jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

They say that Nevada has the world's largest deposit of lithium. It takes billions of gallons of water annually to process lithium, and underground aquifers in that state are going dry. This processing plant has been operating since the 1970s, processing local lithium and lithium from overseas. There are plans to open seventy more plants in Nevada. This is a bad situation. Ironically, water is almost useless for putting out lithium fires.

tuatara Loc: Orig. NZ - currently SF area

There's a pod cast called Electric futures by UC Prof Charles Zukoski that explores a project to extract lithium from the thermal power stations around the Salton Sea in SoCal. I found it very interesting and informative. A bit pedantic but well worth it.
Supposedly one of the largest lithium deposits in the world, found in the thermal steams that drive the power stations. The lithium is extracted from the steam/water after it exits the turbines, and then that is then pumped back into the aquafer. Relatively speaking a clean process.

https://www.energy.gov/eere/articles/us-department-energy-analysis-confirms-californias-salton-sea-region-be-rich-domestic

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

The Salton Sea has a sad history, but there's lots of lithium available.

tuatara Loc: Orig. NZ - currently SF area

Did you know that the Salton Sea is basically a giant puddle from Colorado river overflows in the past?

bikinkawboy Loc: north central Missouri

Several years back National Geographic had a very interesting article on the Salton Sea from its accidental formation when the Colorado River jumped its banks trying to reroute itself to the tourist Mecca it became to the few poverty ridden houses now remaining and the dust storms and smell of dead fish.

apacs1 Loc: Lansdale, PA

Lithium is the lightest metal and the least dense solid element, with a density of about half that of water. In other words, if lithium didn't react with water (which it does, somewhat vigorously), it would float.

alberio Loc: Casa Grande AZ

Maybe they should just hook wires to the north and south ends of the Salton Sea, then you would have a great battery 😎😎😎, JTOTB

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

It was a great recreational area before "stuff" from farmlands flowed into it and killed it.

bikinkawboy Loc: north central Missouri

Partially true, but the real problem is that after the cause of the initial “spill” was fixed there was again no inflow of fresh water into the lake, meaning the water level continually dropped, thus concentrating the minerals contained in the entire body of water. And yes, the only inflow of water comes from the tailings of irrigation water from the surrounding area (lots of winter vegetables). Sodium buildup is a big problem with western soils and water must be wasted carrying that sodium away, just like water must be wasted when you run clothes through your washing machine as a way to carry away the dirt and detergent. As a result of all this the lake is becoming increasingly more saline.

And don’t forget that the lake didn’t even exist before the levee break on the Colorado River. It took months to fix the break, which resulted in huge amounts of water being delivered but then shut off.

So yes the ecological impact of the lake dying is significant since during its approximately 90 year life migrating birds adapted to use it, but don’t forget that it was accidentally man made. Just like if the hand dug Koi pond in your backyard dries up and the goldfish all die. Yes it’s unfortunate, but the environment isn’t being damaged because you altered the environment by building the pond to start with.

I see man destroying something nature created as one thing, but man destroying man made creations as something different. Just like windbreaks in the Great Plains dying and being dozed out. A loss for sure, but a century ago none of those windbreaks existed because they were all planted by humans, not nature.

dwermske

You think Lithium is costly to produce, it is even more costly to dispose of, more so than uranium or lead. It seems that we are very good at trying to solve one problem by creating an even bigger one. I wonder what the government's plans are to dispose of the stuff when all these car batteries have outlived their usefulness. Oh that's right our government doesn't think that far ahead. Another generation can deal with the problem of disposal while they sit in the dark. In the mean time, hung-ho eliminate all fossil fuels. Convert everything to hydrogen/oxygen and use even more water. Pure madness!!

bikinkawboy Loc: north central Missouri

dwremski makes a good point. The Hanford nuclear plant in Washington has millions of gallons of radioactive waste just setting there from the Cold War. And they don’t really know what to do with it. One possibility is to infuse it into molten glass and then park those big inert chunks of glass somewhere for the rest of time. Maybe they can do the same thing with the lithium waste.

Dean37 Loc: Fresno, CA

And as a resident of Eastern Washington from October 1941 until August of 1956, I along with many thousands of others were bombarded very frequently with Iodine 131 (they admit to) and classified other isotopes which were released into the air to see what it would do to a general population. Not to mention the millions of curies of really nasty isotopes released into the Columbia River. These releases began in the fall of 1944 and continued until it was halted in 1973, by the President.

[This data is available in the Bing Crosby Library at Gonzaga University in Spokane,WA.]

Iodine 131 has a half life of approximately 14 days. It settled on the vegetables and fruits growing there. It affects the young children like most radiation, because of their rapid growth rate.

It drifted from the Hanford Atomic Works generally Eastward covering Eastern Washington, Northeastern Oregon, Northern Idaho, Western Montana and OOPS Southern British Columbia, Alberta and more in Canada.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Right, like bringing one animal into an area to control the population of another. Then the new animal becomes an even greater problem.

JBRIII

I believe that was the plan until they picked where the glass would go. Then the state fought it and it sits there, along with all the spent reactor rods stored in pools, waiting for an accident.

JBRIII

Iodine also goes straight to the thyroid and can cause cancer. In a twist, radioactive iodine to used to detect thyroid disease (I had it for a benine, egg size tumor) and, get this, to find and destroy thyroid cancers as only thyroid tissues absorb iodine. I was told if you have to have cancer, thyroid is the one to get as most are easily treated, note most, not all.