EDITORIAL Self-Sufficiency THE PRESIDENT has set 1980 as the target year in which the United States is to achieve self-sufficiency in energy. Well and good. The goal is a most commendable one, even if it does tilt somewhat on the side of optimism-1985 or 1990 would be more realistic targets, say some people in the energy field. But such objections are irrelevant. The significant fact is that the nation has been given a direction in which to go and a target to aim for, and has started on its way. It will be an arduous and challenging journey, filled with great obstacles. And with great opportunities. Precisely when we will get there, the specific year, is of relatively little moment. We will get there as soon as we can. That is the commitment, and it is one, we think deserving of the support of all Americans. But when we reach that goal, what will we have achieved? The right to resume wasteful expenditure of energy? The ability to once again profligately squander the world's precious and rapidly dwindling supplies of coal, oil, and natural gas-raw materials, which, once depleted, will not renew themselves for millions of years? Or merely the ability to pursue the American way of life-by 1980. undoubtedly, a much changed way of life-without fear of outside interruption? The question answers itself. Never again will we be able, nor should we permit ourselves, to waste energy, or any other resource, on the massive scale which has been the national custom until now. And never again, either, if we can avoid it, should we let ourselves get trapped in a situation where we have to rely on the resources and good will of other nations. To say this is not neo-isolationism; it is realism. But it is also realism to acknowledge that the new Ameritan declaration of independence may be achievable in energy, but it isn't in much else. There are, the experts tell us, some 72 raw materials essential for economic survival in today's technological world. The United States is self-sufficient in only three, and must rely on imports for part or all of its requirements of each of the remaining 69, Consider just one statistic: in 1969, according to the Mining Congress Journal, the United States produced 10 per cent or less of its own requirements in aluminum, chromium, cobalt, columbium, corundum, manganese, palladium, platinum, rhodium, strontium, tantalum, metal titanium, and metal zirconium. Energy is not our biggest need, therefore, nor is it our Achilles heel. It is only the need we are most aware of at present, and the one causing us the most inconvenience. But that's all it is. Because the fact is that we are already, right now, self-sufficient in energy, if we look at matters realistically. We can survive without huge, or any, imports of foreign oil and natural gas. The U.S. economy would be seriously disrupted, of course. There would be many people out of work. Millions, perhaps. There would be rationing, severe rationing, of many items, and energy-consuming luxury activities would be a thing of the past. But no one would starve. We would all survive. but there's no danger of it ever being fatal. The same cannot be said, however, of what we think will soon become known as the mineral crisis. Because we are not self-sufficient in minerals, nor can we ever become self-sufficient-as we can (and already are, for survival purposes) in energy. The best we can do is use our own mineral resources frugally, improvise and substitute where we can, and maintain friendly relations with our foreign sources of supply. And, most important of all, we must also keep the sea lanes open. Because what we need we must have in such massive quantities that it can come in only by ship. We can't fly it in, and we can't hand carry it. We must bring it over thousands of miles of ocean. Oceans, moreover, where we are not self-sufficient. We have a strong Navy-the world's most powerful, in many respects, but no longer in all respects. In our Polaris/ Poseidon (and, soon, Trident) ballistic missile submarine fleet we have the ultimate deterrent against thermonuclear war. It seems to many knowledgeable observers, in fact, that, thanks to the nightmare capability of mutual assured destruction, such a holocaust becomes less and less likely with each passing year. But as apocalypse becomes less possible, conventional war, particularly conventional war at sea, becomes more possible. And now facts must be faced. If a conventional war at sea were to occur, the United States would be in grave danger. The U.S. Navy is strong, indeed, but it is also overextended, and is woefully short in the numbers of ships needed to guarantee freedom of the seas. U.S. carrier forces, which many in Congress want to cut to the bone, if not completely eliminate, provide the only edge now available, but the country's global commitments spread those forces very, very thin. It would be no trick at all for the Soviet navy, now building its own carrier fleet, to attain local superiority in any given oceanic area merely by bunching its forces in the right place at the right time. The same picture holds true for the U.S. merchant marine, once by far the world's largest, now so shrunken in numbers that it carries only 5.6 per cent of the nation's foreign trade. During the Mideast crisis we found out, to our dismay, that (except for Holland) we could not count on our NATO allies, apparently, for assistance in anything less than a land war in the European theater itself. That should be a lesson to us. Can we count on outside assistance-from foreign navies and foreign merchant marines-if America's own sea lines of communication are endangered? Can we even count on the so-called "flag of convenience" ships, Americanowned and (supposedly) controlled, but under foreign registry? We don't know the answers to these questions. But we do know this: self-sufficiency in energy is important; self-sufficiency at sea is essential. We have, or can soon attain, the former. We most emphatically do not have the latter. And now, perhaps, because of our preoccupation with other matters and our late start in this area, we may never attain it. But we should certainly try our utmost. Starting immediately. [From the Washington Post, Mar. 7, 1974] THE THREAT OF FOREIGN EMBARGOES (By Hobart Rowen) When President Nixon proposed broad new foreign trade legislation last year, the world was largely concerned with tariffs, quotas, and other measures that are supposed to protect producers in their domestic markets. But the Arab oil embargo has given a dramatic new focus to world trade problems. We are still concerned with import questions-especially the continuing and short-sighted protectionist pressures that would attempt to insulate the United States in a world obviously growing more interdependent. However, the effective use of the boycott and production curtailments by the cartel of oil-producing nations-for which no one was prepared-has demonstrated that trade policy must deal as well with the crucial problem of fair access to foreign supplies. Belatedly, the Nixon administration has come around to the notion that the tough, aggressive economic measures adopted by the oil cartel must be met with an equally determined stance on the part of the oil-consuming nations. Beyond that, the administration has now formally approved the initiative taken by two Democratic senators, Walter Mondale of Minnesota and Abraham Ribicoff of Connecticut to amend the Trade Reform Bill in a way that will help the nation respond to artificially-created shortages of materials. "If we are having so much difficulty coping with an Arab oil boycott affecting less than 10 per cent of our total oil consumption," says Ribicoff, "imagine an international squeeze play affecting such minerals as chromium, tin, manganese. platinum, cobalt, nickel, bauxite, and asbestos, where we are from 80 to 100 per cent dependent on foreign sources." Treasury Secretary George P. Shultz this week told the Senate Finance Committee that "we need unambiguous authority to withdraw the benefits of trade concessions from countries that impose illegal or unreasonable restraints on sales of commodities in short supply." The administration may not be ready to go as far as Ribicoff and Mondale would in imposing sanctions against countries that wage economic warfare against us. But unless some strong actions are taken, ultimately on a multilateral basis, the world will get itself into a race for raw materials that only worsens an already devastating inflationary spiral. One way would be to establish "escape clause" procedures comparable to those now existing on imports if the U.S. finds it necessary to retaliate against export discrimination. Criteria for such retaliation could be spelled out, and public hearings proposed. This in itself might act to discourage those countries that may be thinking about halting or reducing the flow of their supplies of raw materials. The larger and original purposes of the Trade Reform Act-to enable the U.S. to negotiate effectively in new multilateral bargaining and to manage the domestic impact of lowered tariffs and barriers-are still essential. But the bill would be a sham unless it deals forthrightly with the new power that the Arabs have persuasively demonstrated resides in the Third World. As Fred C. Bergsten of the Brookings Institution points out, the whole nature of the foreign economic problem has changed in a year's time. So long as the main unsolved problem is inflation, major nations will be trying to establish export controls. In a sense, that is an effort to shift the inflationary burden to others. Until now, the focus related more to import controls, which was an effort to exportnot inflation-but unemployment. It should be remembered that to protect the supply and the price of soybeans last year, the United States unilaterally put export controls on soybeans, which seriously threatened the Japanese food resources for a while. This was no more defensible than the Arab oil boycott. More recently, when the fuel crisis was at a peak, the Japanese came close to slapping controls on plastics exports to their Asian customers, and the U.S. quietly considered putting export controls on a petro-chemicals. The problem of access to supplies, therefore, is pervasive, and not just limited to crude oil. Exporters of other raw materials will learn quickly from the oil producers. Thus, the nations that depend on a steady supply of raw materials must not be dissuaded from acting in their own self-interest by a misplaced euphoria over lifting of the oil embargo, when, and if that comes. RESEARCH NEWS Manganese Nodules (II): Prospects for Deep Sea Mining The history of mining is replete with examples of recovery and extraction techniques whose development was stimulated by new ores. The discovery in some parts of the Pacific Ocean of manganese nodules that also contain nickel and copper in higher concentrations than most ores being mined today is having a similar effect. Whether the methods now being developed to dredge nodules from the deep seabed and to extract pure metals from the nodule ore will become the basis of a new mining industry is still uncertain -economic, environmental, and legal questions about the feasibility of deep sea mining remain to be answered. Nonetheless, development of what may prove to be a major new marine technology appears well under way. The participants include both industrial concerns and governments. Leading the field appear to be several U.S. firms-Howard Hughes' Summa Corporation, Deepsea Ventures, Inc. (a Tenneco subsidiary), and Kennecott Copper Company, all of which are engaged in exploration and the development of mining and processing systems. Others include Ocean Resources, Inc. and the Canadian-based International Nickel Company (INCO). In Japan and Western Europe the national governments have taken an active role in partnership with industrial groups such as the Sumitomo group in Japan, an association headed by Metallgesellschaft AG and Preussag AG in West Germany, and the French Société le Nickel. The Japanese, in combination with Ocean Resources Inc., have actively worked on the development of a mining system, while INCO, the Germans, and the French have so far emphasized exploration and process development. The potential profits from deep sea mining operations will depend heavily on the metal content of the nodules, their size and abundance on the ocean floor, and the characteristics of the underlying sediments. Consequently, those interested in mining have spent considerable effort in exploring for rich deposits. The principal technique has been to scan the sea floor with an underwater television camera and to collect samples at periodic intervals for later analysis. Typical high grade de posits are reported to assay 27 to 30 percent manganese, 1.1 to 1.4 percent nickel, 1.0 to 1.3 percent copper, and 0.2 to 0.4 percent cobalt (although nodules with higher assays have been found) and to have about 10 kg of nodules per square meter. The dredging methods now in use are limited to about 300 m, and to recover nodules from deposits at depths of 5000 m or more requires new techniques. Two principal types of deep mining systems are being developed. One, a mechanical system known as the continuous line bucket (CLB), consists of a long loop of cable to which specially designed dredge buckets are attached at intervals of 25 to 50 m. A traction drive (on the mining ship) moves the cable so that buckets descend into the ocean, are dragged across the seabed to scoop up nodules, and return to the surface to deposit their load. A second, hydraulic recovery method consists of a length of pipe suspended from a mining ship; a sea floor device (dredge head) designed to collect nodules, screen out those larger than a certain size, and feed the rest to the bottom of the pipeline; and some means of pumping water up the pipeline with sufficient velocity (about 4 m/sec) to transport the nodules as well. The bottom device is either self-propelled or dragged across the bottom by the pipe string, depending on the design. Both conventional centrifugal pumps and compressed air injected into the pipe (air-lift pumping, in which the air bubbles provide enough buoyancy to raise the entire column of water and nodules) are being considered. Mining Nodules Will Not Be Easy Either system must contend with the difficulties of operating a mining ship in all kinds of weather, of controlling an extremely long length of pipe or cable, and of collecting nodules from a seabed of uncertain and variable physical properties. According to John Mero of Ocean Resources, Inc., the CLB system has the advantage of simplicity and flexibility, since it has no underwater machinery, can recover nodules of any size, and does not need to be designed for a specific depth and type of sediment as do hydraulic sys tems. Moreover, he claims that the system will cost much less than the more complex hydraulic equipment, although most other marine engineers dispute his estimates. Mero admits, however, that such measures as shark-proofing the polypropylene cables and using two surface ships instead of one to keep the bucket loop from becoming entangled when the system is shut down may be necessary. A more serious difficulty is that the buckets must actually pick up a good load of nodules but little sediment for the system to be economic, and there is no way to control how the buckets interact with the bottom. Perhaps the most fundamental limitation of the CLB system, according to critics, is that cables are not strong enough and cannot be moved rapidly enough to mine 3 or 4 million tons of nodules per year with a single unit-a capacity that hydraulic systems can achieve and that many companies believe to be the economic minimum. Hydraulic systems, on the other hand, require more elaborate gear, and a ship specially equipped to handle a long string of pipe. Centrifugal pump systems must be electrically or hydraulically powered underwater, a tricky and trouble-prone arrangement in the marine environment. Air-lift systems, however, are less efficient and must cope with the complexities and potential instabilities of three-phase flow (the pipe will simultaneously contain water, air, and nodules moving together). The bottom device, the key to a successful mining system, must traverse or sweep the loosely compacted sediments of the sea floor without becoming bogged down. Hydraulic systems are limited to recovering only part of the available resource, since larger nodules that might block flow in the pipe must be left behind. And the complete system may be expensive. The advantages and disadvantages of each system depend in part on who is doing the talking, of course, and in a competitive arena such as deep sea mining, no company will disclose precise details of its own system, so that much of the available information comes from competitors. Claims and counterclaims are therefore to be regarded with some caution. Experience with both systems is limited. The CLB system was tested in 1970 by an agency of the Japanese government and again in 1972 by a consortium headed by Ocean Resources, Inc. Deepsea Ventures has successfully tested an air-lift hydraulic system in relatively shallow water and plans deep-water tests in 1975. The Hughes organization has built the first full-size prototype of a mining ship (Fig. 1) which is now at sea beginning tests of an elaborate hydraulic system. The enigmatic Hughes is a relative latecomer to the deep sea mining race, but there is general agreement that he bought the best expertise available and now is well in front. His system was designed by the Lockheed Missiles and Space Company, who have an impressive record of experience with undersea technology, and by Global Marine, Inc., who operate (for the National Science Foundation) the deep sea drilling ship Glomar Challenger that has pioneered mid-ocean drilling techniques. Indeed the Hughes mining ship is essentially a more sophisticated version of the Challenger. In addition to the ship, the Hughes system includes a massive bottom device (several versions of which are to be tested on the current cruise). Because the collecting device is too large to be lowered through the pipe-handling well in the ship's hull, it is to be connected to the pipeline underwater from a submersible barge before being lowered to the sea floor. The barge is in essence an undersea launching platform and mining support vehicle. The bottom device may look something like one described in a patent issued to Global Marine, which consists of a collector on a long rotating boom pivoting around a fixed base where the nodules are cleaned and crushed before being pumped up the pipe. In this arrangement, according to marine engineers, the system could sweep out a large area before being repositioned and would avoid the difficulties associated with towing a long pipeline and a dredge head through the water. Several hydraulic pumping systems are also apparently being tested, although some of those working with Hughes are known to believe an airlift system is the best. Competitors have a high regard for the capability of the Hughes team. Raymond Kaufman, of Deepsea Ventures, has "no doubt that they'll succeed technically." But Kaufman and Fig. 1. The Hughes Glomar Explorer, a 36,000-ton experimental ship for deep ocean mining. The 200-meter long vessel has a center well and derrick to handle the pipe from which mining equipment will be suspended and sophisticated systems to hold the ship steady and in position during mining. [Source: Summa Corporation] others believe that the Hughes system may be too elaborate and too expensive to compete. "Lockheed sold Hughes a Cadillac," one engineer put it, and others told Science they believe Hughes is more interested in making a name for himself as a pioneer than in making a profit. Both charges are denied by Paul Reeve of Summa Corporation, who asserts that the company has every intention of making a profit. The hydraulic mining system being developed by Deepsea Ventures, Inc., is more modest than that of Hughes. Their design includes a much smaller collecting device that is essentially a passive dredge head dragged across the ocean floor on the end of a pipeline. Sets of tines much like those on a rake collect the nodules, screen out those that are oversize, and help to separate the nodules from the sediment. An air-lift system is used to bring the nodules to the surface. Because of its simplicity, the system (it involves no underwater pumps or other machinery) has the advantage of low cost and reliability of operation, according to Kaufman. Because of the relatively crude collecting device, however, it must be carefully designed to match sea floor conditions at a particular mine site. And because the dredge must be towed across the bottom without exerting undue stress on the pipeline, the mining area must be very carefully surveyed before mining can begin. The Deepsea Ventures system is thus a less universal mining system than that of Hughes. Another difference is in capacity. Deepsea Ventures intends to recover about 1 million tons of nodules per year, whereas the Hughes team is known to be aiming for 3 to 4 million tons a year or more. The difference is related to the metals which are the ultimate aim of the mining efforts. Hughes, along with Kennecott, INCO, and apparently many others interested in deep sea mining, believes that copper and nickel will be the prime metals obtained from the nodules. To obtain enough of these metals for profitable operation, large tonnages of nodules are needed. Deepsea Ventures, on the other hand, is planning to extract and sell manganese and cobalt as well, rather than consign them to the scrap heap. Because there is so much manganese in the nodules, fewer are needed to yield a marketable amount of metals. The decision to include manganese influences not only the design of Deepsea Ventures' mining and processing system but also the company's business strategy, since they must find new markets (in the steel industry, for example) for manganese metal. Most other companies are waiting to see what Hughes is doing and whether he is successful before committing themselves to mining systems. Kennecott, for example, is known to be designing a hydraulic system, but is moving very slowly. The Germans have published research on hydraulic mining designs, but are not far along in developing a system. The syndicate of companies which owns the rights to the CLB system will probably raise the money for a final test of that technique in the next couple of years, according to Mero, but no definite plans exist. INCO is maintaining an interest in both types of systems but has made no commitment to either. Work on methods of processing the nodule ore is much further advanced. Kennecott has operated several pilot plants and is proceeding with the design of a full-scale system. Deepsea Ventures is nearly as far along. European companies, especially in Germany, have large research efforts on processing under way. Since a processing plant is expected to account for more than half of the cost of a complete nodulemining operation, the stakes in choosing the best extractive method are high and four or five processes are being investigated. Straightforward methods of extracting metals do not work because of the nature of the nodules. The manganese oxide and iron oxide minerals that are the main metal constituents of the nodules are extremely fine-grained. Consequently, physical means of separating the metals have not proved successful. Smelting the nodule ore has been tried, also without great success. Although it is possible to reduce the oxides by heating in a furnace to a temperature of about 1500°C, the result is an alloy of various metals (including iron) that is difficult to separate further. In consequence, chemical (hydrometallurgical) separation methods seem to be of most interest to the industry. In the chemical approach, the nodules are partially or completely dissolved and the metals separated from solution. The task is made easier for those who seek to recover only nickel and copper, since these metals are predominantly found in association with the manganese minerals (adsorbed onto them or embedded in the crystal lattice). Cobalt is found mostly in the iron. Hence several different reagents, selective leaching techniques, and reducing treatments can be utilized, depending on the desired product. Several investigators have tried leaching the nodule material with sulfuric acid. The acid readily dissolves the copper, nickel, and cobalt, but also some manganese, iron, and undesirable trace elements. Large quantities of acid are required, presumably due to the presence of basic material trapped in the nodule. The consensus is that the technique is not selective enough for commercial use. A second selective leaching procedure is based on ammonia in conjunction with an ammonium salt (ammoniacal solution). First the oxide compounds are reduced to a lower oxidation state by roasting with a gaseous reagent such as carbon monoxide. Then the ore is treated with ammoniacal solution, sometimes under conditions of increased temperature and pressure. According to D. W. Fuerstenau of the University of California at Berkeley, this process can dissolve more than 80 percent of the copper and nickel and about 50 percent of the cobalt, leaving the manganese and iron essentially intact. The process is similar to one used to extract nickel from laterite ores. Kennecott has obtained several patents for ammoniacal leach processes and is believed to be basing its commercial plans on a version of this method. A third process involves dissolving the entire nodule. The ore is roasted with sulfur dioxide to reduce the oxides and then leached with water. The resulting sulfate salts are separated to obtain the metals (a tricky process about which little has been published). Al ternately, sulfur dioxide in water is used directly to dissolve the nodule (a reaction that is reported to go very quickly). In either case, the manganese is dissolved whether it is ultimately desired as a product or not. The process is particularly attractive to companies that have sulfur dioxide to dispose of (from, for example, copper smelters), but it is also regarded as a difficult process in which to control pollution. A fourth process, also one in which essentially the entire nodule is dissolved, is that developed by Deepsea Ventures as the basis of its commercial plans. The crushed nodules are reacted with hydrogen chloride at temperatures such that most of the metals except iron are converted to soluble metal chlorides. (As a by-product, hydrogen chloride is converted into chlorine gas.) The metal chlorides are then dissolved in water and separated into aqueous solutions of nickel, cobalt, and copper salts by a liquid-ion-exchange process. From these solutions, pure metal is produced in electrolytic cells. Manganese is recovered separately. According to P. H. Cardwell of Deepsea Ventures, the advantages of the process include the high recovery rate (better than 95 percent of the metal content of the ore is recovered) and the fact that the solvents used are recycled, thus minimizing pollution. Environmental Effects a Concern Nodules are found in areas of the ocean that are in many respects biological deserts, but that does not mean mining will have no effect on the ocean environment. The potential problems include local disruption of the sea floor ecosystem, and distribution of sediment particles-some of which may remain suspended for a year-throughout the water column. The sediment might alter chemical balances both in the more populated surface waters and below, and as it settles out may bury organisms that live on the sea floor. Many oceanographers do not believe that mining itself will do much permanent damage to the oceans as a whole, however, because of the relatively small areas to be affected, but they point out that it may destroy sediment records of scientific interest. More serious environmental effects may come from processing the nodules, especially if, as some have suggested, second-generation plants are built to operate at sea. Even on land, operations that involve discarding all but the copper and nickel must dispose of millions of tons of residues that con tain manganese and other toxic metals in oxide form. The impact of the new source of metals on world markets is also a controversial subject. At one extreme, deep sea mining optimists like Mero forecast a drop in metal prices within 10 years after production starts and the closing of many land mines within 20. Others, such as A. J. Rothstein and Kaufman of Deepsea Ventures, maintain that copper prices will not be affected at all in the foreseeable future and that only for cobalt are the nodules likely to cut into prices or landbased production significantly. An analysis prepared for the World Bank points out that mining of enough nodules (about 6.5 million tons) to meet the world demand for cobalt in 1967 would have provided 22 percent, 0.9 percent, and 13 percent, respectively, of the world demand for manganese, copper, and nickel. The analysis also assesses the economics of deep sea mining as uncertain, largely because of the still unknown costs of the mining itself (estimates range from about $3 to $30 per ton of dry nodules at dockside). It concludes that exploitation of the nodules could reduce the dependence of industrialized countries on imports of metals and could seriously affect a few of the developing countries that depend on exports for revenue. Commercial mining operations are not likely to begin before 1977 (it takes 3 years to build a processing plant and none are now under construction), if then. The prospects probably depend in large part on what happens to the international political and legal argument over the law of the sea, although several companies have hinted that they might force the issue by mining even in the absence of an international convention. At present almost all of the major companies are actively negotiating for partners to share the estimated $250 million investment (and the risks) of a deep sea mining venture. Kennecott, along with four other companies, last week announced a 5year, $50-million research program to determine mining feasibility. Even Hughes, according to Reeve, is considering a joint arrangement in which Summa Corporation would mine the nodules and others would process them. In any case, there appears to be growing conviction in the industry that deep sea mining is gathering momentum, that manganese nodules are indeed on the verge of commercial exploitation. -ALLEN L. HAMMOND |