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Nickel

How Nornickel Became the Arctic’s Biggest Polluter (VTimes/Moscow Times – September 28, 2020)

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/

One Russian company releases more sulfur dioxide into the air than the whole of the U.S.

Ecologists often joke that Europe owes its clean skies to the dirty sky of Norilsk — and there’s more than a shred of truth in this assertion.

The Nornickel mining and metallurgical company supplies metals to 37 countries, where they are used in the production of electric cars, electricity stations and solar panels.

But in the process of extracting all these environmentally valuable metals, Nornickel systemically pollutes the surrounding nature with sulfur dioxide (SO2). Toxic in high doses, this gas causes choking, coughing, pulmonary edema, and (according to the WHO) increases the frequency of respiratory tract diseases.

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Australia’s Jervois to buy cobalt, nickel refinery in Brazil – by Cecilia Jamasmie (Mining.com – September 29, 2020)

https://www.mining.com/

Australia’s Jervois Mining (ASX: JVR) is buying a nickel and cobalt refinery in Brazil from Companhia Brasileira de Alumínio for 125 million reais ($22.1 million) in an effort to transform the company into a producer and refiner of battery metals.

The miner said the São Miguel Paulista refinery, in São Paulo, had a production capacity of 25,000 metric tonnes per annum (mtpa) of nickel and 2,000 mtpa of cobalt before it was placed on care and maintenance in 2016.

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Electric Vehicles: The Dirty Nickel Problem – by Cliff Rice (Clean Technica – September 27, 2020)

https://cleantechnica.com/

“Certainly, electric vehicle manufactures cannot live up to their
professed good intentions of using “environmentally friendly”
nickel if that nickel comes from laterite deposits.”

Electric vehicles are only a small part of the world vehicle market, but this is expected to change. While there are several competing battery chemistries which are likely to be used in this emerging market, many of them contain significant amounts of nickel.

This is a problem, and to understand why it is a problem, we need to understand the basics of where nickel comes from. It gets a bit complicated.

Nickel is mined from two types of deposits — sulphide and laterite. Sulphide nickel occurs in hard rock that has formed from crystallization of magma with the proper conditions and chemistry.

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OPINION: Courtesy of Ford, Canada’s EV moment has suddenly arrived. Are governments ready for it? – by Adam Radwanski (Globe and Mail – September 27, 2020)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Sarah Petrevan, policy director for the think tank Clean Energy
Canada, suggests that Canada could sell itself on ethical and
sustainable mining practices, which is a concern for some makers
of vehicles supposed to represent social responsibility. To get
to that point would likely require an expansive public-policy
tool kit – R&D, de-risking of capital, infrastructure in remote
areas – that governments have yet to formulate.

Suddenly, Canada has a foothold in one of the world’s fastest-growing and most pivotal clean-technology sectors.

Only days ago, being a player any time soon in making electric vehicles seemed preposterous. Ontario’s manufacturing heartland, despite its proud automaking history, had been passed over for new investments in the cars expected to take over global fleets.

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The Sudbury model: How one of the world’s major polluters went green – by Sara Miller Llana (The Christian Science Monitor – September 24, 2020)

https://www.csmonitor.com/

When the Superstack was constructed in 1972, it was the tallest structure in Canada – and the tallest smokestack in the world. At 1,250 feet, it’s visible from every vantage point in the area. It can be seen from the bustling streets of downtown to the quiet cul-de-sacs of residential neighborhoods. It looms large in the distance from highways that feed into a city that is home to one of the largest mining complexes in the world.

Built by Canadian company Inco before it was purchased by Vale, the Superstack has long stood as a reminder of the environmental devastation that mining wrought here. But this year the chimney is being fully decommissioned.

Residents of Sudbury harbor mixed feelings about the Superstack. Some see it as a memorial to their rise as a center of nickel and copper mining globally. Others see it simply as a familiar landmark that signals they are home. Gisele Lavigne lives in the Copper Cliff neighborhood at the Superstack’s base.

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Exploration group says Timmins could become new nickel mining capital of Ontario (CBC News Sudbury – September 23, 2020)

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/sudbury/

There could be a bright future in nickel for the city that has been known for its heart of gold.

Exploration company Canada Nickel is developing its Crawford Nickel Cobalt Sulphide Project, a significant nickel deposit north of Timmins, and officials with the company say they’re committed to extracting and processing the mineral in an environmentally-friendly way.

A subsidiary called NetZero Metals, will be researching ways to start a processing facility that would produce zero-carbon nickel, cobalt and iron. Mark Selby, Canada Nickel’s CEO, said he’s optimistic about Timmins’ future.

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Former Kenora nickel mine may have some life left-Tartisan Resources posts new mineral estimate for Kenbridge deposit – by Staff (Northern Ontario Business – September 18, 2020)

https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

A Toronto junior miner has released a new mineral estimate after poking around an old Kenora-area nickel mine from the 1950s.

In preparing for an upcoming exploration program, Tartisan Resources complete a review and re-estimation of the nickel and copper resources at the Kenbridge deposit near Sioux Narrows in northwestern Ontario.

In the late 2000s, Canadian Arrow Mines had been sizing up its Kenbridge property for both an open pit and underground mine, 70 kilometres southeast of Kenora. Canadian Arrow produced a preliminary economic assessment for the project in 2008. Tartisan acquired the deposit in early 2018.

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BHP expands nickel search with SensOre – by Vanessa Zhou (Australian Mining – September 22, 2020)

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BHP has hired SensOre to target mineral deposits in support of its Nickel West operations in Western Australia. SensOre will apply its data cube and discriminant predictive targeting (DPT) technology on commodity-specific deposits as part of resource exploration with the major miner.

BHP chief executive Mike Henry has often reiterated the company’s intention to develop its growth options, particularly in future-facing commodities such as copper and nickel.

“… In the case of nickel and copper we would like more resource, although another thing that (BHP chief financial officer Peter Beaven) often talks passionately about is the potential for us to unlock more options within the resource that we already have, though a focus on innovation,” he told investors during BHP’s financial year results release in August.

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Sourcing EV battery metals from deep sea claims 90% carbon footprint reduction (Financial Express – September 21, 2020)

https://www.financialexpress.com/

As the world rushes to replace internal combustion engines with electric vehicle batteries, a study suggests that polymetallic rocks found on the deep-ocean floor can be a source for hundreds of millions of tonnes of EV battery metals with dramatically lower climate impact than mining ores on land.

The study published in the Journal of Cleaner Production does a comparative life cycle assessment of battery sources, quantifying the direct and indirect emissions, disruptions to carbon sequestration services realised in the mining, processing, and refining of battery metals.

The carbon intensity of producing metals like nickel led to mounting interest in finding low-carbon metal sources, along with a plea by Tesla’s Elon Musk that promised “a giant contract” for nickel mined “efficiently and in an environmentally sensitive way.”

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Russian Indigenous communities are begging Tesla not to get its nickel from this major polluter – by Maddie Stone (Grist.org – September 21, 2020)

https://grist.org/

Every year in August and September, the people of Ust’-Avam, a remote indigenous community located in the Taimyr region of the Russian Arctic, toss nets into the Avam River to catch tugunok fish, an important traditional food.

This year, the community stopped fishing early, around the start of the month. There were no tugunok to be found. Nor could locals find the fish at other common sites along the river basin fed by Lake Pyasino, which lies just a few miles north of the industrial city of Norilsk.

Gennady Shchukin, a member of the Dolgan ethnic group, has little doubt about the culprit: In late May, a reserve fuel tank at a power plant near Norilsk burst open, flooding local waterways with an estimated 23,000 tons of diesel oil.

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EU deal could forge shiny future for Canada’s low-carbon metals – by Chris Turner (Corporate Knights – September 16, 2020)

https://www.corporateknights.com/

he Canada Nickel Company is a fledgling Ontario mining firm with a handful of leases in mineral-rich northern Ontario and ambitious plans to dig for nickel, cobalt and iron.

So it represents a particularly audacious move that the company recently announced the creation of a wholly owned subsidiary called NetZero Metals, charged with the task of mining those metals without a carbon footprint.

Green boasts can be a little suspect, especially since the net-zero goal is one that established players in industries like steel and oil have placed at the far end of a 30-year ramp.

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Atlantic Nickel extends Santa Rita mine life to 34 years – by Carl A. Williams (Northern Miner – September 15, 2020)

https://www.northernminer.com/

Appian Capital Advisory’s Atlantic Nickel has released the results from a preliminary economic assessment (PEA) of its wholly owned Santa Rita nickel-copper-cobalt mine in northeastern Brazil.

Santa Rita, one of the largest open-pit nickel sulphide mines in the world, was acquired by the private equity firm from Mirabela Nickel in a bankruptcy process in 2018.

Since open-pit operations restarted in August 2019, the mine has produced 48,000 tonnes of nickel concentrate. (Mirabela put the mine on care and maintenance due to low nickel prices in 2015.)

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BHP nears completion of Nickel West plant – by Salomae Haselgrove (Australian Mining – September 16, 2020)

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BHP has confirmed that it will open its Nickel West sulphate plant in Western Australia this financial year after the development was delayed.

The delay means the first product from the plant is now expected in the second half of the 2021 financial year, a year behind the original schedule.

The facility that is located at the Kwinana nickel refinery is expected to produce 100,000 tonnes of nickel sulphate per annum during its stage one development.

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Two new smaller stacks are ready, decommissioning of Sudbury’s Superstack about to begin – by Molly Frommer (CTV News Northern Ontario – September 10, 2020)

https://northernontario.ctvnews.ca/

SUDBURY — Two new, 450-foot stacks are now fully installed and ready to replace the famous Superstack that has been in Sudbury for decades.

The $450 million project began in 2014, and managers with Vale say it was a companion effort to the Clean Atmospheric Emissions Reduction Project (AER).

“That Clean AER project was run in parallel to the service facilities upgrade,” said Darryl Cooke, Vale surface project and studies senior manager. “That was a billion-dollar project for atmospheric emissions reduction.”

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Tesla ‘In Talks’ To Establish Carbon-Neutral Nickel Mine – by Matthew Broersma (Silicon.co.uk – September 14, 2020)

https://www.silicon.co.uk/

Tesla reportedly in talks with Canada’s Giga Metals to establish environmentally friendly nickel mine in British Columbia as it expands battery production.

Tesla is reportedly in talks with Canadian mining company Giga Metals about developing a large mine to give it access to a ready supply of nickel and cobalt for its electric vehicle batteries.

The mine, located in north-central British Columbia, would also offer a way for Tesla to reduce its carbon footprint as it expands battery production, Reuters reported late on Friday.

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