Toxic ultimatum Fight over rare minerals mine turns island into legal battleground

Greenland is being sued by a mining company over its decision to end uranium mining. It could be forced to restart - or pay $11bn

- By Patrick Greenfield NARSAQ and Phoebe Weston

From the iceberg-filled bay, the mountains above the town of Narsaq, in south-west Greenland, appear unremarkable.

Brightly coloured homes are scattered around the shoreline below, home to a community of just over 1,300 people. Were it not for a mining outhouse on the edge of town, there would be little indication of the potential riches in the rock.

The range is home to one of the largest undeveloped deposits of rare-earth minerals and uranium in the world: the Kvanefjeld site, or Kuan-nersuit in Greenlandic. It contains high concentrations of metals used to manufacture permanent magnets in wind turbines and electric cars. Every major power in the world is scrambling to get access to these minerals for carbon-free energy and transport.

A proposed open-pit mine would be worth about $7.5bn if it went ahead, according to the site operator.

But when the mining company acquired the site in 2007, the impact of potentially radioactive waste contaminating drinking water and nearby sheep farms alarmed local people. They feared that the "tailings" - a slurry of ground-up waste from mining - would be laced with radioactive waste and could contaminate waterways or spread as dust in the air.

In 2021, Greenland went to the polls, in a contest to which uranium was so central, international media dubbed it "the mining election". The people voted in a green, leftwing government, led by the Inuit Ataqatigiit party.

When it took power, the new government kept its campaign promise, passing legislation to ban uranium mining. While not primarily a uranium mine, the Kvanefjeld project would require unearthing the radioactive substance to extract its rare earth oxides, putting it in violation of the law.