The goal is to set up a massive and scale 24-hour day, bottom of the ocean mining operation that's eventually going to produce something like 10 million tons a year. Nothing like this has ever been done before in terms of how big of an area. The total amount of metal sitting on the ocean floor in their zones is estimated to be approximately three times as much as any other nickel mine currently being planned anywhere in the world.
The adoption of electric cars has been hailed as an important step in curbing the use of fossil fuels and fighting climate change. There is a snag, however: such vehicles require around six times as many metals as their gasoline-powered counterparts.
A giant storehouse of the necessary resources sits at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean. But retrieving them may, in turn, badly damage the environment.
Guest: Eric Lipton, an investigative reporter for The New York Times.
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