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Bolivia takes a key step on long road to tapping vast lithium riches
Bolivia is cutting the ribbon on its first industrial-scale lithium plant, the dawn of what it hopes will be an export boom of the battery metal that could bring it back from the brink of economic crisis. It’s going to be a long road though. In a ceremony Friday on the world’s largest salt flat, President Luis Arce is opening the $100 million facility, designed to churn out 15,000 metric tons of lithium carbonate a year to fuel electric vehicles in the global shift away from fossil fuels. For the land-locked Andean nation, tapping into vast lithium deposits suspended in brine under the remote Uyuni salt flat ... (full story)