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America has a tungsten problem

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Re: America has a tungsten problem

#171

Post by [deleted] »

mnw21cam wrote: post #169
Dylan16807 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

[deleted]

Re: America has a tungsten problem

#173

Post by pelagicAustral »

iugtmkbdfil834 wrote: post #71
dfee wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

isn't that what a second non-expert or nefarious actor would say, though? :p

I mean.. nefarious actor probably would, but non-expert? Non-expert would likely find some petty way to invalidate the argument.

As an non-expert myself, that's exactly what I would do.

Re: America has a tungsten problem

#174

Post by pjc50 »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #150
petre wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

The problem is that the main military enemy of South America is Other Bits Of South America, especially internal enemies. That's why Costa Rica has no military: can't have a military coup without a military.

(also the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paraguayan_War was so devastating that nobody wants to get back to that point)

Re: America has a tungsten problem

#175

Post by maxglute »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #167
maxglute wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not even close in sense it's likely going to take west longer to build M/HREE at scale than PRC figuring out EUV + entire indigenize semi supply chain at scale.

The execution difference is PRC is generating enough semi talent to replicate EUV and entire semi stack sooner than later. They already have the most complete localized semi supply chain in single nation, i.e. they're doing ASML+5000 niche suppliers at once. Hence consensus estimate is they'll get there somewhere 2030-2035. Reminder EUV is basically a "tiny" ass effort from a handful of countries, for reference airbus/boeing each has 150k employees for commercial aviation, EUV was developed by 3k from Zeiss, 1k from Cymer, 13k from ASML... over 20 years of casual development. It's ultimately a hard but narrow specialization problem, hence PRC EUV prototype beating estimates/expectations. It's not magic, it's just people + cash + industrial vertical integration that PRC is uniquely well equipped to deal with.

VS west has "easier" M/HREE tree to rebuild on paper but lack both talent #s, and state capacity to execute. M/HREE is ~20 minerals each has it's own midstream extraction process that require dozens of plants and 100s of stages for 5/6/7+ sigma high end strategic use. It's a different monumental/gargantuan task, on top of the sheer fucking scale of infra involved. I noted Batou has 3 million residents for a reason, that's the scale of M/HREE industry west has to replicate. It takes 8-10 years to get a refinery up in the west, the chance of west getting 100s of highly polluting industrial chains up for M/HREE before PRC sorts out semi is close to zero. It's a mass scale industrial mobilization problem that west is uniquely not well equipped to deal with. I'd wager M/HREE more bureaucratic magic than even EUV technical magic for west.

Meanwhile, there isn't a single M/HREE plant in western pipeline that will do anything at scale until maybe 2030, only thing in pipeline is validating unproven lab extraction/refining methods by ~2028, if it works, will take years to scale extraction, and even more years to scale refining.

Re: America has a tungsten problem

#176

Post by bmacho »

mnw21cam wrote: post #169
Dylan16807 wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This is all about getting energy out of a very hot heat source. Theoretical efficiency is ~1, and a ~40% practical efficiency also doesn't seem to be hard: let something heat up to 1000C, and don't let much of the energy escape to the environment.

Also deuterium-tritium reactors get energy out of the plasma via capturing high energy neutrons, very similarly to nuclear power plants.

Re: America has a tungsten problem

#177

Post by j16sdiz »

buckle8017 wrote: post #93
tbossanova wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Individual EUers might care about the environment. It’s pretty hard to personally avoid any dirty imported stuff as you just don’t know where it all ends up. Though I guess overall voting patterns might back up your argument

What are you talking about its trivial to avoid purchasing product's produced in environmentally unfriendly ways. All products from China are manufactured with electricity that is largely coal. You just mean it's not economical.

> electricity that is largely coal.

Kind of. China is at 55% Coal and 40% Renewable, with renewable climbing each year.

Compare to USA 40% Gas, 20% Coal, 20% Renewable, with renewable more or less steady.

Re: America has a tungsten problem

#178

Post by giantg2 »

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…

"it's easier and cheaper to let China do the dirty work."

This is true for just about any industrial due to the environmental regulation disparity.

Re: America has a tungsten problem

#179

Post by dv_dt »

fc417fc802 wrote: post #167
maxglute wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I think western companies and governments have ingrained into their own thinking that the optimization strategy of of minimal investments in fundamental sciences and engineering as real constraint. (actually in more that just that, but that goes off topic..) It's a short term focused fictionalization / profit extraction constraint, but because that's so built into the experience and performance companies in the west, many predictions completely misunderstand what is possible with a different focus. We'll see how fast this can be re-calibrated.

Re: America has a tungsten problem

#180

Post by RupertSalt »

a2tech wrote: post #26
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…

People in the US will do dirty jobs if thats what there are, but like people everywhere (in aggregate), would rather not. We outsourced refining and mining to China because 1) it was cheap 2) it meant poisoning the ground and air and ripping up vast tracts of land somewhere else. China's rare earth metals stratagem I believe grew out of this--it didn't happen immediately, but rather some bright bulb saw the growing r…

> tungsten

> some bright bulb

I see what you did there

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