Reno, Nev.– Environmentalists, ranchers and others have fought for years against lithium mining ventures in Nevada. Yet opposition to mining in one particular desert area for the silver-like white metal used in electric car batteries is coming from unusual areas: space.
An ancient Nevada lake points to a vast source of the coveted metal needed to produce clean electrical energy and fight global warming. But NASA says that same site – as flat as a tabletop and as unobstructed as any other in the Western Hemisphere – is indispensable for calibrating extremely sharp measurements from hundreds of satellites orbiting overhead.
At the space agency’s request, the US Bureau of Land Management has agreed to withdraw 36 square miles (92 square kilometers) of eastern Nevada territory from its list of federal lands open to potential mineral exploration and mining.
NASA says the long, flat piece of land above untapped lithium deposits in Nevada’s Railroad Valley has been used for nearly three decades to get the right measurements to keep satellites and their applications working properly.
“No other location in the United States is suitable for this purpose,” the Bureau of Land Management concluded in April after receiving NASA’s input at a site 250 miles (400 kilometers) northeast of Las Vegas.
The bureau has spent nearly three years fighting all kinds of mining challenges from environmentalists, tribal leaders, ranchers and others seeking to overturn approval of a massive lithium mine in northwest Nevada near the Oregon Line.
In December, the bureau began reviewing plans for another lithium mine protesting conservationists near the California line, where an endangered desert wildflower grows about 230 miles (370 kilometers) southeast of Reno.
In Railroad Valley, satellite computation is critical to gathering space-borne information with wide-ranging applications from weather forecasting to national security, agricultural outlook and natural disasters, according to NASA, which states that satellites “touch every aspect of the world.” provide vital and often time-critical information “of life on Earth.”
This includes proven measurements related to rapid climate change.
Critics say that thus the Nevada desert is a paradox. While lithium is the main ingredient in batteries for electric vehicles to reduce greenhouse gases, in this case the metal is buried underground, NASA says, to validate the accuracy of satellites monitoring Earth’s warming climate. For this it should remain uninterrupted.
“As our country becomes more affected by an evolving and changing environment, it is critical to have reliable and accurate data and imagery of our planet,” said Mark Moneza of Planet Labs, a San Francisco-based satellite imaging company. NASA has had the site since 2016 for calibrating more than 250 of its satellites.
A Nevada congressman introduced legislation earlier this month seeking to reverse the bureau’s decision to withdraw land from potential mining use. Republican Representative Mark Amodei told a House subcommittee last week that the decision underscores the “hypocrisy” of President Joe Biden’s administration.
“It is believed to be a goal of the Biden administration to promote the development of renewable energy technology and reduce the carbon in our atmosphere,” Amodei said. “Yet they support blocking a project to develop the lithium needed for their clean energy purposes.”
The Carson City, Nevada, company holding most of the mining claims, 3 Proton Lithium Inc., had not submitted any formal project plans in 2021 when NASA requested the land return. But the company claims it has done extensive research in anticipation of future plans to extract the brine-based lithium resource, believed to be one of the world’s 10 largest reserves.
Chairman Kevin Moore said the tract’s return would likely prevent his energy company from pumping “super brine” from about a third of its claims, the deepest, richest deposits holding about 60% of the site’s value. are also included. He joined Amodei in testifying before the House Resources Subcommittee on Mining and Mineral Resources last week.
“This project will help usher in a green economy, create good-paying American jobs, combat climate change, end America’s over-reliance on foreign adversaries, and secure domestic supply chains for critical and rare earth minerals,” Moore said. is an important part.”
Other opponents of the BLM’s move include James Ingrafia, founder of energy exploration company Lithium Arrow LLC. He told the bureau in earlier public comments that by setting up barriers to railroad canyon lithium mining, it was undermining efforts to combat climate change.
“Essentially, your actions boil down to, ‘There’s a problem we want to keep worrying about but don’t want to solve,'” he said. They said. “It’s self-contradictory.”
3 Proton Lithium emphasizes that its brine pumping operations will not cause any disturbance to the land surface. But NASA doesn’t believe the risk is worthwhile.
The unchanging nature of the region has allowed NASA to establish a long record of images of undisturbed topography using the travel time of radio signals to aid in accurate measurement of distances and to ensure “perfect radiometric calibration” of the sensors on board satellites. given.
“Activities that disrupt the integrity of Railroad Valley’s surface will risk rendering the site unusable,” Jeremy Eggers, a spokesman for NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, told The Associated Press.
“The ultimate decision was to protect Railroad Valley, which in turn protects critical scientific data that many economic sectors rely on,” he said in an email Thursday.
