Japan issued huge blow after $26 billion discovery potentially left worthless
Topics: Japan, Technology, World News, Environment
Ellie Kemp
Featured Image Credit: The Nippon Foundation/Fahroni/Getty Images
Topics: Japan, Technology, World News, Environment
Japan's lucrative $26 billion deep-sea find could be rendered worthless after a technological breakthrough.
A survey by The Nippon Foundation and the University of Tokyo found a field of dense manganese nodules on the seabed of Minami-Tori-shima island - some 1,200 miles from Tokyo.
Located 5,700 meters below sea level, the nodules contain millions of metric tons of cobalt and nickel.
The sought-after materials are two of the crucial components needed to create electric vehicle (EV) batteries, which is the equivalent to 11 years of domestic consumption.
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The ground-breaking survey found around 610,000 metric tons of cobalt and 740,000 metric tons of nickel, which equates to a staggering amount of money.
One metric ton of cobalt is worth $24,300, while nickel sees a value of $15,497, according to market figures from Trading Economics.
As for what has been found, Japan has amassed $14,823,000,000 worth of cobalt, while the 740,000 tons of nickel come in at $11,467,780,000.
That amounts to an eye-watering total of $26,290,780,000.
But now, researchers have developed a new way of creating lithium-ion battery materials which are more effective and environmentally friendly to source.
A team of McGill University researchers, with help from colleagues in the United States and South Korea, have created EV battery cathodes without the need for hard-to-source cobalt and nickel.
The process is more energy-efficient and mass-production ready, paving the way for lower-cost batteries.
The scientists were able to produce one-sized, 'highly crystalline' disordered rock-salt (DRX) cathode particles, with no grinding or post-processing required.
Previously, these particles were all different sizes, and it was costly and time-consuming to file them all down to size.
Better yet, cells made with these newly-produced DRX cathodes retain 85 percent of their capacity after 100 cycles - more than double the cycle life of DRX from older methods.
Because the particles are so uniform and high-quality, you can make lots of batteries with them more cheaply and reliably.
And best of all, they use common metals instead of expensive ones, making future electric cars and renewable energy storage greener and more affordable.
"Our method enables mass production of DRX cathodes with consistent quality, which is essential for their adoption in electric vehicles and renewable energy storage," said Jinhyuk Lee, the paper's corresponding author and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mining and Materials Engineering.
Japan’s planned extraction of around three million tonnes a year of nodules rests on strong cobalt and nickel prices.
And if these new DRX particles lower the demand of these metals, then the nodules’ $26 billion value may tumble, making the find not so lucrative after all.
While this could spell bad news for Japan's economy, it could be a relief for its oceans, as experts have warned of the harm deep-sea mining causes on the environment.
One study found that even a small, two-hour deep-sea mining test off Minami-Tori-shima drove sediment plumes only a few hundred meters, yet one year later fish and shrimp populations had plummeted by 43 percent.
Researcher Travis Washburn previously warned that even limited mining can have far-reaching, long-lasting impacts on ocean life.
Experts also note that extracting minerals at such depths is technically complex and could destroy unknown species before we even discover them.
The Nippon foundation previously confirmed a 'joint venture with multiple Japanese companies to commercialize the minerals as domestically produced resources' would begin in 2026.