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America has a tungsten problem

noleary.com

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Re: America has a tungsten problem

#81

Post by to11mtm »

bell-cot wrote: post #19
noleary wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reserves means something specific in the context of minerals! Reserves measure 'economically viable' deposits. [1] There used to be tons of tungsten mines in the USA, e.g. in Colorado linked below. [1] https://resourcecapitalfunds.com/insights/rcf-partners-blog/... [2] https://coloradogeologicalsurvey.org/publications/tungsten-m...

Yes, but it should be emphasized how dependent "Reserves" are on both exploration work, and current assumptions about future mining/refining/market conditions. China's secret to having most of the world's Reserves may be that they bored a lot more test holes (to actually know "the rock in >THIS< spot is X% tungsten") than anyone else, then made some more-optimistic assumptions.

Ehhh, it could go both ways (as far as over-optimism)

On one hand, historically there's a lot of sparsely populated land; that makes it easier to both do exploration and partition off the land.

Also there is China's more central economy planning; i.e. if it's truly worth it they are more willing to do something about relocating people while 'selling it better' (which is again helped by the sparse populations where they are looking.)

That is, unless you are saying they fudged the sampling....

However, that's still other a weird reversal of the geopolitical playbook; that is, one could argue that the -smartest- thing the US/EU can do, is to import whatever natural materials they can, until the 'clock' runs out, then the native materials can be extracted (even at the 'ecologically correct' cost.)

Re: America has a tungsten problem

#82

Post by maxglute »

ericmay wrote: post #21
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…

> 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…

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.

Re: America has a tungsten problem

#83

Post by russdill »

david927 wrote: post #78

Now try copper, aluminum and more. I saw a clip from a conference that said for copper, at 3% GDP growth, the global demand in the next 18 years will exceed the last 10,000 years, but 80% of known reserves have already been mined. It seems to me that development in the future is going to be constrained. Not to be dramatic but are we in the sort of happy pre-pandemic days not knowing the changes heading our way? Or am…

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

Re: America has a tungsten problem

#84

Post by bmacho »

hunterpayne wrote: post #59
dotancohen wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> how do you efficiently harness 1,000,000C heat? The traditional answer to that question is vacuum and magnetic confinement (usual toroidal). Whether that will turn out to be the practical answer is yet to be seen.

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.

Re: America has a tungsten problem

#86

Post by ericmay »

maxglute wrote: post #82
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…

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 way, the east (as opposed to the west) is fine with migrant labor too. That’s why remittances are a thing. Well, when they’re not being xenophobic or whatever.

Re: America has a tungsten problem

#87

Post by throwup238 »

russdill wrote: post #83
david927 wrote: post #78

Now try copper, aluminum and more. I saw a clip from a conference that said for copper, at 3% GDP growth, the global demand in the next 18 years will exceed the last 10,000 years, but 80% of known reserves have already been mined. It seems to me that development in the future is going to be constrained. Not to be dramatic but are we in the sort of happy pre-pandemic days not knowing the changes heading our way? Or am…

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.

Re: America has a tungsten problem

#88

Post by seg_lol »

ericmay wrote: post #21
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…

> 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…

Don't make China the boogey man here, when it was America's rich that exported all those things (jobs, manufacturing, solid supply chains) to China.

Re: America has a tungsten problem

#89

Post by throwway120385 »

terminalshort wrote: post #58
Night_Thastus wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a frequent pattern of: 1: "We need to be more self-sufficient with minerals!" 2: "Let's try to kick-start more of our own industry digging it up!" 3: "Wow, that's expensive and can't compete with international prices." 4: "Better shut it down!" 5: Goto 1 Without ever getting that the point was never to be as profitable as overseas sources. Or getting the point and ignoring it.

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.

Re: America has a tungsten problem

#90

Post by skulk »

PKop wrote: post #79
h4kunamata wrote: post #42

Tungsten is the least of their problem. When a population cannot afford health care system, and have to walk with their passport so they are not sent to jail, you have a broken country. Not to mention the financial problems. Tungsten won't matter when there is no country.

> walk with their passport so they are not sent to jail No, it's broken because we've allowed millions of foreigners to come in and raise said healthcare and housing costs. Checking that people here actually belong here else they're deported is part of the "cost of living" solution, in addition to crime.

> No, it's broken because we've allowed millions of foreigners to come in and raise said healthcare and housing costs.

The idea that deporting every undocumented person will reduce the bloat and profit extraction in our health care system is making me giggle.

And do you really think checking every person is a strategy that scales? Why not just indiscriminately jail the people who hire them and thereby create a strong incentive to come?

Maybe those workers actually belong here more than you'd like to admit, but the powers that be enjoy keeping their status uncertain to use as a piñata they can beat whenever they need political candy.

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