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Snigger

Norwegian undersea metals find:

There are three types of mineral deposits on the seabed; manganese nodules, manganese crusts and sulphides. All three types contain multiple metals, and they are located at significant sea depths, mainly between 1500 and 6000 metres. On the Norwegian shelf, manganese crusts and sulphides have been found at depths around 3000 metres.

Yes, OK, all known, but they’ve gained more detail:

“The volume of recoverable resources depends on technology and economy. It remains to be seen whether the areas will be opened, and whether production can be profitable from a financial standpoint”.

Also true, these are resources, not reserves. Actually, they’re not even resources in the technical jargon, they’re just stuff that is there. We’ve no even general indication that these will be mineable economically.

15,000 tonnes of hafnium

Umm, not really. There might be 750k tonnes – or so – of Zr, which then contains Hf, but Hf separately, no.

56,000 tonnes of scandium

Well, maybe. But only because they’re talking about all the rock in some vast area of the Norwegian arctic.

This is the sort of thing to put down as vaguely interesting. There are only 92 elements (before we get to manmade ones) so everything is made of them. An, everything is made of them in varying proportion. So if you add up some vast amount of rock – “deepwater areas in the Norwegian Sea and the Greenland Sea” and so the seabed of 2.5 million km, or much more than 10x the land area of England – then you’re going to find lots of metals. Because metals is what stuff is made of, see?

In terms of mineral availability this is about as exciting as finding out that Cornwall is made of rock.

13 thoughts on “Snigger”

  1. 6000t of gold per cubic mile of sea water (or thereabouts).
    So, 200 mile economic limit, 1000 miles of coastline….1.2 billion tons of gold in Norwegian waters.
    We are all rich!
    Yawn.

    Wait for the unmissable share investment opportunities, there be gold in there them suckers!

  2. That’s “continental shelf” in the legal sense, not in the sense we were all taught at school.

    WKPD: “With a few exceptions, the shelf break is located at a remarkably uniform depth of roughly 140 m (460 ft)”.

    Why would anyone take a perfectly well understood scientific phrase and then use it with some quite different meaning in law? Because shysters, presumably.

  3. Can I bet i've seen those nodules in the Olympic Peninsula?

    Will they strip-mine that rainforest to make steel weapons to better kill things with?

  4. It’s possible you’ve seen them; the Olympic Peninsula is uplifted seabed of sufficient youth. It’s probably not commercially or politically viable to strip mine that land compared to just picking them up off the ocean floor. Mangalloy steel doesn’t form a cutting edge so has limited killing capacity. OK, but obsolete, for armour and helmets.

  5. So, PJF, good for Ukraine-type wars?

    Why do they have a core and “rind”? Why does it look like the core was spinning sort of like the earth’s iron-nickel core spins?

  6. We won’t know what a “Ukraine-type war” is until it’s over. If the Ukrainians play (or are forced into) defence /static / attrition then they’ll likely lose. If they are able to conduct a combined arms war of movement then they’ll likely win.

    My knowledge of manganese nodules is Wikipedia level, so you can easily learn as much as I know. Or knew three hours ago before beer.

  7. “Mangalloy steel doesn’t form a cutting edge so has limited killing capacity. OK, but obsolete, for armour and helmets.”

    You have to treat ( hah…..) it differently than carbon steel, but….
    Ohboy… are you wrong…

    And since we’re talking slavic-type “negotiations”.. They redeveloped the falchion-type in the early renaissance to deal with plate. Any cutting edge there was a bonus, not a requirement.

    People are too obsessed with cutting edges, especially on swords.
    I blame Lichtenauer and his autistic obsession with the “Gentlemanly Art of the Sword”. And nowadays the Weebs and their obsession with Japanese Myffology.
    Talhoffer was much, much more practical, and much more of a nasty veteran, and clearly distinguished techniques and weapons between duels and warfare.

    Edges are important when fighting unarmoured/lightly armoured opponents ( duels, city warfare/bloodfeuds/renaissance “politics”, napoleonic-type slaughter).
    In actual warfare, especially against armoured opponents, impact and penetration are the main considerations. This even applies to modern bullets and knives.
    Which is why halberds, pollaxes, and lucerne (luzern) hammers. And earlier excercises in Subtlety. And falchions..

  8. You’re correct, Grikath. Throughout most of history, edged weapons were secondary back up weapons. Or just for show. For the simple reason that any thick clothing will defeat the edge.

  9. They redeveloped the falchion-type in the early renaissance to deal with plate. Any cutting edge there was a bonus, not a requirement.

    That was all genuinely interesting, Grikath, but besides my point. Mangalloy (Hadfield steel) was developed in the 1880s and its properties did not render it useful for contemporary weapons manufacture.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mangalloy

  10. What thermodynamic process produces nodules with spinning cores?

    Will they use mangalloy for the treads of the shovel loggers and cats they use to clearcut the Olympic forest as they stripmine? Because crapitalism?

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