A worker takes a sample of processed nickel at the Prony Resources nickel mine plant in Goro, New Caledonia, Nov. 24, 2021. Tesla wants to reinvent nickel mining, crucial to electric car batteries but a dirty and destructive process, by turning the Prony mine in New Caledonia into an experiment in sustainability. (Adam Dean/The New York Times)
GORO, New Caledonia — From the reef-fringed coast of New Caledonia, the Coral Sea stretches into the South Pacific. Slender native pines punctuate the shoreline. The landscape, one of the most biodiverse on the planet, is astonishingly beautiful until the crest of a hill where a different vista unfolds: a gouged red earth pierced by belching smokestacks and giant trucks rumbling across the lunarlike terrain.
This is Goro, the largest nickel mine on a tiny French territory suspended between Australia and Fiji that may hold up to one-quarter of the world’s nickel reserves. It also poses a critical test for Tesla, the world’s largest electric vehicle maker, which wants to take control of its supply chain and ensure that the minerals used for its car batteries are mined in an environmentally and socially responsible fashion.
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