C&EN Uncovered: The ocean floor is littered with valuable minerals. Should we go get them?
Resting on the bottom of the ocean are potato-sized nodules of valuable minerals that are more or less up for grabs. Multiple corporations and some nations are racing to build deep-sea drones that can withstand the extreme conditions at the seafloor and bring these 1-20 cm nodules to eager buyers on the surface.
Many of the metals in these nodules are critical for green technologies like batteries. But these nodules are also an important part of ecosystems we are just beginning to understand. In this episode, C&EN reporter Priyanka Runwal chats with host Craig Bettenhausen about this complex…
The skinny
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