Minerals/table: Difference between revisions

!Labor<br />intensity<ref>Estimated from the market prices of minerals (unless otherwise specified) (www.dailymetalprice.com - Feb 17, 2023 - although ideally it would be better to use prices ''averaged'' over a year or two), using ''very'' simplified assumptions: global average wages of $4/hour; wages account for 1/3 of the mineral's market price. These assumptions are far from perfect, so if you know of more accurate data on the labor-intensity of any mineral, please post it in the {{talk}} and we can fit it in the table.</ref><br /><small>(hours/tonne)</small>

!Global<br />production<ref name="mcs2023">Mineral Commodity Summaries 2023: U.S. Geological Survey, ISSN: 0076-8952 (print), https://doi.org/10.3133/mcs2023 - https://pubs.usgs.gov/periodicals/mcs2023/mcs2023.pdf</ref><br /><small>(tonnes/year)</small>

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|<ref>Estimated as follows:{{dp|congo.cobalt_miners|255000|Number of people working in cobalt mines in the Congo|[https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/drc-mining-industry-child-labor-and-formalization-small-scale-mining The DRC Mining Industry: Child Labor and Formalization of ...]<br /><q>Of the 255,000 Congolese mining for cobalt, 40,000 are children, some as young as six years.</q>}}{{dp|congo.cobalt_production|130000 tonnes/year|Amount of cobalt produced from mining in the Congo|Mineral Commodity Summaries 2023}}{{dp|full_time|40 hours/week||Due to lack of better data, we just have to we assume that the average miner works this many hours. Some maybe work more, some maybe work less.}}{{calc|congo.cobalt_miners * full_time / congo.cobalt_production|hours/tonne}}The Democratic Republic of Congo produces most of the world's cobalt, so it's reasonable to use this country for the calculation.</ref>{{p|If this was instead estimated the 'default' way (from mineral prices), it would be 2,974 hours/tonne. But that's likely an underestimate because most cobalt comes from the Congo where wages are much lower than the "$4/hour average wage" used in estimating labor from mineral prices.}} : 4,094

|<ref>Life cycle assessment of cobalt extraction process - https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsm.2019.03.002 - https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2300396018301836</ref>{{p|<q>Particles emitted during cobalt mining consists radioactive emissions, cancer-causing particles, and particles which may cause vision problems, vomiting and nausea, heart problems, and Thyroid damage. Cobalt is an important gamma-ray source which is used as a radio therapeutic agent for cancer treatment (Baskar, Lee, Yeo, & Yeoh, 2012).</q>}}

|1,600,000,000

|85,000,000,000

|230,000,000,000

|{{p|Alternative estimate: 407 m^2/tonne, from <q>The high-altitude basin contains around 40 per cent of the world's lithium reserves in about 3000 square kilometres.</q> - <cite>New Scientist - Drought, not lithium mining, is drying out Chile's largest salt flat - https://www.newscientist.com/article/2345815-drought-not-lithium-mining-is-drying-out-chiles-largest-salt-flat/</cite>}}<ref><q>The most accessible and easy to extract resource only contains 1.9 Mt of lithium, spread out over 1,100 square kilometers of the salt body.</q> - <cite>TheDialogue - Energy Advisor - Is Chile Losing Ground to Other Lithium Producers? - https://www.thedialogue.org/analysis/is-chile-losing-ground-to-other-lithium-producers/</cite></ref> : 58

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|{{p|If [[breeder reactors]] succeed as a technology, thorium could offer a lot more [[energy]] than it takes to mine it.<br /><br />Additional thorium resources could maybe be obtained from ordinary dirt, but we don't know yet whether this would really be [[Term:viable|viable]]: The labor/energy/land intensity of this option is still unknown.{{rn}} Average soil concentration of thorium is (6 ppm).<ref>Toxicological Profile for Thorium - https://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxprofiles/tp147-c5.pdf</ref>}}

|{{p|Uranium offers a lot more [[energy]] than it takes to mine it. The energy ''density'' of uranium is 574699 GJ/tonne for conventional nuclear reactors, and 82099829 GJ/tonne as a theoretical maximum for [[breeder reactors]].<br /><br />Uranium occurs in nature as a mix of two isotopes: U235 (0.7%) and U238 (99.3%). Conventional nuclear reactors can only make use of the U235 component.}}