More than 200 million tons of manganese nodules rich in rare metals lie on the seabed near Minamitorishima, a remote island in Tokyo, the Nippon Foundation and the University of Tokyo said Friday.
The nonprofit and national university discovered a vast amount of mineral concentrations on the seabed containing abundant rare metals such as cobalt and nickel – both essential for lithium-ion batteries – in a survey that covered an area at a depth of about 5,000 meters. in the country’s exclusive economic zone, near the Pacific island.
The research team, led by Yasuhiro Kato, a professor at the university, estimates that the 100-square-kilometer study area contains 234 million tons of such nodules and that the amount of nickel in them is enough to sustain Japan’s consumption for 75 years. while the amount of cobalt is sufficient for about 11 years.
