the tail pipe, may be neutralized in the extrication segment of the cycle.
And to be honest, Elon doesn’t seem to be honest about a lot of things he says, so who really knows if his environmental posturing is bona fide. It’s the right thing to say, but it’s a whole level of better to do the right thing. Elon.
Reducing the amount of fossil fuels we put into our cars will have a positive effect on climate, but by going electric we will increase the need for batteries, semiconductors and other components that make the BEV work. RJ Scaringe, founder and CEO of Rivian, says the semiconductor shortages we see now (at the beginning of the e-volution) is a mere “small appetizer” of what we’ll see for battery (and their components) demand/supply issues in the transition to EVs. So what’s a civilization to do?
Metaling with the future
Whether its lithium, nickel, cobalt, copper, cadmium or any of the other transition metals to the electric future, it’s an environmental quagmire. Even more so with increased demand and a limited, or perhaps an undefined supply. How do we balance the needs of the future with the environmental lessons of the past?
When I worked in the uranium industry during the 1970’s, the mines and mills had all the inherent considerations and concerns of other mining operations, but it also had another element it had to contend with….. the additional risk of radioactivity for everyone involved, even the transportation of the processed ‘yellow cake’ and other uraniferous derivatives exposed those who handled it to the unsteady and unstable isotopes of uranium/vanadium and other atomic particles that most of us just didn’t see everyday. If you can’t see it, does it exist? God? I mean, God!
[Unless, of course, you grew up in a basement in Grand Junction or one of the other small towns of the four-corners region that used spent mill materials for grout and construction concrete. And even if you couldn’t see God, you could certainly see his handy work (and that of his eternal footman) as the grim reaper. I mean, who knew?
Well, actually, it was scientifically well known through work conducted during the Manhatten project of the 1940s and 50s, that radioactivity was not good for one’s health. But that information was determined, by those who determine such things, as “not relevant” to the pursuit of that strategic metal because it was a big picture issue, and, oh, yeah, it had the distinct taste and stink of political unsavoriness. So, until it became a problem, (and it did become a problem a mere 30 years later when all the miners, mill workers, geologists, engineers, truck drivers, milk deliverers, etc. started dying from the same radioactively induced cancers at an alarming rate), then it wasn’t a problem. Politicians love to kick the can down the road. So, the next generation of elected officials had to deal with it in the form of Class action suits which unveiled the dirty truth and while compensations were made to survivors and their families, those men were still dead, except for their radioactive bones still clicking away. Early to bed, not so early to rise. Ahh, politics, the ways and means remain the same, and nothing ever changes, eh?]
I wonder what can we’re currently kicking down the electric avenue.
But other than that (Mrs. Lincoln) the mining process was the same as it was for any other mineral. Dig a big hole, or a tunnel, pull the rocks that have been buried for hundreds of millions of years out of said hole, smash it into tiny bits, throw some very nasty toxic solvents on top of it, capture the sludge that comes out of the bottom of the tank, and voila, stuff you need to make batteries. And semi-conductors. And cars and bikes and buildings and civilization’s infrastructure.
So we’re driving our EV and riding our ebikes across these old passes and it looks, and perhaps feels, like what it must have been like in the late 1800s (and if you’re a native American, long before that). Many of the old mineral districts remain relatively isolated and nearly all of the ones we have visited show the scars of the mining practices of the late 19th century.
It’s a paradox worth noting that these beautiful mountain passes with spectacular views and scenery were exploited by a society and its government who’s principal focus was survival, expansion, and success. At the time, there was little thought or regard for the environment, both locally and globally and the long term effects on health and other life issues.
We’re considerably more circumspect then that now. Aren’t we? 
The times, they are a changing….
The economic conditions of the late 1800s drove the desperate fortune seekers to these locations and like starving men, you can see their singlemindedness in their efforts. Huge yellow-orange piles of sterile rock pock mark the treeless mining camps of Central City, Leadville, Caribou, Jamestown, Creede, and hundreds of other places across the west and in spite of some post-mining effort to clean them up, they remain scarred and sterile. And don’t even think about drinking the water.
And yet, they’re in some amazing places, which is why we ride to them. Nearly all of the passes have been used for thousands of years. Its remarkable that many are still unpaved, and relatively unknown. There is some 4×4 traffic, but for the most part we still ride in a 21st century version of solitude. The sound and smell of this land is awesome, narcotic and addictive. Not to mention physically challenging even with an electrical nudge, the rides are arduous. Georgia pass, Webster Pass, Mosquito and dozens of other passes to ride and miles to go before we sleep.
Sustainable Mining
What does sustainable mining look like? I’ve never personally seen it but I’ve read that it’s a ‘thing’, although it seems very much like an oxymoron to me. How do we get more out to the ground while doing less to the air and water and earth?
Part of the solution is scrap recovery. It also includes recycling, substitution, technological advances in processing and of course, an environmental approach that respects all interests simultaneously and balanced against current and predictable demand and the impact mining operations have on the local, regional and global populations, including floral and fauna. Seems like a conflation of disparate interests. Or how you make a horse by committee…. and end up with a camel. Or a duck billed platypus.
Lithium- The Buzz
Lithium. Number 3 on your periodic hit chart which makes it unique among metals – the lightest, and the least dense solid. Its got 3 orbital electrons, 2 on the inside and one on the outside (looking in…..just like Timothy Leary) with energy levels close to hydrogen…..which means it has high electrochemical potential and ideal for making cathodes in batteries. “Li-ion boasts high energy density relative to older nickel-cadmium batteries and the absence of a memory effect…….which causes [those kinds of] batteries to lose storage capacity with continued use.” And don’t you forget it.
According to those who know, Lithium has one of the best “energy to weight ratios, high open circuit voltage, low self-discharge rate, no memory effect and a slow loss of charge when not in use.”
Watts not to like?
It’s the 10% to 11% of the electric battery that makes it so ….electric. And is it coincidence that Lithium, that light headed metal, is also the magic ferry dust that makes us less depressed? Just a pinch between the lobes and it puts the vim back in our vigor, puts the order in bipolar, -rebalances your chi, makes you less manic, relieves panic, drives us to tantric, while commencing romantic?.
Di-lithium crystal made the USS Enterprise warp the speed of light and made Scottie stay up at night (he’s giving her all she can take, Cap’n). So where are we going to get more lithium? (Damn it, Jim). With Russia and China owning a disproportionate amount of those strategic metals it gives one pause to think there may be a simple solution to all these titanic clashes of politics and environment and the new electrical frontier.
Tellurium, antimony, lithium, copper, nickel, and the whole orchestral suite of metal bearing minerals needed to make an environmentally better place (fewer fossil fuels), are, ironically, critical to the new paradigm. Without a stable, sustainable supply of these and other metals the world will lurch from enviro/economic/political crisis to crisis. It was only a sesquicentennial ago that we went through a similar situation with the first industrial revolution. And except for a couple of world wars, an existential threat to the planet in the form of climate change, and a modicum of political instability around the world in the interim, that turned out ok, didn’t it?
And not to put too fine a point on it, but for most of those original gold seeking ’49ers’ all they had to show for their efforts was a hole in the ground. Not to say their efforts, or our efforts in the future are futile, because they are not, but what have we learned? I mean, look at this place. We’re riding through some of earth’s most spectacular scenery and multiple decades later the scars remain like scarecrows on a fallow field. If we’re going to mine the hell out of the future for a new electric horizon, we’re going to have to be more creative about the way we extract it, recycle it, and recover it.
