World’s biggest lithium reservoir found in supervolcano McDermitt Caldera in Nevada – with $1.5trillion worth of the precious metal that powers world’s technology

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

The 600-mile-wide McDermitt Caldera found clay containing up to 40 million tons of lithium—nearly double what was found on Bolivia’s salt flats, which have long held the record for most lithium deposits.

Although the amount of lithium is based on estimates – no drilling has taken place – scientists have found high concentrations of lithium in the caldera since the 1970s.

As of 2022, the average price of lithium carbonate for batteries was $37,000 per tonne, meaning the volcano may be sitting on $1.48 trillion worth of precious metal.

Lithium is a crucial component of batteries that power everything from smartphones to electric vehicles and solar panels. China has dominated the market for decades because 90 percent of the metal extracted is refined in the country.

Canada-based Lithium Americas Corporation plans to start mining as early as 2026, develop the region over the next 40 years and then backfill the pit.

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

Anouk Borst, a geologist at KU Leuven who was not involved in the research, told Chemistry World: ‘If you believe their back-of-the-envelope estimate, this is a very, very significant deposit of lithium.

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

McDermitt Caldera is believed to have formed approximately 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, potassium and lithium, chlorine and boron.

The material cooled quickly to form a finely crystalline, glassy volcanic rock – ignimbrite – which weathered 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.

Some scientists are skeptical because no drilling has been done to prove the high estimate of lithium content in the caldera.

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

Previous drilling in nearby Thacker Pass, owned by Lithium Americas, yielded 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 back-of-the-envelope estimate for 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 quickly began to realize that Li (lithium) was the behemoth, found everywhere in 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 origins of the Li deposit, as little to no information was known at the time about its history.”

‘This study shows caldera-wide drilling showing that this smectite to illite conversion at depth occurs only in the Montana Mountains and south around the Thacker Pass area.

Benson further explained that lithium-bearing sediments are located right at the surface of the Earth, which “makes the deposit one of the least impactful mines ever built.”

“We will do a process called strip mining, where we dig a small hole in the bottom of the well and after about five years begin to migrate the well eastward,” Beson said.

‘While we do that, we will start backfilling the pit (with material that has only touched water, so it is benign for the environment – ​​in fact probably better because we have removed As, Sb and other heavy metals from the soil they are in the clay).

“Once the pit reaches its 40-year mine life, the pit will be fully backfilled and revegetated, leaving it approximately as it appears today, if not more vegetated, and at a slightly lower elevation.”

Benson noted that phase one of the project aims to extract 40,000 tons annually, generating $1.6 million in annual revenue.

“The US would have its own lithium supply, and industries would be less afraid of supply shortages.”

The US imports hundreds of millions of lithium-ion batteries every year, with the volume increasing.

According to data from the UN Comtrade Database, China accounted for the most imports of UUS batteries last year, with a total trade value of $9.3 billion. South Korea and Japan are popular sources, with $1.3 and $1.0 billion worth of batteries imported into the US in 2022.

The total import value of lithium-ion batteries has almost tripled since 2020, reaching $13.9 billion last year.

Data suggests that around one million tonnes of lithium will be needed to meet global demand by 2040 – an eightfold increase over total global production in 2022.

‘Developing a sustainable and diverse supply chain to meet low-carbon energy and national security goals requires the extraction of the highest quality domestic lithium resources with the lowest waste:ore stripping ratios to both reduce the amount of material extracted from the earth minimize,” the researchers said. 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 deposits with large tonnage and low waste:ore strip ratios.

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

Paiute, Shoshone and Bannock people are pushing back on mining, claiming the project would allow “nearly 100 acres of disruption across 267 drilling sites.”

The tribes are part of the People of the Red Mountain organization, which says 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 founded to protect the sacred site, said in an August statement.

‘The Caldera is home to many early foodstuffs, medicines and hunting grounds for tribes past and present.’

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

Although lithium plays a crucial role in the clean energy transition, mining white gold can lead to ecological damage in the long term.

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

Miners drill a hole in 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, filtered and placed in another evaporation bath.

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

Over a year, the production of 60,000 tons of lithium could devastate the surrounding environment – requiring up to 30 million tons of earth to be dug.

This is more than the annual amount of dirt dug up to produce all but seven or eight of the coal output of all U.S. states

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

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

Lithium mining is also harmful to the soil and causes air pollution.

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

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

According to Guillermo Gonzalez, a lithium battery expert from the University of Chile, “This is not a green solution – it is not a solution at all.”