The largest deposits of rare earths in Europe have been found in Sweden – by chance in the world’s biggest underground iron ore mine. Could the discovery boost Europe’s self-sufficiency in raw materials?
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00:00 Sapmi, or Lapland in the Arctic Circle, is home to huge expanses of pristine nature.
00:07 And also to deposits of rare earths, precious raw materials that have seen a rapid growth in demand from industrialized nations.
00:16 Drilling teams at a range of locations are collecting rock samples from the ground down below.
00:24 The operation is being funded by Swedish mining company LKAB, which anticipates a new gold rush.
00:32 The team here is currently still busy identifying and analyzing the potential sites, before those deposits are mined sometime in the future.
00:42 The client's spokesman is also on hand to inspect proceedings.
00:51 We are still drilling and cannot see where it ends. We have drilled deeper than 2,000 meters from the surface.
00:58 And we have found more than 700 million tons of iron ore and some 1.3 million tons of rare earth oxide.
01:08 So it's a very good deposit and we think that we have explored perhaps a quarter of it.
01:14 So far they've literally found no end to the rare earths deposits.
01:19 Today they're taking a sample from a depth of some 900 meters down.
01:24 The operation has made international headlines due to the discovery of the first known rare earth deposits in Europe.
01:32 This device records the depth of the relevant site to within a centimeter.
01:37 In total, the teams are taking several thousand samples, which are catalogued by depth.
01:46 Geologist Jean Gehien takes away the samples for further analysis in the lab.
01:52 He's one of a five-strong team working there on shift.
02:00 The geologists hail from a variety of countries. Jean Gehien himself is French.
02:11 The sample analysis stage conducted prior to the development of the site will cost the mining company many millions of euros.
02:18 I can go and scratch the rocks and see. So this part is really hard. I need to press harder.
02:27 And this here is softer. So it gives me information on what kind of mineral it could be.
02:36 The material samples are actually 50% iron ore and have a rare earths content of just 0.2%.
02:44 They also contain significant levels of phosphate, which will later be sold to fertilizer producers.
02:52 So this is a bonus we get when mining the iron ore. That's the main idea of our operations.
03:02 But we get these critical raw materials as a by-product, as a bonus.
03:06 China is dominating the market. But this deposit, the Periella deposit, is the biggest reported rare earth deposit in Europe.
03:15 So it has very big importance for the self-sufficiency of the EU of critical raw materials.
03:22 The rare earths would then be extracted from material mined from newly created tunnels belonging to the neighboring mine.
03:29 Without rare earths, we'd have no screens or displays, no magnets for wind turbines, no electric cars and indeed no green energy transition.
03:39 But the plans certainly have their critics too.
03:46 Every year the indigenous Sami people drive their reindeer several hundred kilometers from east to west and back again.
03:57 In addition to the pollution, the mine would block the animals' trails, says one reindeer farmer.
04:03 They want to open up more mines and that will, I guess, totally destroy the reindeer herding in this district, in this area, in this Sami village.
04:15 And you can say we can't move to the south, we can't move to the north, we are stuck in this area.
04:26 A spokeswoman for the Sami Community Association points out those obstacles.
04:31 From craters and a new copper mine to lakes full of mine water, railroad tracks and highways.
04:39 The traditional grazing areas for each Sami clan measure around 80 by 100 kilometers.
04:53 A new mine right in the middle would block all of the animals' routes.
04:57 Well, it would be the end for traditional reindeer herding in my community, in the community of Gavna.
05:07 And it would have a deep impact on our culture and our future.
05:16 So, what does the spokesman for the mining company have to say?
05:22 It is quite narrow for reindeer herders to bring the reindeers past Kiruna,
05:27 from the mountain areas where they are during the summers down to the forest areas in the wintertime.
05:34 We want to find solutions in dialogue with the Sami village.
05:38 The rare earths beneath those migration routes amount to at least eight times annual global consumption.
05:44 And mining the resources so close to home would reduce Europe's dependency on China and Russia for supplies amid growing global tensions.