Effects of Lanthanide Mining on Persistent Nitrate Pollution of Groundwater.

[NNadir]

The paper to which I'll briefly refer in this post is this one:

Baseflow and Coupled Nitrification-Denitrification Processes Jointly Dominate Nitrate Dynamics in a Watershed Impacted by Rare Earth Mining Wang Shu, Qiuying Zhang, Joachim Audet, Thomas Hein, Peifang Leng, Mei Hu, Zhao Li, Hefa Cheng, Gang Chen, Fadong Li, and Fengchang Wu Environmental Science & Technology 2025 59 (1), 719-729.

The informal name for the lanthanide elements is the historical and persistent term "rare earths" although some of these 14 elements - 16 if one includes yttrium and scandium with very similar chemistry among them - are not particularly rare at all, although some, particularly the heavier ones, and indeed scandium, are.

These elements are prominently used in what are often referred to as "green" energy devices, those involving so called "renewable energy," as well as electric cars, the popularity of the latter being a key component of the collapse of one of the world's oldest and once powerful democracies, ours. (We still have assholes here at DU prattling insipidly about their Tesla cars and how "green" they are.) So called "renewable energy," and the popularity of electric cars have done nothing to address the extreme global heating we're now experiencing other than making it get worse faster.

We are not going to mine our way out of the runaway environmental crisis now undergoing.

To point to the paper, it appears that the mining of lanthanides for "green" energy isn't um so green, according to the paper cited at the outset.

From the paper's introduction:

In mining regions worldwide, the extensive use of explosives and nitrogen-containing extractants has resulted in regional nitrogen (N) pollution. (1,2) Among these, ammonium sulfate ((NH₄)₂SO₄) is the most widely used leaching agent in in situ extraction of ion-adsorption rare earth minerals, which causes substantial accumulation of ammonium (NH⁴⁺), sulfate (SO₄^2–), and residual metal elements in the soil. (3) These anthropogenic pollutants enter rivers through leaching, surface runoff, atmospheric deposition, and biotic transport, leading to eutrophication and various environmental problems (e.g., hypoxia and algal blooms). (4−6) Despite the implementation of strict management measures, such as buffer strips, to reduce external nitrogen inputs, many streams still face eutrophication risk. (5,7) The main reason is that legacy N in soil and groundwater has been overlooked as an essential NO₃^- source to rivers due to a lack of long-term monitoring. (4,8) Studies indicate that legacy nitrogen gradually migrates to nearby water bodies, becoming a continuous pollution source over the coming years or decades and posing a major obstacle to achieving water quality goals. (4,9) Baseflow, the stable flow portion of rivers, is chronically recharged by groundwater and loamy intermediate streams, transporting large amounts of dissolved pollutants from aquifers into rivers. (10) However, the contribution of baseflow to the riverine NO₃^- load and whether baseflow is the primary driver of legacy N inputs to rivers remain unclear.

NO₃^- undergoes continuous transformations during its transport, significantly affecting its dynamics. (11) Additionally, in mining-affected watersheds, N transformations become more complex in rivers due to the asynchronous presence of multiple pollutants, including salts, heavy metals, and hydrocarbons. (3,12) Microbes are key drivers of nitrogen transformation, and the enrichment and transformation of N are closely linked to microbial metabolic activities. (13) By establishing relationships between microbial communities, functional genes, and nitrogen species, potential nitrogen transformation processes can be identified from a microscopic perspective. (14,15) Furthermore, combining multiple isotopes (e.g., (delta)¹⁵N-NH⁴⁺, (delta)¹⁵N-NO₃^-, and (delta)¹⁵N-N₂O) can reveal and quantify the contributions and transformation extent of NO₃^-– sources, effectively complementing the limitations of molecular biology. (8,16) Thus, integration of isotope-based stoichiometry and microbial processes with hydrological and Bayesian models provides an effective

I'm not going to spend a lot of time with the details of this paper; I'm way behind on a lot of stuff, tired, and depressed by the collapse of the United States in particular, and the planetary ecosystem in general.

To cut it short, lanthanide mining fucks up groundwater, just like enthusiasm for Tesla cars - which are useless as environmental tools because electricity, despite all the bullshit about solar and wind, isn't "clean" and "green." About the poster boys and girls for solar and wind energy: They mine burn fucking coal in Germany, mine oil and gas offshore in Denmark and Norway, so there's that.

An excerpt from the paper's conclusion:

We found that after years of anthropogenic or natural leaching in the rare earth tailings, a significant amount of legacy nitrogen remained in the soil profiles, gradually accumulating in the deeper soils and becoming an important source of nitrogen for groundwater. Another study, based on long-term field observations and Hydrus-2D modeling, also revealed that under natural hydrological and climatic conditions, over 80% of the NO₃^- remained in the soil of the rare earth mining area after a decade of leaching and transformation. (59) In the entire watershed, we further identified that groundwater (36%) and soil (25%) were the primary sources of riverine NO₃^-, with low young water fractions and baseflow serving as the main hydrological pathways for the export of legacy nitrogen from soil and groundwater. These observations suggested that in watersheds affected by rare earth mining the processes of NO₃^- production, release, and transport from soil to groundwater and subsequently to rivers were exceptionally slow, posing a long-term threat to the watershed. The persistence of legacy nitrogen not only increased the risk of cross-regional pollution but also introduced significant uncertainty in attributing traditional NO₃^- sources (i.e., ND, NF, NS, and MS)...

So much for the "green" in mining elements for "green" energy.

Have a nice weekend.

[niyad]

1. KNR and bookmarking for later, when my brain is fully functioning. With

the talk about "rare earths" in Greenland and Ukraine, this article is most timely and interesting.

Thank you.

[Finishline42]

2. Found this on google...

According to recent announcements from Tesla, their next generation of electric vehicles will contain zero rare earth elements in their motors, meaning they aim to eliminate completely the use of rare earths in their new powertrains; currently, a Tesla Model Y uses around 520 grams of rare earth elements in its motor.

Tesla is also working to eliminate cobalt from their batteries.

[NNadir]

3. Bullshit. They're not working to eliminate fascism from their cars.

Their fucking Nazi CEO's been prattling about eliminating cobalt from his crappy flammable car ever since it became stupidly and incorrectly marketed as "green," to the technically gullible.

He hasn't emancipated his cobalt slaves, has he?

I knew it was a line of shit from the beginning technically since I understand how electricity is made, and how fucking useless the wind and solar scams are, but I would never have believed that sales to the gullible and technically illiterate public would finance the sale of the United States for the bargain sales price of $250 million.

Yet here we are, owned by a liar Apartheid fascist dismantling our government and the future of our country.

[eppur_se_muova]

4. But in the meantime, Greenland has very large deposits of lanthanide minterals, so maybe we better invade ...

... just in case.

https://www.npr.org/2019/11/24/781598549/greenland-is-not-for-sale-but-it-has-the-rare-earth-minerals-america-wants

Wonder who suggested that ?