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The Bromine Chokepoint

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Re: The Bromine Chokepoint

#141

Post by Animats »

mbreese wrote: post #122
adrian_b wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That makes just bromine suitable for ordinary chemical processes. Bromine with a semiconductor-grade purity, like any other chemical substance that may be used in semiconductor device manufacturing, must pass through a very long and energy-consuming purification process, which can be done in few places besides that from Israel that is mentioned in TFA.

> which can be done in few places At the moment. We could purify bromine gas anywhere and extraction and purification don’t need to be co-located. But at the moment, the purification and extraction in Israel are co-located, which is why this is more of an immediate risk than a long term one. However, it does take time to get new production online and no one will spend the capital to build a new purification facility…

Right. Commercial "high purity" bromine is 99.5% purity, and easily available at reasonable cost. Semiconductor processes want 99.9999%. Merck offers that. [1] €2500/liter from a lab supply house. Very few companies offer the post-purification.

But access to the Dead Sea is a non-issue.

[1] https://www.merckmillipore.com/UY/en/product/mm/101947

[2] https://www.lms-lab.de/en/bromine-99-9999-suprapur-250-ml/12...

Re: The Bromine Chokepoint

#142

Post by tiberious726 »

FrustratedMonky wrote: post #127
nl wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't believe route limitation for dangerous goods is a thing. I looked on https://www.iata.org/en/publications/newsletters/iata-knowle... Interestingly I asked both Claude and ChatGPT "does the Infectious Substances Shipping Regulations include anything about what routes for airfreight are allowed?" and it flagged it and wouldn't respond, although switching to Sonnet 4 allowed Claude to answer.

ChatGPT has gotten 'sensitive', almost unusable in last week. That seems like a simple question, and it refused. It's done same to me, on very simple generic questions. It somehow infers something much more nefarious, then refuses.

It doesn't infer anything, you just hit a blacklisted token

Re: The Bromine Chokepoint

#143

Post by littlestymaar »

nandomrumber wrote: post #139
littlestymaar wrote: post #7

The more efficient a system is (due to specialization and removal of redundancy), the more fragile it becomes. That's why biological systems look so wasteful (chlorophyll reflecting the more abundant wavelength, etc.)

What do you mean? There’s more green light from sun light at the surface of the Earth than the red or blue.

Yes, that's my point exactly: to maximize efficiency, you'd try catching this more abundant light, but plants do the opposite, chlorophyll catches other wavelength and reflect green (which is why plants appear green).

Re: The Bromine Chokepoint

#144

Post by brominebrewer »

adrian_b wrote: post #132
brominebrewer wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're all over this comment thread spreading your speculation as fact. Semiconductor-manufacturing grade bromine (specifically anhydrous hydrogen bromide) is, in fact, made in the US.

You may be right but it would have been nice to name the company that produces it. The USGS article pointed by others contains absolutely no information about a US producer. The parent article lists at least 3 US producers of ordinary bromine, but it claims that none of them produces semiconductor-grade pure HBr and the conclusion of the parent article is that someone should build in USA a purification plant, to avoi…

I apologize for being a bit too personally targeted in my reply.

Albemarle domestically produces high purity anhydrous hydrogen bromide.

Re: The Bromine Chokepoint

#145

Post by toss1 »

nandomrumber wrote: post #138
toss1 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You overlook the "long time" in your last sentence. Of course any of these problems can be solved in a long time, 5-10 years. The article is talking about the problems of between potentially supply being shut off tomorrow and being fixed in "a long time". Not good times.

There is no difference between now and before this war started. Israel’s enemies have been launching missiles in to Israel for decades. Why is only now a problem?

Size, Scale, Intensity, and Intent.

All are different here.

Yes, Hamas and Hezbollah are the IRGC's remote occupying armies in the adjacent territories of Gaza and Lebanon, and they have launched rockets into Israel on a near-daily basis for years.

The difference is Ham/Hez rockets are small, unguided, generally aimed at residential or commercial areas to cause disruption, and are generally low-intensity and are routinely intercepted.

The differences are:

1) The attacks from Iran are large warheads on intermediate range ballistic missiles, with precision targeting.

2) They are fired in coordinated barrages along with drones and other rockets specifically intended to over-saturate the Israeli missile defenses.

3) The attacks are also targeted specifically at industrial infrastructure with the intent of causing maximal damage to the world economy.

4) The targeting uses high-precision satellite data and intelligence from Russia and China to cause maximum global damage.

Those are major differences in both quality and quantity of the attacks.

Before, the risk was relatively low: not targeting this type of industrial site, not using high-intelligence and high-precision targeting, not saturating, and using small warheads unlikely to cause major damage.

The situation since 28-Feb-2026 is entirely different.

Re: The Bromine Chokepoint

#146

Post by lifeisstillgood »

Pay08 wrote: post #99
lifeisstillgood wrote: post #79

Complete tangent but “produced at is Sodom Facility” Wait what? Really - “ At ICL’s Sdom facility, the Dead Sea brines…” I always assumed it was gone for good … weird. I did not know that name was still in use …

Why wouldn't it be used?

To be honest I thought it had been destroyed, wiped out, gone forever and no-one knows where it was.

It’s not a huge issue but a bit surprised to find out during a dive into consequences of Iranian blockades

Re: The Bromine Chokepoint

#147

Post by TrnsltLife »

xrd wrote: post #50

I really like this addendum: "Please note, as a matter of house style, War on the Rocks will not use a different name for the U.S. Department of Defense until and unless the name is changed by statute by the U.S. Congress."

Stop deadnaming the Department of War!

Re: The Bromine Chokepoint

#148

Post by TrnsltLife »

scythe wrote: post #24
arjie wrote: post #4

I have a sense of complacency regarding all these. There’s always The One Factory In North Carolina That Produces The Essential Ingredient and it turns out that it’s just the price optimal one and there is enough capacity around the world to substitute. Everything from Peak Oil to today has the globalized market/trade machine meeting the needs continuously with only leaf nodes for products being the constraint. Almos…

Bromine is unusually concentrated in the Dead Sea, representing 0.4% instead of 0.0065% in the oceans: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bromine#Occurrence_and_product... The largest producer outside the Dead Sea is China by far, and the only other significant producer is Japan (!) which produces a paltry ~10% of worldwide output. It's possible to produce bromine from other places but you'd basically be starting from zer…

> However, it may be hard for Iran to disrupt bromine production. They may also not think about it.

At least they wouldn't have until they read this article. Come on guys.

Loose lips sink chips!

Re: The Bromine Chokepoint

#149

Post by Pay08 »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #146
Pay08 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why wouldn't it be used?

To be honest I thought it had been destroyed, wiped out, gone forever and no-one knows where it was. It’s not a huge issue but a bit surprised to find out during a dive into consequences of Iranian blockades

I mean, a good portion of American cities are named after destroyed historical ones. Sodom the city itself doesn't exist anymore, it's a wider geographical naming AFAIK.

Re: The Bromine Chokepoint

#150

Post by nandomrumber »

littlestymaar wrote: post #143
nandomrumber wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean? There’s more green light from sun light at the surface of the Earth than the red or blue.

Yes, that's my point exactly: to maximize efficiency, you'd try catching this more abundant light, but plants do the opposite, chlorophyll catches other wavelength and reflect green (which is why plants appear green).

Ah, yes indeedy, obvious now. Dunno what I was thunking when I wrote that.
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