Always worth reminding people that the “building” is ~4 of those years, on average. Half the 18 is permitting/litigation, which the government seems to have forgotten it gets to change if it wants to, except when it wants to shut down more things. The rest is exploration and feasibility studies, which can be accelerated (or at least parallelized) by spending more money, if the time-value of minerals is high.
Always worth reminding people that the “building” is ~4 of those years, on average. Half the 18 is permitting/litigation, which the government seems to have forgotten it gets to change if it wants to, except when it wants to shut down more things. The rest is exploration and feasibility studies, which can be accelerated (or at least parallelized) by spending more money, if the time-value of minerals is high.