Why Sweden Is Digging Europe's Largest Hole 

Portugal is in a middle of a political crisis due to a corruption scandal related to... u guessed lithium!

Lithium is fairly common in some parts of the world. Importantly for "Western Countries", Australia has enough easily mined lithium to last both themselves and Europe for a century.

So probably they are next on US hitlist. Now I see why they applied for BRICS and approached with China. US are cancer of free trade.

I don't think lithium is a rare earth, only the heavier elements in those funny bits of the periodic table

@@Twitchi yes, but it's also another raw material needed in the modern market as lithium bateries are needed for EVs, sollar panels of grid houses and industries etc.

also luxembourg

Quite the oversight for a channel that claims to be from Denmark.

I'll let you in on a secret. RU-vidrs sometimes deliberately include mistakes in their videos to get more engagement as people rush to correct them. This time I chose to exclude a few countries from the EU map. Which includes my own, something that can't really happen by mistake ;)

​@@OBFYTso smart!

Biafra

Communism

@@visitante-pc5zc sucks

funny how the presenter just covered the chinese side of it to make it seem like they were the stronger party.

Diggy diggy hole!

True dat💯💯😂

Don’t let women activists hear you 🤭🫣

@@jSergiu Woooow, that came out of nowhere. What the hell?

Several rare earth minerals were discovered in a single Swedish town lol

They got 1.18 Minecraft update

Rare earth metals and not rare.

@@kazioo2 🤓☝

Here is a dose of reality: No they did not "Just" discover "rare earths" minerals in said mine. They have ALWAYS known rare earth minerals were there just as they are known to exist in ALL OTHER MINES IN THE WORLD. These elements are not rare for majority of them. The only difference is the west, REFUSES to REFINE said minerals as it is VERY toxic, expensive to do so. USA for instance up until ~1980-->90 used to refine 80+% of ALL the rare earth minerals in the world, but due to IDIOTIC laws which made refining them horrifically expensive, combined by not impose tarriffs of said minerals by other countries using slave labor and no environmental regulations lost all its refining capability of these minerals. The other ~20% were refined in EU countries. In this case, EU also did not pass tariffs on countries refining these minerals, as both EU/USA passed near identical refining laws on these elements at nearly identical dates in time.

Well, hydrogen isn't found alone in nature, it must be produced using some form of electricity. So I'm hoping that energy will be renewable.

@@Henrik46 ..yes its the biggest problem with Carbon free steel making... ...it takes alot energy make hydrogen...but as a bonus u get ALOT of oxygen (twice as much Hydrogen ), and to liquify both take even more energy.. but yes the electricity need to come from renewables... if it would be from fossile fuel the relesed co2 would by faar exceed the win from co2 emission free steel... ...it is the BIGGEST problem about it...

..been official some time now... ...and it will be needed for electronics and batteries... ..also alot of Lithium for many years to come till the Sulphur cells been perfected ...in the future we will need a wide variety of different cells because thers to few rare earth metals for one single thechnology atm... ..on estimate Sweden will in the future need more rare metals than the whole wourld currently produces yearly.

@@Henrik46 The advantage of the Scandinavian countries is that they have vast amounts of hydro and wind available. While it might not be as viable in other countries which lack the constant supply of electricity, in Sweden at least it seems pretty viable to use their renewable stocks. Another country I can think of is Australia, which has tons of wind and solar available as well as massive amounts of iron.

Hei! Olen ruotsalainen, rakastamme Suomea!

@@thegoat9533 Hej! Vi älskar Sverige! Vår storebror! 💙

Don’t let happen what Groningen went through. Demand that government compensates you for all those issues.

pretty sure you dont want to work in Kiruna, there the sun never show it self for 6 months and its f-ing cold.

Cost of electricity also matters. China subsidise it for the mines. In Kiruna it happen to be incredibly low due to histotical reasons and very stable

Something that the critical raw materials act will likely change

@@joaquimbarbosa896 Well. i would probobly change the Likely to ... hopefully.

It's surprising there isn't enough effort in cleaner industrial processes. Cheaper and less polluting reprocessing of raw materials should be a matter of national security.

@@fedorbutochnikow5312 Well... i think there is a consideral effort. But the two main problem. Electricity consumption och dangerous waste materials, as Thorium. that to be fair, is not specially dangerous, still have a bit or radiotoxisity, is really hard to avoid. China really just ignores the problem

Everything is remote in Canada. The Hydro-Québec line that powers New York is total of 3400km.

I swear I get ads for ev manufacturing in Ontario all the time. And I think to myself: How many car brands do RU-vid viewers statistically own?

Thanks man - I just read about it on Wikipedia. The article said Cliifs Natural Resources (Formerly Cleveland Cliffs Iron) is going to invest 3.2 billion dollars in the area. CCI was the biggest employer in my hometown when I was a kid. It looks like a money maker, but they will need good infrastructure to process and haul the product out. Mining can take a lot of energy to grind rock. If a smelter is built there, this will mean even more infrastructure. It'll take a few years to get those mines built. Those mines should have a ripple effect and produce many good paying jobs.

Staking rush in the RoF continues. Nothing coming out until somebody spends the billions for road and rail. Hope in a decade or two we can drive to James Bay.

Yep. The biggest capital cost for any new large mine is always the associated infrastructure - railway, ports, worker housing etc. The only thing that makes this low grade rare earth deposit worth exploiting is that all that has already been there for over 100 years.

The largest problem is waste deposit rules that china just ignores. In Kiruna the cost of mining is not really a issue because its covered by Iron mining. The cost of extracting it is also fairly low due to the cost of electric power in Kiruna is lower than in china because of hydropower and lack of transfer cables

The iron ore mining in Kiruna is already insanely profitable so that funds a lot of the mining process. So the REM only has to fund the extra processes to extract that.

​@@matsv201Thank you, yes processing is the stumbling block. Very messy, and polluting.

@@carlthor91 Well. its not really that black and white. The process CAN be messy and polluting, and it can also not be. What it always is is power consuming.

Exactly, people just dont understand the exonomics of it

We have the skilled workforce to refine them. Western countries however have much more strict environmental laws making getting permits to build a factory processing them much more difficult. We still have a lot of heavy chemical plants in europe and america that could provide the required experience.

yea, but is it mineable or allowed to mine there?

@@MrAlexs888 I don't know the current status. It was very much in the media but I think I remember concerns about some of it being on top of agricultural land. Anyway, it is there for future generations to figure out what to do about it.

Talking about the Fen complex?

@@steffenc77 Yes. I only vaguely remember it was a big thing in the media many years ago, but I haven't heard any news in a long time.

​@@fredmidtgaard5487...on top of agricultural land?

The 'west' also raises the cost of their local mining via the higher wages.

@@Apollorionhigher wages are needed to compensate for the higher cost of living…due to higher levels of regulation.

I would love to visit China to see how carelessly the country is run.

@@HubertofLiege ... well, the removal of regulations concerning the handling of houses has made the price of housing skyrocket, so don't concentrate the high cost of living on high levels of regulations. Also luxury & health care also boost the cost of labor.

Reindeer mortality is huge from sport hunting and vehicles road kills in Sweden.

Lmao

Cards are useless if they can't be used. Same with the US using the swift sanctions

Actually pretty smart, they make a great distraction for Western nations to waste money on just starting pointless mines that are a tiny fraction of China's whole mineral reserves in their control so China can focus on building EV factories using Chinese batteries in Africa and Mexico to sell to Europe and USA to make their previous spending all the more pointless.

I doubt that China cares whether the rest of the world buys their rare earths, they have plenty of their own usages.

Did it happen so that the protest was finased by China?

Not the biggest iron ore mine in the world. Both Brazil and Australia have plenty of iron ore mines that are 5 times that size.

@@Dave_Sisson OP is confused, it's the largest underground iron mine, I guess it's easy to forget details that make your claims less impressive.

Sweden has the most efficient and modern mining industry? Since when?

sami entered scandinavia in the last 2000 years. they can move back to russia if they dont want to adapt to scandinavian cultures

@@bennyklabarpan7002 ⁠ That still makes them predate any existence of scandinavian culture that far north. Hell, the “local roots” of what came to later be called scandinavian culture didn’t form until 1000-1500 years ago. And to OP; Sweden has been treating the Sami people the same way, or worse, than the US and Canada have been treating their indigenous populations. I agree that the mine should be developed but LKAB and the Swedish government should provide an equal amount of land (of equal value) for the Sami to use when they get displaced. And yes, that’s a “when”, not an “if”.

The sami protest was almost certainly finansed by china

It's implied that the existing mine was already operational for decades. Taking land out of use for decades would do a lot of environmental damage.

@@Imaboss8ballBut it's not out of use. It's being used.

@@thysonsacclaim out of use to the environment

@@Imaboss8ball really if they put everything back there is no environmental damage maybe displace the local wildlife for a few decades that means they are required to clean up any chemicals before letting nature come back true environmental damage is places like chernobyl or any hundreds of thousands of places that have been so chemically damaged that nothing should live there

According to the Government of Canada, we do not have any commercial production of Rare earth elements yet. It’s all in the ground, waiting to be mined.

No. That's not how it works. When you dig all the coal or oil from the ground and burn it it's over. When you dig lithium you can recycle it forever and it only gets purer and better. Once there are giant amounts of lithium batteries in the world we won't even need to dig anymore because recycling will be the main source of all needed lithium. And btw there are astronomical amounts of lithium in the world. All that salt water in oceans has lithium - currently not used due to cost of getting it from water, but it's doable.

As the value for rare earth metals increases so does the amount of metal available. The main limiting factor is the cost to extract that metal.

Nopp. Probobly more likely vulcano. The deposit isn't that rich

Han är dansk. Ingen idé att ens försöka.

True.

Are your reading subtitles or understand English in the video but prefer to write in your language? Genuine question. It struck me for the first time reading your - translated - thank you.

Om du vill att man ska förstå det där texten får du skriva på Svenska.

No

There are nor much uranium. But a bit or thorium. There is always everything all of the places. The diffrance is the concentrarion.

@@matsv201 fair point, its a very thin layer in the southern part of sweden and along our mountain range, but as u said not alot. And not everywhere and we dont mine it

@@nenasiek Well would probobly call it mid/south, around Borlänge and Västerås and Strömstad In some areas there are actually a considerable amount of ore. There have been Uranium ore mining ban in periods, but probobly didn´t effect any mining. But that is pretty much as far away from Kiruna that Itally is in the other direction

They do.