Geologists have discovered what they believe could be the world’s largest lithium deposit inside an ancient supervolcano along the Nevada-Oregon border in the United States.

Clay containing up to 40 million metric tons of lithium was identified throughout the 600-mile-wide McDermitt Caldera, nearly double what has been found in the Bolivian salt flats that have long held the record for the most. lithium deposits.

While the amount of lithium is based on estimates (no drilling has been done), scientists have found high concentrations of lithium in the caldera since the 1970s.

In 2022, the average price of lithium carbonate for batteries was $37,000 per metric ton, meaning the volcano is potentially worth $1.48 trillion in precious metal.

Lithium is a critical component for batteries that power everything from smartphones to electric vehicles to solar panels, and China has dominated the market for decades because 90 percent of the mined metal is refined domestically.

Lithium Americas Corporation, based in Canada, plans to start mining from 2026, exploit the region for the next 40 years and then fill the well.

However, the plan has been criticized due to the environmental impact of mining and claims that the site is on sacred Native American land.

Geologists have discovered what they believe could be the world’s largest lithium deposit inside an ancient supervolcano along the Nevada-Oregon border in the US.

Anouk Borst, a geologist at KU Leuven University who was not involved in the study, told Chemistry World: “If you believe their preliminary estimates, this is a very, very significant lithium deposit.”

“It could change the dynamics of lithium globally, in terms of price, security of supply and geopolitics.”

McDermitt Caldera is believed to have formed about 19 million years ago and last erupted 16 million years ago.

When the event occurred, the caldera was filled with debris from the eruption, including alkaline magma rich in sodium and potassium, lithium, chlorine and boron.

The material cooled rapidly to form a finely crystalline glassy volcanic rock, ignimbrite, which was eroded to produce lithium-rich particles.

A lake formed in the crater, covering the materials with a sediment-rich clay that was re-exposed hundreds of years later.

Canada-based Lithium Americas Corporation plans to begin mining as early as 2026, but the plan has been criticized due to the environmental impact of mining and the location on sacred Native American land.

Some scientists are skeptical as no drilling has been done to demonstrate the high estimate of lithium claimed to be in the caldera.

The study published in Science Advance explains that the high lithium tonnage is due “to the consistently high concentrations of lithium measured in lake sediments,” which are more than 1,000 parts per million lithium.

Previous drilling at Thacker Pass, located near and owned by Lithium Americas, has 13.7 million tonnes of lithium carbonate equivalent and was previously known as the largest deposit in the US.

The team used lithium collections from surrounding areas to determine this preliminary estimate for the McDermitt Caldera.

Tom Benson, of Lithium Americas and Columbia University, told DailyMail.com that he began studying the McDermitt caldera in 2012 to understand why it contained so many different deposits.

‘I soon began to realize that Li [lithium] “It was the giant, which occurred throughout the caldera from the northern tip in Oregon to the southern tip in Nevada,” Benson said.

“So I quickly shifted my focus to understanding the origin of the Li deposit, as little to no information about its genesis was known at the time.”

“This study shows caldera-wide drilling demonstrating that this smectite-to-illite conversion at depth only occurs in the mountains of Montana and south around the Thacker Pass area.

Benson went on to explain that lithium-bearing sediments are found right on the Earth’s surface, which “makes the deposit one of the lowest-impact mines ever built.”

Most of the world’s lithium deposits are locked in brine. Lithium brine recovery involves drilling to the underground brine reservoir, which is then pumped to the surface and distributed to evaporation ponds like this one in Bolivia.

“We’ll do a process called strip mining where we’ll dig a small hole at the bottom of the resource and after about five years we’ll start migrating the hole east,” Beson said.

“While we do that, we will begin to fill the hole (with material that has only been in contact with water, so it is benign for the environment; in fact, it is probably better because we will have removed As, Sb and other metals heavy from the soil that are contained in the clay).

“Once the pit has reached its 40-year lifespan, it will be completely backfilled and revegetated, leaving it much the same as it looks today, if not with more vegetation, and at a slightly lower elevation.”

Benson said the first phase of the project aims to extract 40,000 tons per year, which will generate $1.6 million in annual revenue.

“The United States would have its own supply of lithium and industries would have less fear of supply shortages.”

The United States imports hundreds of millions of lithium-ion batteries each year, and the volume is constantly increasing.

According to data pulled from the UN Comtrade database, China accounted for the majority of US battery imports last year, with a total trade value of $9.3 billion. South Korea and Japan are popular sources, with $1.3 billion worth of batteries and $1 billion imported to the United States in 2022.

The total value of lithium-ion battery imports has nearly tripled since 2020, reaching $13.9 billion last year.

Data has proposed that around one million metric tons of lithium will be needed to meet global demand by 2040, an eight-fold increase than total global production in 2022.

“Developing a sustainable and diverse supply chain to meet national security and low-carbon energy goals requires extracting the highest quality domestic lithium resources with the lowest waste: mineral strip ratio to minimize both the volume of material extracted from the Earth,” the researchers say. he wrote in a study published in Science Advances.

‘Sedimentary lithium resources from volcanoes have the potential to meet this requirement, as they tend to be shallow, high-tonnage deposits with low waste:ore strip ratios.

While the discovery could be great news for the American economy, it spells trouble for Native American tribes who claim the land is sacred.

The Paiute, Shoshone and Bannock peoples are rejecting the mining, saying the project would “authorize nearly 100 acres of disturbance from 267 exploration drilling sites.”

The tribes are part of the Red Mountain People organization, which said there are 91 important cultural sites in the area.

“The global search for lithium has become a form of ‘green’ colonialism,” People of Red Mountain, an Indigenous-led organization created to protect the sacred site, said in an August statement.

“The Caldera is home to many early foods, medicines and hunting grounds for tribal peoples past and present.”

The organization is now attempting to stop on the Oregon side of the caldera.

While lithium plays a critical role in the clean energy transition, white gold mining can cause long-term ecological damage.

The lithium extraction process uses a lot of water: more than 500,000 liters per ton of lithium.

Miners drill a hole in the salt flats to extract lithium and pump salty, mineral-rich brine to the surface.

After several months, the water evaporates, leaving a mixture of manganese, potassium, borax and lithium salts, which is filtered and placed in another evaporation pool.

After 12 and 18 months, the mixture is filtered sufficiently to extract lithium carbonate.

In one year, producing 60,000 tons of lithium could devastate the surrounding environment: up to 30 million tons of earth need to be excavated.

This is more than the annual amount of earth dug up to produce all the coal production in all but seven or eight US states.

In May 2016, dead fish were found floating in China’s Liqi River, where a toxic chemical leaked from the Ganzizhou Rongda lithium mine.

Carcasses of cows and yaks were also found floating in the river, probably killed by drinking contaminated water.

Lithium mining also damages the soil and causes air pollution.

In Argentina’s Salar de Hombre Muerto, residents believe lithium operations contaminated streams used by humans and livestock to irrigate crops.

In Chile, the landscape is marred by mountains of discarded salt and canals filled with contaminated water an unnatural blue hue.

According to Guillermo González, a lithium battery expert at the University of Chile, “This is not an ecological solution, it is not a solution at all.”