NASA throws down against NV lithium mine

Mining companies that hope to draw lithium-rich brines from Railroad Valley in the Nevada desert have come up against heated resistance from environmentalists, local ranchers and tribal leaders for years. A highly persuasive voice that joined the chorus of opponents – the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration itself – has succeeded in placing a world-class lithium area off limits to mining.

This wasn't exactly a bolt from the blue – NASA has been working with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management since 2018 to determine how best to preserve northwestern Nevada's Railroad Valley, eventually applying for the land's withdrawal from public use back in July of 2019.

A Federal Register Notice of Proposed Land Withdrawal published in 2021 was approved by the BLM, effective April 27, 2023, designating nearly 23,000 acres to be set aside for ground-based calibration of satellite instruments.

A unique asset

The ancient lakebed in Railroad Valley has been used by NASA for nearly three decades to calibrate satellites due to its smooth and undisturbed area visible from space, making it indispensable for accurate alignment and measurements by hundreds of Earth-observing satellites orbiting overhead.

This flat desert basin, known as a playa, sits atop a rich, untapped deposit of lithium that is needed in large quantities for electric vehicle batteries. Given that the lithium deposit below this satellite-calibrating lakebed is considered one of the ten largest in the world, it is no surprise that developers want to develop a mine that extracts the lithium-rich brine.

NASA, however, does not want to see the Nevada playa disturbed because it happens to be a best-of-its-kind location in the United States and one of the best in the world for satellite calibration due to the area being large enough to be visible from space, flat with a uniform surface and color, free of vegetation, and under consistently clear skies for most of the year, with low concentrations of airborne particles.

Similar to quality control on a production line, ground-based accuracy assessment of satellite sensors and applications ensures the captured data equates to ground measurements and verifies that the space-derived measurements are a true representation.

Since 1993, NASA has relied on Railroad Valley for verifying accuracy in critical functions, from weather forecasts and agricultural predictions to tracking natural disasters and national security applications.

Earth Science instruments for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the U.S. Geological Survey, as well as the next generation of Earth-observing satellites launched by international and commercial concerns, all rely on the region to maintain accuracy in relaying critical information regarding weather, agriculture, water, urban planning and transportation, disaster preparedness and emergency response.

Included in these functions are certifying measurements related to the globally influential subject of climate change – without which there would be no interest in new lithium resources to begin with – and calculations providing vital and time-critical information affecting nearly every aspect of life on Earth.

To preserve the surface integrity of this area, BLM agreed to NASA's request to withdraw 36 square miles of Railroad Valley from potential mineral exploration and mining, successful where most opponents of lithium mining have struggled over the last three years.

Two sides, one issue

Due to its use in EV and renewable energy storage batteries needed for the U.S. energy transition, lithium sits high on the list of critical minerals. Satellite data, however, also happens to be critical to combating climate change, which makes the flat desert landscape covering the lithium below Railroad Valley an important asset to NASA and others.

"As our nation becomes ever more impacted by an evolving and changing environment, it is critical to have reliable and accurate data and imagery of our planet," said Mark Moneza of Planet Labs, a San Francisco-based satellite imaging company that has relied on the playa to calibrate more than 250 satellites since 2016.

Republican Rep. Mark Amodei introduced legislation earlier this month seeking to revoke BLM's decision, telling a House subcommittee last week that it represents the current administration's hypocrisy.

"It is supposedly a goal of the Biden Administration to boost the development of renewable energy technology and reduce carbon in our atmosphere," Amodei said. "Yet they support blocking a project to develop the lithium necessary for their clean energy objectives."

3 Proton Lithium Inc., a Nevada-based company holding most of the mining claims, had not submitted any formal project plans in 2021 when NASA requested the land withdrawal but has always intended to develop extraction of the brine-based lithium resource.

3 Proton Lithium Chairman and CFO Kevin Moore joined Amodei in testifying last week before the House Resources Subcommittee on Mining and Mineral Resources, saying the tract's withdrawal likely will prevent his energy company from pumping the "super brine" from about one-third of its claims there, including the deepest, richest deposits holding about 60% of the site's value.

"The Railroad Valley deposit is one of the ten largest in the world, and the only one of its type in North America. It is only comparable to certain strategic mineral deposits in China and South America due to its unique geological history. [...] This is a salt deposit with a very distinct alkaline chemistry. The complex salts contain significant amounts of lithium, but also consequential amounts of other critically needed strategic minerals, including boron, tungsten, molybdenum, and rare earth elements," Moore said in his own testimony.

"This project is a vital part of transitioning to a green economy, creating good-paying American jobs, combating climate change, ending America's over-reliance on foreign adversaries and securing a domestic supply chain for critical and rare earth minerals," Moore said.

James Ingraffia, founder of the energy exploration company Lithium Arrow and another opponent of BLM's decision, told the federal land manager in earlier public comments that by establishing obstacles to RRV lithium mining, it was undermining efforts to combat climate change.

"Essentially, your actions are boiling down to, 'There's a problem that we want to keep worrying about but NOT allow to be solved,'" he said. "It's self-contradictory."

NASA experts contend that the present function of the site is equally integral to a successful energy transition. There are other sources of lithium, but no other locations with such a perfect set of attributes for environmentally significant data collection necessary to gauge the progress of environmentally significant actions such as critical mineral mining and their effects over time.

"Activities that stand to disrupt the surface integrity of Railroad Valley would risk making the site unusable," said Jeremy Eggers, a spokesman for NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. "The ultimate decision was to protect Railroad Valley, which in turn protects the critical scientific data that multiple economic sectors rely on."