The demand for batteries for electric cars relaunches mining activity in Italy, which has 120 sites surveyed. To reignite the interest in this sector is the race to produce accumulators for which lithium and cobalt, manganese and rare-earth elements are needed, which for years have been imported and that have now unleashed a kind of race to the mines. The hunting goes from programs to restart closed sites to requests for permissions for new exploratory activities. The search for cobalt, silver, nickel and copper starts from Piedmont, which has renewed the exploration license to the Australian Altamin Limited. The project concerns the area of Punta Corna, in the municipality of Usseglio and that of Balme: it is a site active in the mid-1700s and called "the largest cobalt mine in Europe". There are also investments and interventions to reopen the zinc and lead mine (ie blende and galena) of Gorno-Oltre il Colle, in the province of Bergamo, where it is assumed a production of 30,000 tons annually extractable zinc and 8,000 tons of lead. Other mines will be opened between northern Lazio and the southern part of Tuscany. This is the case of the Campagnano project, where research is concerned with the sourcing of lithium. There are 800 geothermal wells drilled between the 1970s and 1990s. Despite a mining past, Italy is totally dependent on foreign markets for the supply of minerals. Now it's time to turn the page.
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