Why are we sending critical metals to the dump? | Jeff More

0:06You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hugh. Mining is a controversial topic. It's crucial for the supply of metals needed in the clean energy transition, but it's also hugely wasteful. In his 2024 talk, Wasteless Miner Jeff Moore shares that the solution lies in the waste dump. He lays out how new technology is helping mines meet supply demands and become more sustainable, all by not wasting what's already there. That's coming up.

0:44So, this is the truth about mining. It's an absolutely essential industry. In fact, we've even named historical ages after the metals that are produced by mining. So, for example, take the Bronze Age. Now, bronze is actually 90 % copper. So I think maybe some unfair branding. It should have been the Copper Age. But the only thing that happened before the Bronze Age was the Stone Age, when basically the level of our material science consisted of looking for a nice rock to pick up and smash something with. So the first metal that humankind figured out how to transform into something useful was copper.

1:20As we advanced technologically, copper became known as the industrial metal. It typically works behind the scenes, but it is critical. Just as some examples, without copper, we'd have no lights in this auditorium. Smartphones would not exist. And that machine that your favorite barista uses to make your favorite cup of coffee would not be possible. I know that last one was really scary. I'm sorry if I took it too far. Now, here's actually the real important part. Here are other things that are not possible without copper. Electric vehicles, wind turbines, solar power. In fact, these critical technologies use a lot more copper and other metals than the traditional non-sustainable technologies that they're replacing.

2:04This means the demand is growing dramatically to the point that miners are not sure how they're actually going to meet that demand. Today, globally, we produce 22 million tons of copper per year. If forecasters are correct, by 2050, there'll be a supply shortage of 19 million tons, almost equal to today's total production. If we look out just six years to 2030, that shortage is predicted to be 4 million tons. Now, to put that into perspective, today there's about 250 operating copper mines in the world. That would require 50 new mines to be built in the next six years. Even if we could find that many new potential mines, a mine typically takes about 15 years to develop into production.

2:51So filling the gap with new mines is literally impossible. We need other solutions, and we need them now. So here's another truth about mining. is traditionally very wasteful. The mine called Chukicamata, it's in northern Chile, in a region that I spent a lot of time in, that produces about a third of the world's copper. The problem that we have here is that all that material gets dug up, over half of it ends up in the waste dump. And this is where the problem is. In all that rock piled up, there's a lot of good copper that was thrown away in error and wasted. Wouldn't it be great if there was a way to meet that demand by simply wasting less of what we're already mining?

3:30Well, there is. Let me explain. Miners, of course, want to find and process as much copper as possible, but they lack data. Traditionally, there's been no way to actually see inside the rock as they're digging it out of the ground. That massive shovel digs out the rock after it's been blasted. And here is where the most important decision in the entire mining process has to be made. Does that mine rock get put on a truck to be processed and turned into copper that the world needs? or does it go on a truck to be hauled to the waste dump, never to be seen again? And this is where new technology comes in, part of a system called ShovelSense that essentially turns this dumb loading instrument into a smart measurement device.

4:14By taking delicate equipment that literally sees inside the rock as it tumbles into the bucket and combining that with AI, we can create data that's never been available before and allow the mire to make better decisions. Now, this wasn't easy. This had never been done before. I think, frankly, nobody was crazy enough to try it. So there was no spec that we had. So we went with the toughest spec, which is military spec. For shock, that's 50G. And our engineering team determined that our hardware would last eight years, which sounded pretty reasonable. Our first installation lasted eight minutes.

4:50Everything broke. Everything broke. Turns out it's not 50G, it's actually 400G. Oops. But in the last five years, we've figured out how to make this not break, and we're growing rapidly in the market. By applying this technology, we're increasing copper production at operating mines by between 5 % and 30%. That's massive. And this is the future of mining, because it also means that these mines are using less electricity and less water. And it's not just copper. It also works for the metals like nickel, iron, zinc, even cobalt. all metals that we need for the clean energy transition. At MineSense though, we did start with copper.

5:30We're currently operating at 15 mines in South and North America. And we have already increased copper production by the equivalent of one whole new mine. But we did that in two years, not the 15 years it would take to have built that new mine. For every shovel sense that we install, we produce enough incremental copper to build 15 ,000 Tesla Model 3s. And we are expanding globally and we're growing rapidly. We believe that we'll be able to produce 2 million tons of extra copper by 2030. Or in other words, fill half of that supply shortage. And it all comes down to not wasting what is already there.

6:09Thank you. And if you happen to run into a miner, please give them a big hug.

6:20That was Jeff Moore at TED Countdown's Dilemma event. in Brussels in 2024. If you're curious about TED's curation, find out more at ted.com slash curationguidelines. And that's it for today's show. TED Talks Daily is part of the TED Audio Collective. This episode was produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Green, Lucy Little, Alejandra Salazar, and Tonsika Sarmanivon. It was mixed by Christopher Faze-Bogan. Additional support from Emma Taubner and Daniela Ballarezzo. I'm Elise Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed. Thanks for listening.