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America has a tungsten problem

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Re: America has a tungsten problem

#141

Post by dwd »

ricksunny wrote: post #114
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.

My foray into rare earths, critical minerals and some defense stocks was initially as a hedge against Trump starting a trade war with China, the increasing risk of military confrontation and the rearming of Europe. All three concerns have occurred to some degree, but it's a long game and actually took a lot longer to play out than I had expected in some cases.

And I get your lack of confidence, I did miss some quick opportunities that I felt were there but I wasn't confident at the time.

The only way to really gain confidence is do your research; read the presentations of each company, particularly their JORC-compliant estimates, time frames to production, how far along the funding path they are, etc.

Use your preferred LLM for deep dives. Whatever you're question, just ask and you'll be surprised at what you learn. For example asking for a cost/effort comparison of the metallurgic processes required for each type of rare earth host material really helped me understand what they were doing, and how each company differed in their approach.

If you like learning random things on Hacker News, deep diving into any technology or industry will not be an issue.

Re: America has a tungsten problem

#142

Post by noleary »

anigbrowl wrote: post #140

Counterpoint: Tungsten is about $1100/ton, so if demand averages 10k tons/year the annual US spend is about $10-12 million. That's peanuts in economic terms. If relations with China deteriorate the US could just set up a front company in some third country, buy tungsten, and re-export it.

FYI, Tungsten prices are quoted in metric ton units (MTUs) [1], which surprisingly aren't metric tons. They're actually 1% of a metric ton -- or 10kg. [2] So the price of Tungsten is actually 100x that.

[1] https://www.fastmarkets.com/metals-and-mining/minor-metals/t...

[2] https://quoteddata.com/glossary/mtu/

Re: America has a tungsten problem

#143

Post by russdill »

throwup238 wrote: post #87
russdill wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good news, we have big plans to send significant quantities of copper and aluminum into orbit with zero possibility of recovery.

Good news, that’s a tiny drop in the bucket compared to mining operations. Rocket payloads are measured in the metric tons; copper mining is measured in tens of millions of metric tons per year. It’s not even a rounding error, you’d have to launch hundreds of solid copper rockets a day to even make a dent.

Elon is talking about a million satellite constellation and launching a rocket capable of putting 100 tons into orbit every hour.

Re: America has a tungsten problem

#144

Post by terminalshort »

mschuster91 wrote: post #130
terminalshort wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The worst part is that most of number 3 is self imposed by the ridiculous amount of environmental review and litigation delays surrounding that process. Sure, cost of labor is some of it, but really it's not very much in comparison.

> The worst part is that most of number 3 is self imposed by the ridiculous amount of environmental review and litigation delays surrounding that process. Because, surprise, we do not want more Superfund sites . Like, the Silicon Valley is the US' biggest cluster of Superfund sites by far. At the same time, it is very convenient that there are lots of piss poor countries that have very difficult/dirty to mine resourc…

If SV is full of superfund sites then I guess they aren't as bad as I thought because millions of people live there and are doing just fine.

Re: America has a tungsten problem

#145

Post by terminalshort »

toss1 wrote: post #131
terminalshort wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mine the metal or do without the tech that uses it. You have to choose. Years of environmental review do not help.

The environmental review WILL help if it is used to adjust the mining techniques so they don't destroy everything nearby to do the work, or even if it jist creates a reclamation / restoration plan (and yes, factor that into the price, it's trivial). Taking too long is a problem.

Then make laws and punish the people who break them. It doesn't do any good to litigate before the project has even started. DUI is a problem and you solve it by arresting drunk drivers, not making them fill out paperwork before they go to the bar.

Re: America has a tungsten problem

#146

Post by CGMthrowaway »

MisterTea wrote: post #2

I really would like to see answers to the four questions at the end. Though I would hazard a guess that the answers to the first three can be summed up as "it's easier and cheaper to let China do the dirty work." The last question I cant answer as I don't understand boom-bust mining cycles. Edit to add: > After all, it turns out tungsten actually isn't hard to find! It's all over the United States. In fact, it's pret…

>I really would like to see answers to the four questions at the end

The bottom line is that China has the biggest most economical tungsten reserves, they have been able to flood the market with predatory pricing for the last 40 years and they almost completely control the ore processing bottleneck as well.

For this to change the US govt would have to enter major agreements w US mines, offering relaxed permitting and a guaranteed price

Re: America has a tungsten problem

#147

Post by matheusmoreira »

MisterTea wrote: post #65
hunterpayne wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't a pretty unhinged take. > China has 50 years of ore refinement development behind them. No it doesn't (at best its about 35 years) and it often (mostly) uses equipment made in the west. In fact, if you want to extract something from the earth, its very likely you need a US firm to help you do it (depends on how hard the material is to extract). > and ecological collapse You can do mining responsibly, it ju…

> > China has 50 years of ore refinement development behind them. It's amazing how many people think China bootstrapped its industry from first principals when all it did was lure western companies to move their production over and "learned" by copying.

> all it did was lure western companies to move their production over and "learned" by copying

Yeah, and they fell for it. Handed over all their intellectual "property" to the chinese on a silver platter. Moved all their production to China, thereby deindustrializing their own countries and impoverishing their fellow citizens to the point of nearly wiping out the middle class.

I wonder if it's even possible for the west to save itself at this point.

Re: America has a tungsten problem

#148

Post by jandrewrogers »

ricksunny wrote: post #114
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.

A key aspect is being able to read the geology of the ore body. That is still more of an art than a science. If you are a nerd, it is actually super-interesting. Not too hard to pick up if you have the interest. It isn’t for the casual investor though. In the US there is a regulatory thicket you have to get through to develop it, and it often isn’t cheap, which factors into the value of the minerals.

I built a small catalog of ore deposits primarily by hiking deep into areas of the US mountain west that no one has gone into, albeit not for the purposes of prospecting. There is still quite a bit out there. Mostly gold-copper ores in my case.

Re: America has a tungsten problem

#149

Post by rsync »

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.

It's a website about metals.

Lady, why are you so interested in what I read or what I do ?

Re: America has a tungsten problem

#150

Post by matheusmoreira »

petre wrote: post #20
MisterTea wrote: post #2

I really would like to see answers to the four questions at the end. Though I would hazard a guess that the answers to the first three can be summed up as "it's easier and cheaper to let China do the dirty work." The last question I cant answer as I don't understand boom-bust mining cycles. Edit to add: > After all, it turns out tungsten actually isn't hard to find! It's all over the United States. In fact, it's pret…

> The Wikipedia Tungsten article states the largest reserves are in China followed by Canada, Russia, Vietnam and Bolivia Easy one, then. The administration will kidnap the president of Bolivia, install a replacement and strike a minerals deal.

This doesn't even seem that far fetched at this point. The economic influence of the USA is being eroded at every turn. Their military capabilities could very well turn out to be their last hope one day. South America stands virtually no chance against even a decadent USA. It's actually embarrassing how weak South America is.
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