raw materials
:
There is a treasure trove in Sweden – theoretically
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The Swedish mining company LKAB in the industrial area: Significant deposits of rare earths have been discovered in the far north of Sweden.
(Photo: Maja Suslin/dpa)
No smartphone, no electric car or wind turbine can be made without rare earth metals. A great find has now been made in Sweden. But not everyone is as enthusiastic about it as Europe’s politicians.
from
Hanno Charisius, Thomas Fromm, Gunnar Herrmann and Alex Rühle
On Thursday, the Swedish mining group LKAB announced that it had discovered the largest known deposit of rare earths in Europe. The Per Geijer deposit near a large iron ore mine in Kiruna contains more than one million tons of rare earth oxides, the state-owned company announced before a visit by the EU Commission to the region. This amount would be enough to cover a large part of the future EU demand for the production of permanent magnets, which are needed for electric motors in e-vehicles and wind turbines, among other things, and make Europe less dependent on imports. Politically, this is celebrated as a success. But experts take a more sober look at the find.
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