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Partly cloudy. Low 38F. Winds light and variable..
Partly cloudy. Low 38F. Winds light and variable.
Serving Sun Valley, Ketchum, Hailey, Bellevue and Carey
The Idaho Cobalt Operations site lies deep in Idaho’s cobalt belt, about 22 miles west of Salmon as the crow flies.
A Tesla charges up in a Hailey garage. According to figures from the
, the typical 1,000-pound lithium electric-vehicle battery contains “about 25 pounds of lithium, 30 pounds of cobalt, 60 pounds of nickel, 110 pounds of graphite, 90 pounds of copper” and “about 400 pounds of steel, aluminum, and various plastic components.”
The Idaho Cobalt Operations site lies deep in Idaho’s cobalt belt, about 22 miles west of Salmon as the crow flies.
The United States’ largest-to-date cobalt mining operation will officially launch Friday at a remote site in the Salmon-Challis National Forest, Australia-based mining and exploration company Jervois Global announced in a press release Oct. 1.
Friday’s inaugural ceremony is expected to draw Gov. Brad Little, Australia diplomat Arthur Sinodinos, Idaho State Economic Development Director Tom Kealey, U.S. Department of Energy chemist Dr. Geri Richmond—as well as top company executives—to the mine’s location in the rugged Salmon River Mountains, about a two-hour drive from Salmon on switchback roads.
At full production, Jervois’ project, called “Idaho Cobalt Operations,” should produce some 16,890 tons of cobalt over its eight-year lifespan.
That amount should be enough to power between 1.1 and 7 million electric vehicles, according to mine manager Matt Lengerich, depending on battery composition, he said.
The first domestic cobalt ore shipment is expected by early 2023, according to Jervois’ website.
“What Jervois is doing is setting up a supply chain of sustainably-sourced cobalt that’s independent of China, Russia and the Democratic Republic of the Congo,” Lengerich told the Express.
At full production, Jervois’ project, called “Idaho Cobalt Operations,” should produce some 16,890 tons of cobalt over its eight-year lifespan.
The nearly 200-acre Idaho Cobalt Operations campus is built on a plateau three miles east of the Frank-Church Wilderness as the crow flies, at the confluence of the Little Deer Creek and south fork of Big Deer Creek drainages.
Mine construction began in 2012, but accelerated after Jervois acquired the site from Formation Capital in 2019.
The ICO site currently includes a wastewater treatment plant, a mine tailings storage facility, several ore hauling roads, a processing mill in the plateau area and two portals to the west where hired contractors will tunnel horizontally into the hillside in the Big Deer Creek drainage.
According to the company, the plateau sits on a reserve amounting to 4 million tons of ore with a cobalt concentration of 0.5%, higher than the average cobalt ore grade of 0.1%.
A Tesla charges up in a Hailey garage. According to figures from the
, the typical 1,000-pound lithium electric-vehicle battery contains “about 25 pounds of lithium, 30 pounds of cobalt, 60 pounds of nickel, 110 pounds of graphite, 90 pounds of copper” and “about 400 pounds of steel, aluminum, and various plastic components.”
The Idaho Cobalt Belt is a 40-mile-long band of mineral deposits containing cobalt, copper, gold and other metals. The cobalt—present at high enough concentrations to make it the belt’s primary metal—was deposited by underwater volcanos about 1.6 billion years ago on what used to be an ancient sea floor, according to Jervois.
The ICO mining campus features two tunnels that angle slightly upwards into the “Ram” cobalt deposit within the Idaho Cobalt Belt. While Jervois will mainly focus on the “Ram” deposit, it is planning to drill into the neighboring “Sunshine” vein—a short traverse south from the ICO campus—starting next summer, according to its website.
Southeast of both the “Ram” and “Sunshine” deposits lies the “Blackbird” deposit, where the open-pit Blackbird Mine operated through the late 1960s with little federal oversight, supplying the U.S. government with cobalt for jet engines.
The mine now serves as a cautionary tale. According to the EPA, acidic waste material—known as mine tailings—were spilled along Blackbird Creek and seeped into Panther Creek, creating a dead zone for fish and most other aquatic life.
According to Lengerich, checks are in place to prevent runoff from this project. Jervois’ permit includes a requirement for fish tissue monitoring over time to test for accumulation of heavy metals, for example. Jervois will also need to continuously monitor aquatic invertebrates and check water quality in Big Deer Creek for nitrates, nitrites and sulfates.
The company will also use modern mining techniques and “minimal” explosives to prevent pollution, he said.
First, ore extracted from the tunnels will be trucked up the hillside to a grinding mill on site, where the rock will be pulverized into fine, sand-like particles and refined using a frothing chemical. In this “bubble bath” of sorts, valuable metals will cling to the froth for easy extraction, while tailings will sink to the bottom.
“Jervois’ mine is practically and symbolically a major step toward growing the United States’ domestic critical minerals supply chain."
The mine should produce 1.9 million tons of tailings over its lifetime, Lengerich said. Approximately half of the waste material will be mixed with cement and used to fill in tunnels; the other half will be ground down, dehydrated, and consolidated into dry “cakes” stacked over a nonpermeable clay liner on the western side of the campus. Finally, the stacks will be topped off with vegetation and topsoil.
As for the valuable material, Jervois will ship cobalt and copper concentrate to its SMP Refinery in São Miguel Paulista, Brazil. The metals will then go to its Freeport Cobalt Refinery in central Finland for further processing.
Aside from lithium-ion batteries, cobalt has “a variety of important aerospace and military applications,” according to Jervois, which has claimed that its new mine will help decrease the U.S.’s reliance on foreign cobalt imports.
“Cobalt is also crucially important to U.S. national security, being used in a variety of defense and aerospace applications. Most of the metal’s mining and processing currently takes place outside the U.S. and is heavily controlled by China,” the company stated on Oct. 1.
According to the U.S. Geological Survey, the Democratic Republic of the Congo churns out about 70% of the world’s cobalt ore. The U.S. only produces 0.4% at the Eagle Mine, located in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, mostly as a byproduct of nickel and copper mining. (The Eagle Mine will cease production in 2026.)
“At present, the global cobalt supply chain is dominated by China and the opening of Jervois’ Idaho cobalt mine is a crucial step forward in securing America’s domestic EV supply chain,” Jervois stated. Chinese-based companies own or have investments in nearly four out of five cobalt mines in the DRC, according to price-reporting agency Benchmark Mineral Intelligence. According to Benchmark, the U.S. will need to open between 38 and 62 new cobalt mines with an annual output of 5,500 tons to meet cobalt demand by 2035.
“Jervois’ mine is practically and symbolically a major step toward growing the United States’ domestic critical minerals supply chain,” the company stated.
The project is expected to create about 150 to 200 jobs in the Salmon-Challis area.
The ICO site has not been affected by the recent Moose Fire, as it sits west of the fire boundary, according to federal mapping. 
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Congrats, dems. Your climate change/electric vehicles push got us an expanded cobalt mine just outside the Frank Church Wilderness Area. Good luck with that.
Agreed; she is a phenomenal reporter. The only information in this piece that let me down was to hear about the refining process that requires the material to be shipped overseas twice before it can be put into manufacturing. Would love to see more of those industrial processes (and jobs) here in the US as well. Close the loop and keep it domestic
If Musk is going to build his lithium refinery in TX why not refine cobalt there too? I agree, We have let China bully us for too long. ETR, I too appreciate her sharp approach to reporting, the MtEx is fortunate to have someone of her caliber. I like that she is never scared to ask questions we want answers to.
What an excellent, detailed, informative story about a critical product this is. Congratulation to Emily Jones
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