SILVER: From Potosí to PV Solar to Electronic Waste

Sustainable Much?

SILVER from Potosí, Bolivia was the most consequential natural resource the Spanish discovered in all the New World. Natural silver ore grades were as high as 50%. Why does grade matter? Because the energy and labor required to convert high-grade ore into pure metal (low-entropy) is low. The lower grade the ore, the more energy required to mine, process, and purify it.

Potosí had such a dramatic impact on world history because of entropy. Once the Spanish (primarily from País Vasco) worked out the metallurgy (low smelting temperatures and mercury), it cost them little to pour more pure silver ingots and mint more silver coins than the world had ever seen. More than any single thing, Petosi's SILVER is responsible for GLOBALIZATION. See also 1493, Charles C. Mann, Chapter 4.

But even during the early Spanish times, “[w]hen miners hit a patch of low-quality ore, they were forced to work harder to make their quota of silver.” 1493, p. 182. This is the law of entropy in action and it works the same way today.

The discovery of high-grade silver ore played a notable role in Utah history. Thomas Kearns was the Silver King due to a combination of good luck and lots of low entropy (high-grade) silver ore deposited in the Rocky Mountains by the same hydrothermal forces that created Kennecott Utah Copper.

Kearns’ chance discovery of some of the highest grade silver ore in the western USA in 1892 resulted in an enormous expansion of the Park City mining district, his election as a U.S. Senator, his founding of the stridently anti-Mormon Kearns Trubune newspaper (now the Salt Lake Tribune), and the construction of both the Kearns Mansion (the official residence of the Utah Governor), and the Kearns Building, where I worked for many years.

Kearn’s good fortune was all made possible by entropy—or the lack of it—in the silver ore discovered in Tom Kearns’ mine. Thousands of tons of silver ore was high grade: it could be smelted without incurring the cost of milling and processing. The miners would sort out the waste rock for dumping; the low-grade ore for milling; and the high-grade ore for direct shipment to the smelter.

My great grandfather spent most of his life as a miner in the Silver King Mine. Thermodynamically, Grandpa Randall’s manual labor did but one thing: It reduced the entropy in natural silver ore so Tom Kearns could sell pure silver metal. The residual waste rock, tailings, and slag were left behind.

Park City, Silver King Mine, cir. 1935.

As fate would have it, I would spend several years of my legal career working on remediation of the Park City mining district, including the Silver King Mine. My legal office was in the Kearns Building, including Tom Kearns’ corner office on the 10th floor. As fate would have it, I got to help clean up some of the waste rock and tailings my great grandfather literally helped generate long before I was born. Also as fate would have it, I got to work from the same offices where Tom Kearns himself ran the whole show while my grandpa was up in the mountain mining silver.

The office was interesting, some say haunted. There were rumors from the cleaning people who sometimes claimed to be able to smell the distinct odor of cigar smoke from Tom Kearns’ corner office on the 10th floor. I too was skeptical till one Saturday afternoon, when three of us indeed got wafts of what smelled like cigar smoke wafting from the office. In the building lobby there is a huge painting of Senator Kearns holding a smoldering cigar. And I’ve always wondered if there was a connection. I am relieved that I no longer work in that building, as interesting as it was.

Like gold, copper, and aluminum, silver is an excellent conductor of electric energy. Solar panels require around 10% of world silver production. In 2019, the PV sector soaked up 98.7 million ounces. In 2021, PV silver consumption rose to 1.137 million ounces.

But once again, entropy comes into play, this time in reverse. In the solar cell manufacturing process, small amounts of pure, refined silver are used in the form of paste. An average solar panel (2 meters square) includes about 20 grams (0.643 troy ounces) of silver. While new manufacturing techniques are reducing this number—and may even be able to substitute copper for silver if manufacturers pay for patented technology—solar cell efficiency is impacted and at current market prices ($18.51 per troy ounce), the economics may not be too compelling. The cost of silver is a small part of the overall cost of a single panel. It is unlikely that the solar panel industry will stop using huge volumes of silver in the foreseeable future. In fact, PV silver demand is expected to grow by 15% in 2022.

SILVER production today (around 800 million TA/yr) consumes vast quantities of fossil fuel energy in the form of petroleum for diesel fuel, lubricating oil, jet black for tire manufacturing; coal for smelting and firm electricity generation; natural gas for ammonium nitrate production, process heat, dispatchable power, and so forth. The mining industry directly consumes more petroleum than the airline industry.

In terms of energy consumption, ore grades matter a great deal. In continuous production for over 500 years, the Fresnillo Mine in Mexico is the world’s largest silver producer. But its ore grades are a fraction of Petosí or Silver King. Its average ore grade today is 265 Silver (g/ton).

This is not to suggest there is or will be a silver shortage. But it is to suggest that as available silver grades fall, even more fossil fuel will be required to mine and refine silver. As the cost of fossil fuel goes up, the cost of silver will increase.

Does this make sense? Nuclear energy does not have appreciable silver requirements.

THE POWER of labels lies in the fact that they create and reinforce assumptions. And assumptions are more powerful than complete factual truth. Indeed, assumptions, combined with a few facts, become a truth of their own.

In energy, it seems there is no label quite so consequential as “renewable” and its cousins, “sustainable” and “green.” But does PV solar qualify for these labels? Proponents of the labels contend that the factual basis is enough, specifically that the sun is free and that the entire planet is awash in free solar radiation. This premise is appealing to humans because it is consistent with our daily experience. There is no larger energy source than the sun, which is the ultimate human archetype for energy.

Now that humans have created machines that can convert free photons into useful electric energy for humans, solar power skeptics face seemingly insurmountable challenges. Turns out that the sun power archetype is extraordinarily powerful in the universal human psyche.

But as Mark P. Mills points out, the fact that photons are free is entirely irrelevant. Coal is free. Petroleum is free. Uranium is free. Hydro power is free. What is relevant is the cost to create, maintain, and replace the machines required to convert any “free” natural resource into useful energy. In the case of PV solar, the natural resource inputs, minerals and fossil fuel, are significant.

To Support Nuclear Power is to Support Civilization. Orders of magnitude more production of what we need with orders of magnitude less burden on Mother Earth who provides for us all.

Source: Here