In full transformation of the world geopolitical order, the European Commission announced at the end of March Three strategic objectives in Romania with the aim of tackling the dependence on critical materialsespecially from China. , closed 21 years ago.
This is Baia de Fier, located in Gorj County, and in which Romania has now taken an important step by obtaining the license to resume its exploitationas announced this week the Minister of Economy of the country, Radu Miruț. Now they look for the best offer, as the politician explained in .
“Our country has the necessary technology to exploit graphite and expert personnel, but we do not have technology to transform it into graphene by exfoliation,” said the Romanian medium. Now, the Minister of Economy has announced that they will also obtain this technology, “since the graphite of our country It has the highest degree of purity throughout Europe“He pointed out.
To recover the mine, 200 million euros of European funds will be invested. Baia de Fier is currently in ruins, but before its closure 40,000 tons were extracted per year of a mineral that there is more and more dependence, So its value “increases day by day”, as the minister has remarked. Graphene is obtained from graphite, currently used in the construction of solar panels and batteries, but also involves an important resource for the development of artificial intelligence (AI).
“The greatest battle will be for the control of artificial intelligence. And the limit of artificial intelligence is not large companies or money, but mineral resources, because it is done of something. That something is very rare and that something is only in Romania in one place: the graphite of Baia de Fier. In Europe it is in a few places and of worse quality than ours,” said the Minister of Economy to the Romanian medium.
