Fun to see Kiruna here on Hacker News! My wife and I lived there for a year in 2014/2015. The mine is the _reason_ for the town, and it's exciting for my friends that live there to see additional minerals other than the high-quality iron ore they currently are mining.
As some other comments have mentioned, the town is being moved as the mine follows the iron ore under the current town. It's a relatively small town (~22,0000 people) but it's still a huge project to move.
The new deposit is under the town's ski slope on Luossavaara, which is the site of a now-abandoned iron ore mine. Luossavaara is the "L" in the mining company's LKAB name (Fully, Luossavaara Kiruna AB), so good that it's going to be working again under that same played-out deposit. It's also almost directly under my sister-in-law's house--which means they're probably slated to move too!
Just hematite, apatite and phosphorus, which is mined there for over hundred years already. What is new that they decided to use the new other minerals than iron ore from apatite, mainly Titan, and they'd need phosporus for fertilisers. There's also lot of V (Vanadium) needed for steel.
This Per Geijer deposite (already mined since the late 1800's) is close to the old and new Kiirunavaara mine.
https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Sketch-map-of-the-geolog...
Kiruna has a long history about mining incl world war II importance for iron.
Also due execessive minig the whole town needed to be moved:
“In 2004, it was decided that the present centre of the municipality would have to be relocated to counter mining-related subsidence.[29] The relocation would be made gradually over the coming decade. On January 8, 2007, a new location was proposed, northwest to the foot of the Luossavaara mountain, by the lake of Luossajärvi.[30]“
This deposit has been known for a long time. The news is that they have a better estimate how much rare earths are actually in there now. You don't just stumble upon something like this right next to one of the most important iron mines in Europe.
> No rare earth elements are currently mined in Europe
This is a little crazy fact I learnt today. Given how much we use, this news hits harder.
Isn't rare earth metals mining insanely pollutive? I've heard they can be found all over the world but only China mines them massively because nobody else is willing to destroy their ecology.
Looks promising but still only a mineral resource as opposed to a mineral reserve. Which means it may not be economical to mine amongst other the things.
Lot easier to publish/announce resources and most don’t go anywhere. (Been a mining/mech engineer for a while now)
"Rare" earth metals are actually not that rare.
The reason we (in the west) don't mine much is that they are very dirty to refine. We don't want pools of toxic waste left over from refining all over the place but China etc will tolerate those.
Given the ore itself is (ironically) quite common, all the mining happens where the refining happens because why would you bother shipping tonnes of ore there when is so common.
I enjoyed a TV show set in Kiruna with many scenes inside the mines. I like Nordic Noir type shows for the entertainment but I also enjoy the geography of my ancestors. It's really pretty country.
Very important to start mining these to get away from dependence on questionable activities in China and Kongo.
We just have to hope that the "greens" don't stand in the way as they usually do.
They are also rich in death metal components, but sadly nobody thinks about naming their band Iced Thorium or ThugSten.
For a block that won't even grant a rocket launchpad permit, I'd say this timeline is probably optimistic.
If we look at how other permit processes have worked within our industry, it will be at least 10-15 years before we can actually begin mining and deliver raw materials to the market.Wonder what the practical implications of a million tonnes is? For industry, is a million tonnes really that much?
How fortunate we are that silicon is so abundant.
Who's laughing now Norway?
800 mio tons in china, 1 mio ton in sweden. So, four years of worldwide supply, unless we start building more electric cars.
#fuckcars, IMHO. Trains are nicer and bikes provide exercise, but the world seems to rely on two-ton vehicles for mostly one occupant, except for kei cars.
Given that it's in Sweden it's probably never be mined. We rather save some frogs.
I find it suprising that two posts talking about this topic are currently on the front page, although it's not the typical HN material.
Maybe it's just a coincidence, or maybe there's something worth investigating for dang.
Compared to the mines in China, what’s the potential of this one?
The article said biggest in Europe and also that currently Europe was at 0. How big an impact is expected/hoped for from this mine
Maybe better announce this after Sweden joins NATO?
Is there any material on how they move the city? I am interested on the technical and economic feasibility.
I have been there, as far as I know it’s already a mineral mining town. So convenient!
What effect will this have economically? GDP surge or invisible in broader scope?
I'm sorry, does this article say which metals were discovered?
While they are hailing this as a deposit of REEs what it most likely is is a greenwashing by the Swedish state, and LKAB to more easily sell the public on more iron mining, as this is really just yet another iron ore that happens to have a high content of REE. Shockingly high to be honest, almost enough to make me a bit skeptical that they hadn’t misplaced a decimal in the press release.
The major iron ore deposits that are mined in the Kiruna area, Kirunavaara, Malmberget and so on are what are known as iron-oxide apatite deposits. These occur in other places in Sweden, including central Sweden, Grängesberg, Blötberget to name a couple, and in the world. They are rich in, well, iron, as well as the mineral apatite, which containes abundant phosphorus. Phosphate minerals like apatite have a habit of acting as sort of a vacuum for REEs, enriching them in thes iron ores. These deposits also contain other REE minerals, xenotime, monazite, allanite.
Now why do I suggest that this is greenwashing? Well REEs are a hot topic right now due to being metals that are critical in transitioning to green technology, as well as other high tech uses. The currently mined iron oxide apatite mines up right next door to this new ore body also are rich in REE. Not as rich, but they come out to be about 0.07 percent on average in these ores, but the sheer volume of ore means that the potential tonnage is high. But they aren't hailed in the media as a harbinger of European REE independance.
Now, apatite and its phosphorus is not wanted in iron, so when the iron ore is crushed and enriched on site, it produces a waste sand known as tailings, which are then dumped in ponds near to the mine. The tailings are enriched in the apatite and other REE rich minerals, as the iron has been taken out.
Just the tailings pond in Kiruna, which amount to 76 million tonnes of tailings (as of 2019) have been measured to contain 0.12% REE. Pretty close to what is reported from this new deposit. Combined with other tailings repositories in the area, it is potentially hundreds of thousands of tonnes of REE just sitting there, ready to go more or less, already mined and crushed. They could easily be exploiting that resource if they were serious about REE production. To be fair, there are projects working on it, but it is still small scale pilot projects.
But they don't get splashy international headlines because like I said, I doubt this is really about them hot to mine REE. It is because they want to get at the easy to extract, easy to process iron fast, so the Swedish government makes a big announcement, to sell this as an REE deposit and try and get mining it faster, and wrapping it up in a big green bow to try and make the environmentalists and the Sami keep quiet.
We must liberate Sweden with Democracy!
wow this is great news, the Earth keeps surprising us with its riches!
hopefully Sweden is smart enough to go "cool. leave them there " =/
Over 1 millon metric tonnes of rare earth minerals found in Kiruna, Sweden.
The value of many "rare earths" suddenly plummeted recently when an iron+nitrogen [edit: not "nickel"] alloy/crystallization ("allotrope") was discovered that approximates the properties of the best lanthanide magnets.
("Rare-earths" are not, incidentally, needed for [edit:batteries], wind turbines, or solar panels, however much certain people wish they were, or confidently claim.)
‚metals which are essential for, among other applications, the manufacture of electric vehicles and wind turbines‘
Great way to frame mining as eco-friendly haha. Is my take too skeptical? Are these very specific metals to eco-friendly production?
Rare earth elements aren't actually rare.
> If we look at how other permit processes have worked within our industry, it will be at least 10-15 years before we can actually begin mining and deliver raw materials to the market.
Meh ?
> If we look at how other permit processes have worked within our industry, it will be at least 10-15 years...
When it takes 15 years simply to get permission to do something, you know that your country will never be competitive globally.
Either the benefits outweigh the downsides, or vice versa. A group of 10 of the right experts ought to be able to decide that in a week.
Spending 15 years paper-pushing, doing court battles, public enquiries, etc. just delays the process. At the end of the day, you will end up either doing it or not doing it, and whatever you choose is best decided quickly (with the right expertise).
Perhaps we should adopt a system like for the choosing of popes - we lock the experts in a room till they come up with a consensus conclusion.
Seems like Sweden will need more democracy very soon
> "This is good news, not only for LKAB, the region and the Swedish people, but also for Europe and the climate...
No, this is not good news. Mining is one of the most polluting human activities there is. In addition, all those machines used for digging and pulverizing the minerals, they run on petrol.
In fact, the entire value chain from raw mineral to finished product, be it solar panels, wind turbine, or the latest iPhone, is totally dependent on fossil fuels: coal for making steel, petrol for the all the rest: mining, refining, transporting, installing.
This is the hard truth about so called "renewables" - they would not have existed without the use of fossil fuels. Anyone telling you otherwise is simply greenwashing. If we really care about our future a whole different approach is needed.
Not exactly surprising that it’s in Sweden, as many rare earth metals were first discovered here and are named after Swedish things:
- Scandium from Scandinavia
- Yttrium, Terbium, Erbium and Ytterbium from the village of Ytterby
- Holmium from Stockholm
- Thulium from Thule