Buried beneath an ancient volcanic crater on the Nevada Oregon border sits an enormous deposit of lithium rich clay. Scientists now think this quiet landscape may hold enough lithium to influence the global battery market for decades.
A new study argues that McDermitt caldera may host about 20 to 40 million metric tons of lithium, likely the largest deposit yet identified.
Using the recent United States’ average contract price for lithium carbonate, about 37,000 dollars per ton, that estimate comes out to be nearly $1.5 trillion.
Sure, go digging around the supervolcano, that can only end well …
The volcano now is about 400 miles away, in Yellowstone, so there shouldn’t be a problem with that. And no, the volcano did not move, the continent did.
I’ve played so many mining video games just give me an industrialized mega sized 3d printer, couple million dollars and I’ll be set for life with that mine untouched.
There’s almost nothing humanity could do that would actually impact the world in a way that could even make a dormant supervolcano so much as fart.