Rio Tinto’s Chief Scientist and professors from the University of Belgrade’s Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and Faculty of Mining and Geology have jointly submitted a letter to the scientific journal Nature – Scientific Reports to request a correction or retraction of the paper titled “The influence of exploration activities of a potential lithium mine to the environment in Western Serbia” by Dragana Đorđević and colleagues, published on 24 July 2024.

They believe the conclusions are incorrect as a result of a significant number of deficiencies in the data, inconsistent application of scientific methodology and the manipulation of facts and references.

Rio Tinto Chief Scientist Dr Nigel Steward said: “The publication of inaccurate data about the Jadar Project in the paper, despite the correct information already being publicly available, directly undermines the credibility and scientific foundation of the work and misleads both the scientific community and the general public about the potential environmental impacts of the project.”

“It is clearly important that both the Serbian and international scientific communities contribute to the broader discourse on potential lithium extraction in the Jadar Valley, however, these contributions must be factually accurate and subject to rigorous scrutiny to ensure the objectivity of the scientific debate.”

Rio Tinto is requesting that the paper by D. Đorđević et al is significantly corrected or retracted in accordance with the Correction and Retraction Policy of Nature – Scientific Reports.

Notes to Editors

The letter to the editorial board of Nature – Scientific Reports is signed by Nigel Steward, Rio Tinto Chief Scientist and three professors from the University of Belgrade, who acted as independent experts in the development of the Jadar Projects preliminary draft Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) studies. They are:

Dr Aleksandar Jovović, full professor at the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering and team leader for the draft EIA studies for the ore processing plant and for the industrial waste disposal site;
Dr Nikola Lilić, full professor at the Faculty of Mining and Geology and team leader for the draft EIA study for the underground mine; and
Dr Aleksandar Cvjetić, full professor at the Faculty of Mining and Geology and team member of the team for the draft EIA study for the underground mine.

Examples of the inaccuracies

The full details are contained in the letter to Nature – Scientific Reports.

Manipulation of references: The Đorđević paper claims that “the least environmentally harmful method of lithium extraction is from brine solutions, while extraction from hard rock ore has serious environmental consequences.” The authors cite the work of Liu, Agusdinata, and Myint, titled “Spatiotemporal Patterns of Lithium Mining and Environmental Degradation in the Atacama Salt Flat, Chile.” However, Liu and colleagues' work exclusively deals with the impacts of lithium extraction from brine solutions in the Atacama. It does not mention other mining methods that could be compared with lithium extraction from hard rock, such as jadarite.

Factual inaccuracies: The paper states that the project area will cover between 2,031 and 2,431 hectares. However, long-standing publicly available data shows that the central area of the project, including the mine and processing plant, covers only 220 hectares, and with the industrial waste disposal site in the Štavice Valley, the total area is 388 hectares.

The paper also claims that industrial liquid tailings waste will be stored near the Korenita and Jadar rivers, which are prone to flooding surrounding areas. Long-standing publicly available data clearly shows that the proposed waste disposal site is outside flood-prone areas. In addition, it will be stored as solid dry waste, not liquid tailings.

Unsound methodology: One of the paper’s main conclusions is that initial analyses of selected chemical elements in soil and rivers suggest that the environmental impacts from the exploration process are already evident. The authors do not provide baseline data on the pre-existing state of the soil and water before Rio Tinto’s geological exploration began and historical findings by Serbian geologists from the 1990s confirm that elevated levels of boron, lithium and arsenic in the Jadar Valley are naturally occurring phenomena.

The authors fail to mention pre-existing pollution problems, such as the dam break in May 2014 at the Stolice mine, which caused the release of tailings and contamination of soil and water in the downstream Jadar River basin, again a long-standing publicly available fact.