Sulfate waste could slow the battery buildout

In fall 2012, an employee conducting a routine inspection at Talvivaara Mining Company's nickel mine in a forested part of central Finland discovered that the site's 60 hectare wastewater pond had sprung a leak. Crews built emergency dams to contain the spill, but within a few days, water containing heavy metals and sulfates flowed into the local watershed. It took 10 days to plug the leak, which ultimately released more than 3,000 metric tons (t) of sulfates into the environment. Scientists from the University of Helsinki found that this spill, and another one just a few months later, caused a "massive ecological disruption" in Lake Kivijärvi, located a few kilometers southwest of the mine. Dense, sulfate-rich water sank to the bottom of the lake. Oxygen stopped circulating from the surface to the lake bed, killing insects, mussels, snails, and other organisms living there. That had ripple effects throughout the ecosystem,