Because it’s the cheapest option. It’s very simple. It’s the cheapest. They found that we, in fact, don’t have strict regulations, and we don’t have the capacity to oppose this in a sufficiently documented and expert manner. Of course, they found cooperation with our authorities, who aren’t sufficiently informed about what’s going on. I’ll illustrate this with an example. Rio Tinto plans to partially use water from the Drina River, to recycle process water in the plants, which is a normal process in any chemical plant worldwide, which is done. But then they say the following: they will use the groundwater, which is rich in salts, in a very large percentage, and they will purify it, but they still don’t know how they’ll purify it, and then they’ll add rainwater to it for the processes, though they don’t know how much rainwater there will be, they can’t estimate it. The only reliable water source for processes, in terms of quality and quantity, could be the alluvial plain of the Drina River. The other two sources are not viable. When it comes to water recycling, they state in some documents that they will recycle 48% of the water, while in others they say 70%. A big difference. Everyone would ask how it can be both 48 and 70. This means the company doesn’t have precise data in these areas or is hiding them, which is also not good. And most people, who suspect that Rio Tinto has bad intentions, are even more suspicious as a result.

It’s simple. Very simple. In our country, excluding the processing of lead and zinc that we used to have in Kosovo, which we no longer have, there were two mines, one at Rudnik near Gornji Milanovac. One is Majdan, and both were bought by a foreign company, which now transports the ore for processing abroad. The only big producer is Bor, and the experience with Bor is more than evident. Bor is a very old mine, exploited for a very long time. When it was set up, it wasn’t expected to be so intensively exploited. It has expanded, and its size now threatens the entire eastern part of Serbia. I think there’s no need to say more.

No. The company is closed to everyone. I’ll say that just about two or three weeks ago, I was able to get a sample of jadarite, although I had been trying to get a sample since they practically found it, purely out of scientific interest, because at that time I was researching lithium minerals very intensively. The company has its materials, worked in collaboration with our colleagues and institutes—like the Černi Institute and others—and has done quite a bit of research. That’s not disputed. However, those studies are not available to the public. The company has several materials, such as a report on the deposit. They also completed one study that is still unfinished, related to the exploitation of ore, and only sporadically mentions processing. These are the basic materials. On the company’s website, there were other materials that were available in fragments. I personally gathered all the materials I could. I dealt with them extensively, and when these environmental impact studies appeared last summer, I was very surprised that the company once again, instead of making a comprehensive environmental impact study on the exploitation and processing of jadarite, presented it fragmentarily in three separate materials, created by different teams who evidently didn’t communicate much with each other and which contained many incomplete, contradictory, and partial data. So, when a larger number of people wanted to get involved to investigate what’s really behind the project, Jadar was unable to do that. They couldn’t do it.

One more very important thing I’ll mention. The spatial plan was created based on incomplete data, exclusively from the materials that our institutions received from Rio Tinto. They even stated in the spatial plan that they had documentation from Rio Tinto with conceptual solutions. What are conceptual solutions? No one can say what that is if they are technically educated. There is a conceptual project, not conceptual solutions. So, when I look at this, I’m very surprised that the broader scientific public hasn’t been more involved in this issue, but I’m not because people don’t know where to start, what to look at.

Rio Tinto considers itself transparent just because it issues statements, only when someone says something unfavorable, they are very loud in the media, issuing press releases denying it. That’s a wrong approach. There are already many such statements, media responses, and attacks that people are hesitant to make their own comments, which is damaging. The company doesn’t even realize that it’s damaging itself, not just trying to disqualify people who say something. I would actually strongly recommend to the company that the team it hired to work on this project first review the materials it released to the public, especially the so-called environmental impact studies, and remove all the data that is not backed up. Why? People ask why we didn’t give objections. What objections could we make on something the company itself says it doesn’t guarantee the data in those studies? What should I comment on? I’ll take you back to the issue of water, which we briefly touched on. What would the effects of the excavation in Jadar really be, especially on water sources and potential contamination? This is very complex. As I mentioned earlier, the only reliable water source that would supply the entire mining-industrial complex is the alluvial plain of the Drina River. However, what’s confusing is that the company states in the same document, even in the spatial plan, that they would use between 1,000 and 5,000 cubic meters of water per day. How much? I don’t know. I believe they don’t know either.

When water purification is mentioned, a new problem arises. The issue is that wastewater, by the nature of the process that occurs, must contain lithium and boron in amounts that are not insignificant. And what the company says next is this: they will use a combined system for wastewater treatment that involves something called ultrafiltration or reverse osmosis, which are well-known methods widely used around the world for desalinating water—water used for drinking or irrigation. These methods are widely used in Israel, Cyprus, Malaysia, the United Arab Emirates, and many other places. However, in these waters, the concentration of boron is low. Boron is a very specific element, very similar to water, and in the reverse osmosis membranes, it cannot be treated effectively if the concentration is high, significantly higher than that in seawater. Such a concentration is expected in these processing plants. It’s not clear how the company intends to handle this; there’s no scientific data showing that reverse osmosis is effective for such high concentrations. There is no data anywhere in the world that shows these high concentrations of wastewater can even be purified. Why? Because this method is extremely expensive and requires a large amount of energy to operate. Between three and ten kilowatt-hours per cubic meter of water are consumed in this process. In Saudi Arabia, for example, they install solar cells and can afford to do this.

That’s another problem, a new problem. All chemical processing companies try to separate mines from processing plants. The processing plants are located in so-called industrial zones, which are positioned along the shores of large rivers, seas, and oceans. Australia has placed its two new plants—one is already operational, and the other will be next year—on the coast of the ocean in Perth. The discharge pipe goes several kilometers into the ocean under strict conditions regarding how much lithium must be discharged. There’s no boron there. On the other hand, Turkey is the world’s largest producer of boron compounds, with four mines. The largest plant is in Bandirma, also on the coast of the Sea of Marmara, a processing plant that discharges boron waste into seawater where boron is present.

There’s no Jadar Sea, there’s none. The Jadar River is a small river with a small capacity, and the company is trying to convince us that it will discharge a small amount of wastewater and will recycle a lot. As I said earlier, the data on recycling is all over the place. Again, different sources state different amounts of wastewater that will be discharged. We’ve heard from colleagues involved in the study that they will carry out remineralization, and that the water will be completely purified. But purified water cannot be completely purified. Water must contain everything that was in it, it’s just a question of concentration. If they were purifying water that has a maximum of 800 milligrams of material, and if they purify it to only 1 milligram—our standard—they would purify the water to 99.9% purity. Absolutely unbelievable. This means that all the statements made by the company must be precise, accurate, and not make promises about things they cannot fulfill. Just as they didn’t tell the population that boron is dangerous for plants, they haven’t told us how much wastewater will actually be involved. And they can’t say until they have a conceptual project.

Well, the exploratory boreholes that leak, which they can’t seal, show that. Even though they’ve been drilling for decades. The exploratory borehole that is leaking and has been the subject of media reports in recent weeks was checked by eminent institutions in 2021. There are photographs showing that the water contains both lithium and boron. The exact amount of boron is known. That photograph, of those boreholes, shows a barren area where soybeans couldn’t grow. Soybeans are very sensitive to boron. Rio Tinto can get angry or make strange statements about our colleagues who studied this, but their data is accurate. And even if it weren’t, Rio Tinto knows exactly why the soybeans didn’t grow.

Eurolithium explored Valjevo and Mionica. Balkan Limited explored Rekovac. Before that, the Piskanje deposit, near Baljevac on the Ibar, was explored. There isn’t much lithium in those exploration boreholes, but lithium was detected. I’d say that in the 1990s, small concentrations of lithium were detected in surface layers in many parts of Serbia by our colleagues from the Faculty of Geology, led by Professor Jelena Obradović. Would expanding those exploration works lead to the discovery of something that would produce commercially promising results? It’s hard to say. These deposits, especially in Valjevo and Mionica, actually contain more boron than lithium. They contain more boron than lithium, but when it comes to boron, the search for it worldwide isn’t significant. Why not? Because Turkey’s ore reserves are still large enough for the entire world, and Rio Tinto, which is also a producer of boron compounds, knows this. These millions of reserves in Russia, Kazakhstan, and other more acceptable locations are much more cost-effective. Boron compounds aren’t expensive products. Right now, I don’t know the current price of lithium carbonate, maybe around $12,000 per ton, but boric acid, the other substance that would be produced, is around $720 per ton. For years, the public in Serbia has been hearing about mining plants throughout Serbia, with the Homolje Mountains at the center of attention—Bor, Majdanpek—and this one piece of data that says 40 new mines will be opened in our country by 2035.

What is certain is that people in Serbia need to be aware. Serbia is too small to have one more mine, and one more mine than Bor is already too much. And of these few mines we have, including the coal mines, opening 40 more would mean that we’re gone. That we’ve disappeared from the land we’ve managed to preserve for centuries. We have no reason for that. We have no reason for that. This rush that has led mining companies to explore so much is essentially a consequence of many subsidiaries of large foreign companies, and it’s one of their outlets that doesn’t represent much of a cost to these companies. Most of the advocates for opening mines in Serbia are actually representatives of "trinket" companies that we need to expel from here.

What I know is that this would just be a cover, because the state wouldn’t manage anything with such a small stake. Economists have told me that the state would only be able to manage if it has more than 51%. This would just be a cover for the company to continue doing whatever it wants here, just as it has been doing.

First of all, that’s a journalistic cliché—the oil of the 21st century. It can’t be. Lithium batteries aren’t an energy source; they just store the energy we give them, and when they’re depleted, we have to provide that energy again. So, anyone who has ever picked up this mobile phone knows that when the battery runs out, you need to recharge it. Where does it get recharged? From the outlet. Where does the power come from? From electricity. We can produce electricity from hydropower and solar, from wind, and, of course, from coal. We don’t have much sunlight; we don’t have much wind. What we still have is coal. And we need to be aware that we should use our coal more efficiently, without emitting carbon dioxide into the air. But will this save the global industry and energy sector? That’s not true. So, as a university professor who has spent a good 43 years at the University of Belgrade and a few years at the University of Kragujevac, I think we need to educate young people to look at the world’s problems and technological development with open eyes and be much more prepared than we were. We wouldn’t be in this situation if my generation and the one behind me were more prepared to think about the future. I think we weren’t ready. That’s why we’ve fallen into all these difficulties. We need to teach those who come after us to carefully manage resources so that they have something to leave to future generations. As generations, what will we do now? Economists say this is an unprofitable job. We say, fine, it’s unprofitable, but we’ll do it anyway. What will people who are 20 years old now say to their grandchildren in 40 years? We had lithium, now we don’t. We had clean air, now we don’t. We had clean water, now we don’t. What do we have? We have land, and it’s polluted. We need to leave something for future generations. That could be the generational message.