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America has a tungsten problem

noleary.com

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Re: America has a tungsten problem

#111

Post by JSR_FDED »

wolvoleo wrote: post #36
ericmay wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Now that China has become more adversarial and also more established (you mean people want to actually get PAID to slave away in a mine, or even worse, refuse to even work in a dangerous and dirty pit mine?!) the US is facing some hard decisions. There is an implication here that the United States is immune or afraid of doing “hard” or “dirty” work and so we outsourced refining and mining to China. This doesn’t see…

> With respect to avoidance of “dirty” jobs. The EU is far , far worse in this respect than the United States is or was. Well yeah. Because we care about the environment and people like to enjoy their retirement instead of sitting in a wheelchair with COPD due to inhaling a lifetime of toxic dust. China is getting better at it too, but only a few years ago I remember a story of all the toxic lakes where all the bypro…

Sorry but while that was once true, the current administration has reversed that pretty dramatically. You personally might care about the environment, but when you use “we” in the context of US/China it no longer holds true.

Re: America has a tungsten problem

#112

Post by queenkjuul »

Saline9515 wrote: post #103
a2tech wrote: post #15

This website has no author attribution and this is the only article on it. I would be very suspicious of its claims (not that I disagree with them, just that unattributed works on brand new websites are not ALWAYS the most trustworthy). The United States has exported the dirtiest businesses internationally for quite a few years (raw mineral extraction is a dirty, nasty business, with slim margins). Now that China has…

This is plainly false. China bought the refining companies doing the extraction for rare earth in the US, extracted knowledge, then shipped the tooling to China and closed the US factories. Having no environmental regulation probably helped as well cost-wise, but that's not the fault of the USA. https://www.counterpunch.org/2006/04/07/the-saga-of-magneque...

That article doesn't say anything about selling a mine, it says the only mine was already in China. China bought an American magnet manufacturer which had been using Chinese neodymium to make magnets. It doesn't say anything at all about extraction.

Also, nobody forced US companies to sell those assets.

Re: America has a tungsten problem

#113

Post by maxglute »

ericmay wrote: post #86
maxglute wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

West fine with migrant labours doing hard and dirty work hidden from prying eyes (agriculture fields, meat packing plants). Mining just as strategic, but hard to hide big holes in the earth from constituents. I'm sure push comes to shove, US can import a bunch of central Americans to do hard and dirty work in mining.

Yep and the workers from those countries prefer that arrangement since it pays better. The alternative is they don’t do the work, we just pay higher prices, and then they don’t get paid and stay home. > I'm sure push comes to shove, US can import a bunch of central Americans to do hard and dirty work in mining. Yea let’s ban migrant labor and the entrance of migrants now so we don’t have this moral failure. :) By the…

TBH papering over xenophobia is easy because it's just foreigners. Problem with mining is extractors are scarring mother earth, that's the unfortunate optics problem for nimby's, not people, but landscape/backyard, even if it's in the middle of nowhere. I suppose that's why fracking gets an easier pass, because the hole is smol.

Re: America has a tungsten problem

#114

Post by ricksunny »

dwd wrote: post #101

They're working on it. Invested in an Australian tungsten miner late last year. Has an operating profitable mine in Spain and active Government support to restart the large Mt Carbine mine in Queensland. Antimony is another critical mineral. A number of smallcap Antimony/Tungsten miners are exploring potential deposits in Idaho and Tennessee and Australia, but timelines are long.

That's cool - I'd imagine 'invested in a mining concern' is rare on the spectrum of HNers' resumes. May I ask how did you come to be confident enough to risk capital on something that's not typically within the average tech person's familiarity space? Asking b/c I would like to be able to develop such confidence if I could credibly (even just to myself) do so.

Re: America has a tungsten problem

#115

Post by gkanai »

noleary wrote: post #18
a2tech wrote: post #15

This website has no author attribution and this is the only article on it. I would be very suspicious of its claims (not that I disagree with them, just that unattributed works on brand new websites are not ALWAYS the most trustworthy). The United States has exported the dirtiest businesses internationally for quite a few years (raw mineral extraction is a dirty, nasty business, with slim margins). Now that China has…

Hey, I wrote the article. This is my personal website that I wrote mostly over the weekend. I went down a rabbit hole reading about metals and mining and just thought it was interesting. Not an expert or a nefarious actor, unfortunately.

You may want to attribute the site/article to yourself.

Re: America has a tungsten problem

#116

Post by ridgeguy »

Caught my eye due to family events. One of my uncles was killed in the Pine Creek mine in California. He was repairing an ore crusher when somebody switched it on. Pre-OSHA and tagout days.

I doubt we'll be pinched by tungsten shortages. The fusion application isn't going to come on for at least two decades. Smaller apps will be met by known reserves.

That said, it is a cool material. Looking for aluminum bars at Alan Steel (CA) years back, I was stunned when I tried (and failed) to pick up a 12" long by 6"diameter piece of what turned out to be tungsten misfiled in the aluminum section. Density, thy name is tungsten.

Re: America has a tungsten problem

#117

Post by ErroneousBosh »

BizarroLand wrote: post #108
emmelaich wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To what extent is tungsten recyclable? i.e. What does it mean for a fusion reactor to consume tungsten?

My guess is that while it is running it will dump spare neutrons into the tungsten, converting the tungsten into exotic materials that are not fit for task for various reasons.

If you whack enough neutrons into it, you'll eventually get Rhenium and Osmium. Both are actually pretty useful and while not actually dangerous you might not want to get any on you, especially if it's still hot from the reactor.

Osmium in powder form will oxidise to osmium tetroxide, and you want to avoid that because it stains just about any kind of plant or animal tissue including the surface of your eyes, and is spectacularly poisonous.

Re: America has a tungsten problem

#118

Post by dwd »

queenkjuul wrote: post #112
Saline9515 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is plainly false. China bought the refining companies doing the extraction for rare earth in the US, extracted knowledge, then shipped the tooling to China and closed the US factories. Having no environmental regulation probably helped as well cost-wise, but that's not the fault of the USA. https://www.counterpunch.org/2006/04/07/the-saga-of-magneque...

That article doesn't say anything about selling a mine, it says the only mine was already in China. China bought an American magnet manufacturer which had been using Chinese neodymium to make magnets. It doesn't say anything at all about extraction. Also, nobody forced US companies to sell those assets.

Originally there was the Mountain Pass mine, and China setup their own mines while also building out the refining and processing capacity. Until recently MP Materials was shipping all it's output to Chinese refiners.

The history and asset ownership is also quite convoluted. Try this Wikipedia article:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo_Performance_Materials

This article is quite good at explaining how China cornered the market:

https://thehustle.co/originals/what-the-hell-are-rare-earth-...

Re: America has a tungsten problem

#119

Post by refulgentis »

hunterpayne wrote: post #31
noleary wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, I wrote the article. This is my personal website that I wrote mostly over the weekend. I went down a rabbit hole reading about metals and mining and just thought it was interesting. Not an expert or a nefarious actor, unfortunately.

Nice work but no offense, but it comes off as you describe. I think you are overall right about needing to switch W sources. You are wrong that it will be used for fusion reactors. That won't happen in the lifetime of anyone alive today. It will get used for armor for weapons and possibly some fission reactors. We are nowhere near an actual breakeven fusion reactor. We are only close to theoretical break-evens which…

> We are nowhere near an actual breakeven fusion reactor.

This isn't true.

I understand why you said it. Always 5 years away from being 5 years away. Years and years and years of nothing and hopecasting. Post-COVID market and startup antics. Data center power antics. Well-educated people pointing out BS and that even the best shots we had were example systems that were designed to be briefly net-positive in the 2030s.

But it's just not true.

Commonwealth Fusion Systems. Book it. 2027. They've hit every milestone, on time, since I started tracking in...2018?

Re: America has a tungsten problem

#120

Post by dwd »

Animats wrote: post #91

There are at least three US tungsten mining startups.[1][2][3] It looks like the product is the stock, not the mineral. They're all in the money-acquisition stage. Two have animated American flags on their sites. The third is Canadian-owned. It's worse than the wannabe rare earth mining companies. [1] https://www.unitedstatestungsten.com/ [2] https://investornews.com/critical-minerals-rare-earths/ameri... [3] https:/…

There are some Australia startups with the American flags everywhere.

Resolution Minerals (which has some dodgy connection to the Trump boys) might have been the first to go with the heavy US patriotic tilt.

Trigg Minerals was more normal, but have recently rebranded as American Tungsten and Antimony and has gone full patriot as well to attract US buy-in.

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