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America has a tungsten problem

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Re: America has a tungsten problem

#161

Post by Animats »

High value metal price volatility is huge. Here's copper.[1] Demand is relatively inelastic because, while substitution is possible, it takes years to switch. Supply is relatively inelastic because mines are big, capital-intensive operations. So small supply-demand imbalances produce large price swings.

We keep hearing about rare earth shortages, but the mining industry is now worried about a coming rare earth glut.[2] Everybody who can is adding rare earth capacity. Last glut was in 2015. A side effect of Trump's tariffs is a copper glut.[3] Tungsten is in a shortage mode but production is increasing.[4] Tungsten demand for incandescent lamps is down, but other uses are up.

This oscillation has real effects. Mines shut down and companies go bankrupt.

China operates on a five year plan and can, to some extent, force price stability by having the government control production. This has political risk; it can lead to huge stockpiles of useless material to maintain employment. The US has a National Cheese Reserve due to badly designed milk price supports. Canada has a potato glut. It's worse for food products. Metals don't spoil.

[1] https://www.macrotrends.net/1476/copper-prices-historical-ch...

[2] https://rareearthexchanges.com/news/beyond-beijing-the-uneas...

[3] https://logistics.maritimeprofessional.com/transport-infrast...

[4] https://www.coreconsultantsgroup.com/tungsten-market-outlook...

Re: America has a tungsten problem

#162

Post by Dylan16807 »

bmacho wrote: post #84
hunterpayne wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I said efficiently, you would be lucky to get 1% efficiency there. Vacuums don't conduct heat very well do they.

Literally 100% of that heat travels from the 1000000C stuff to the environment throught that vacuum. Vacuum doesn't just remove energy. If you use a steam engines it doesn't matter if your source of heat is 900C or 1000000C, all heat will be captured, and 40-60% will be turned into electricity.

What you said there is all true, but largely because you didn't mention efficiency. If your heat source is a lot hotter than the steam you make, you do lose a lot of efficiency. If you had a million degree heat source, you could have many steps extracting huge amounts of power before your "waste" heat gets down to 1000C and is used to boil water.

The part about bad conduction being a problem is nonsense. The "lucky to get 1% efficiency" is not nonsense.

Re: America has a tungsten problem

#163

Post by user____name »

kbelder wrote: post #102
aeternum wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's often hard to beat bulk mining. When you're already mining a quarter billion tons of iron and 5B tons of coal, you get a decent amount of all other trace(rare-earth) metals as part of that stream. It's far easier to just collect tungsten as it rolls down your conveyor belt.

The Minecraft paradigm.

Look, we can't just recreate the mining industry, it would crowd out all others, no more doctors and engineers, the children yearn for the mines!

Re: America has a tungsten problem

#164

Post by clarionbell »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #147
MisterTea wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > 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 w…

What happened one way, can happen the other. Recently, I've watched a documentary about late 19th century steel maker. His approach was very similar to what many seem to consider "uniquely Chinese" for some reason.

He bought IP from people who didn't see value in it. He obtained state subsidies and convinced politicians to see his sector as a national priority. When he couldn't buy the know how, he had it reverse engineered from samples.

West just needs to go back to what used to work, and what still works. If China could industrialize itself from practically nothing, why couldn't western countries do something similar? Some of them already did after WWII.

It's just a matter of will. And accepting that there will have to be compromises and certain level of sacrifice.

Re: America has a tungsten problem

#165

Post by quotemstr »

throwway120385 wrote: post #89
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.

Having seen some former open pit mines I'm not entirely sure the environmental review is "ridiculous." One of them was basically a huge open pit full of acid.

Who cares? There's a ton of land out there.

Re: America has a tungsten problem

#166

Post by navigate8310 »

clarionbell wrote: post #164
matheusmoreira wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 w…

What happened one way, can happen the other. Recently, I've watched a documentary about late 19th century steel maker. His approach was very similar to what many seem to consider "uniquely Chinese" for some reason. He bought IP from people who didn't see value in it. He obtained state subsidies and convinced politicians to see his sector as a national priority. When he couldn't buy the know how, he had it reverse eng…

The biggest reason as others have already discussed, manufacturing is inherently dirty work so better off shore and be concerned about the environment locally.

Re: America has a tungsten problem

#167

Post by fc417fc802 »

maxglute wrote: post #109
runsWphotons wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, we don't.

Yes, you/"we" do. There's a reason western M/HREE (i.e. the strategic good stuff) strategy hedges on similar iconic clays finds like PRC, because that's the only working industrial chain that extracts M/HREEs at scale. It's why AU/Lynas focus on ionic clays and not US hardrock... which btw doesn't even pretend it will do anything meaningful for mineral security other than light REE. US+co is trying to replicate PRC M…

> it's going to be slow going like PRC EUV

Not even close. EUV lithography is as close to magic as it gets. By any reasonable assessment it shouldn't work but a few wizards somehow manage to pull it off.

Re: America has a tungsten problem

#168

Post by fc417fc802 »

gmerc wrote: post #151
CGMthrowaway wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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…

Wait until you find out the US is flooding the software market with "predatory" SaaS products. Point being, it's only "predatory" if others do it.

Textbook whataboutism. I agree that US BigTech strategy of dumping free product is predatory and arguably a regulatory failure (or success, depending on your values and goals). But that's got absolutely nothing to do with the current discussion.

Re: America has a tungsten problem

#169

Post by mnw21cam »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #162
bmacho wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Literally 100% of that heat travels from the 1000000C stuff to the environment throught that vacuum. Vacuum doesn't just remove energy. If you use a steam engines it doesn't matter if your source of heat is 900C or 1000000C, all heat will be captured, and 40-60% will be turned into electricity.

What you said there is all true, but largely because you didn't mention efficiency. If your heat source is a lot hotter than the steam you make, you do lose a lot of efficiency. If you had a million degree heat source, you could have many steps extracting huge amounts of power before your "waste" heat gets down to 1000C and is used to boil water. The part about bad conduction being a problem is nonsense. The "lucky t…

Carnot efficiency is 1 - Tc/Th, where Th is the hot side temperature and Tc is the cold side temperature. Tc is set by the surrounding environment, probably in the vicinity of 300K. If you have a hot side temperature around 1,000,000K then the theoretical maximum efficiency is very good. If that heat has to be stepped down by separating it from materials that would melt and you can only sustain a hot side temperature of 1200K, then your theoretical maximum efficiency drops to 75%. Obviously the real life efficiency will be a bit less than that, but the principle shows that the "lucky to get 1% efficiency" bit is nonsense - you're not actually losing that much after all.

Re: America has a tungsten problem

#170

Post by 7thpower »

FpUser wrote: post #153
MisterTea wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> > 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.

>"when all it did was lure western companies to move their production over and "learned" by copying" Would you fucking stop crying already. What did you expect them to do? Commit to being a slave and leave all the value to western corps? And who asked western companies to outsource everything? It seems that for an extra buck they would sell everything. So you basically reap what you sow

This.

Every time there is a discussion about how China is wiping the floor with the west, someone wants to chime in that they stole IP. It is an unhealthy fixation and betrays the fact that they are genuinely more efficient in many cases, even when labor costs and subsidies are removed.

Not to mention, complaining about China stealing IP is a pacifier. Even where true, it does not change the competitive dynamics at this point because any damage has already been done.

If we, as the west, want to be great, we will have to move beyond the victim stage.

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