LETTER: Let's develop new Alaskan resources

To the editor:

At www.renewableenergyworld.com Danielle Tucker (Aug. 28) reports that Stanford researchers find that caldera lakes formed by super-volcanos have deposits of lithium, a critical element in cellphones, lithium-ion batteries, etc. Why do we allow China and Chile to control and corner this vital resource? Alaska has calderas from past super-volcanoes at Aniakchak, Emmons, Fisher, etc., where lithium accumulates in clays, there, waiting for us to find it. The 10-km-wide Aniakchak caldera, for example, formed 3,400 years ago during a giant eruption with flows traveling 50 kilometers north to the Bering Sea and south to the Pacific Ocean. So, let's go!

In the same magazine, on Nov. 15, Joe Ryan and Chris Martin report a recent 35 percent price spike in polysilicon, used to make solar cells, because China controls that market, too. Polysilicon is created by tectonic plates slamming together, compressing sandstone. Tectonic plate collisions in Alaska have pushed up the Chugach-St. Elias Range right in our backyard, and other mountain ranges, too! Let's go, folks!

Instead of dreaming about past pipeline boom-days, we need to look toward the future and develop these critical, key resources of our modern age, so that Alaska's economy may prosper, and so that other nations may not dominate us.

— Daniel N. Russell

Anchorage