America has a tungsten problem(noleary.com)
71 points by noleary 2 hours ago | 44 comments
- a2tech 57 minutes agoThis 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 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. We need many of these materials, and we have them, but we haven't had the will to mine them. Lots of people want to open US government lands to these resource extraction outfits, but there's right worry about the potential for ecological destruction.
[-]- noleary 55 minutes agoHey, 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.
[-]- themanmaran 31 minutes ago> Not an expert or a nefarious actor
If it helps, I know @noleary and can confirm this is a true statement!
[-]- dfee 21 minutes agoisn't that what a second non-expert or nefarious actor would say, though? :p
- hunterpayne 26 minutes agoNice 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 are themselves more than an order of magnitude from actual working powerplants. Ask yourself this, how do you efficiently harness 1,000,000C heat? Even at 900C we can only get about 55% and we have materials which can withstand that temperature for decades. We have nothing physical that can take anywhere near 1,000,000C.[-]
- montyanne 53 seconds agoCommonwealth fusion is theoretically pretty close with their high temp superconductors.
Far from a slam dunk, but I don’t think we’re as far from net gain as we were 10 years ago.
- noleary 14 minutes agoI'm not smart enough to stake an opinion on the viability of fusion. I pretty much only have high school mechanics and Wikipedia in my toolkit.
I can only ever make material conditional claims about things like this :)
- dotancohen 16 minutes ago
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.> how do you efficiently harness 1,000,000C heat?
- ericmay 47 minutes ago> 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 seem to be correct.
China has a national strategy to dominate refining of rare earth minerals and critical components and our entire society wants cheap products and China was the cheapest place for this stuff and environmental rules are more lax, and with an authoritarian regime supporting and fast tracking the business for strategic reasons, well there you have it.
Part of the strategy involves decoupling China from a weak link in the energy supply chain infrastructure: oil and refining rare earths, manufacturing products that use them, and more is how they are pursuing some level of energy independence from the USA which controls oil flows globally, for the most part.
With respect to avoidance of “dirty” jobs. The EU is far, far worse in this respect than the United States is or was.
[-]- wolvoleo 17 minutes ago> 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 byproducts of neodymium mining were dumped.
[-]- orochimaaru 1 minute agoYou don’t care about the environment. You care about the environment in your backyard. Otherwise you would not import rare earths and minerals from China (which Europe does).
- pixl97 40 minutes agoA good way to put it as "China was very willing to subsidize the cost of mining these elements as environmental damage".
- a2tech 36 minutes agoPeople 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 reliance on access to the minerals and encouraged internal growth and acquisition competing resources. Absolutely, very clever.
[-]- ericmay 18 minutes agoBut let's be very clear here. the US might have outsourced those jobs, which I think is an oversimplification, but the EU also outsourced those jobs and the Chinese welcomed and encouraged that outsourcing. Americans, Europeans, and Chinese workers were all onboard at a national level for this arrangement.
I want to be very clear here to avoid any misunderstanding of an application of moral judgement against the United States for "outsourcing dirty jobs".
> 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 reliance on access to the minerals and encouraged internal growth and acquisition competing resources. Absolutely, very clever.
This could be true. The truth is likely somewhere in the middle, in that China never intended to join a US and European led world order because doing so would compromise the power of the authoritarian CCP (free speech, free markets are incompatible with communism) and this became the eventual strategy to work toward energy independence. Of course "independence" isn't a real thing here, just less reliance. You can't run fighter jets or tanks on batteries or solar panels.
- Night_Thastus 20 minutes agoIt'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.
- h4kunamata 2 minutes agoTungsten 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.
- MisterTea 1 hour agoI 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 pretty much all over the world.
The Wikipedia Tungsten article states the largest reserves are in China followed by Canada, Russia, Vietnam and Bolivia. This contradicts the articles claim. Just because it's all over does not mean it is easy to dig up and refine. Some clarification is needed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tungsten#Production
[-]- Tuna-Fish 57 minutes ago> The Wikipedia Tungsten article states the largest reserves are in China followed by Canada, Russia, Vietnam and Bolivia. This contradicts the articles claim.
No, it does not, it's just a confusion of the term reserves. That's not on you, though, because everyone constantly gets it wrong.
Reserves are not estimates of the amount of a mineral underground. To be counted as proven reserve, you need to show that the mineral is economically extractable at market prices. Specifically, by starting to extract them. They are "working inventory" of mines that have been developed, they are not our understanding of how the minerals are distributed. They are also a function of commodity prices, not something that remains constant unless you dig them.
China has so much of the worldwide production and reserves because mining is an extremely capital-intensive industry, that is also sensitive to labor costs and environmental legislation. For a long time, China had the trifecta of lax legislation, cheap labor, and sufficient political stability to attract investment. US or Europe can't compete because mining there is more expensive, the third world can't compete because people are wary of investing billions into projects that might go to zero for political stability reasons.
Should the market prices of key minerals rise to the point where it makes sense to mine them outside of China, reserves will be developed and production will shift. This will probably require political will to either tariff Chinese production or subsidize production outside China, because so far China has wielded mineral exports as a weapon only for brief periods, being careful to release exports to crater prices often enough to kill competing projects.
[-]- nullhole 1 minute ago> To be counted as proven reserve, you need to show that the mineral is economically extractable at market prices. Specifically, by starting to extract them.
You don't need to be actually mining the stuff for it to be considered a reserve, at least in the Canadian (CIM) definitions. You do need at least pre-feasibility study, and details on market prices & contracts.
The general point is right though, "mineral resources" means there's metal in the ground, "mineral reserves" means there's metal in the ground that can be economically mined, with consideration of the mining methods, infrastructure, legal title, environmental impact, metallurgy, market contracts, etc.
- a2tech 43 minutes agoThe US has lots of tungsten and other minerals. The problem is mining them here--people really don't want to see huge holes in the ground, industrial run off, and ecological collapse.
If the fundamentals of international resource extraction changes (which because of the increase in wages and living standards and expectations in China is happening) then we might see wide spread and rapid mining happening in the US. My questions in that scenario are 1) who will work these mines? The US is running at very high employment right now, and mining is very hard work 2) where would our ore refinement equipment and skills come from? China has 50 years of ore refinement development behind them. They have infrastructure to BUILD the infrastructure for ore extraction and refinement. My understanding is that they're uninterested in selling that currently 3) then all the other local issues like where will they be able to sell locals on building giant mines, dealing with the heavy traffic, potential environmental concerns, etc.
- noleary 1 hour agoReserves 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...
[-]- bell-cot 52 minutes agoYes, 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.
- lkbm 1 hour ago> The Wikipedia Tungsten article states the largest reserves are in China followed by Canada, Russia, Vietnam and Bolivia. This contradicts the articles claim. Just because it's all over does not mean it is easy to dig up and refine.
It doesn't contradict the claim.
Just because it's all over does not mean it is easy to dig up and refine, but just because it's not the largest reserve doesn't mean it's not easy to dig up and refine.
- aeternum 34 minutes agoIt'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.
- petre 52 minutes ago> 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.
- chwtutha 8 minutes agoJust want to say respect for making the blog and leading with a self-taught post about tungsten. Very cool dude stuff. Add an RSS feed.
- SoftTalker 39 minutes ago1. Fusion is not going to be a reality any time in the next 50 years.
2. Why does the US import tungsten? Is it that we don't have any, or it's cheaper to just buy it from China?
- delichon 1 hour agoI have a tungsten paperweight on my desk and I am legion. A tungsten drive for a good nerd cause could accumulate hundreds of tons. A good nerd cause like "make a 1 meter tungsten cube". It would be very good at holding down paper.
- sholladay 24 minutes agoSo we are finally building the Rods from God
- AceJohnny2 32 minutes agoThe US govt already tracks the geopolitical status of "Critical Minerals" at the USGS:
- HelloUsername 1 hour agoAre they secretly building the "Rods from God"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment
- 01100011 1 hour agoThere is likely a good amount of tungsten, along with other useful elements, sitting buried in US landfills.
It may take a while, but one day our old landfills will turn into mines.
[-]- Gigachad 60 minutes agoWith most resources, it’s usually not that they literally can’t be found, but that the cheap sources are gone. If tungsten costs 20x as much to extract, it doesn’t matter that it technically exists, a lot of users are just not going to be able to afford it.[-]
- dmurray 2 minutes agoThe article says the US currently imports about 10,000 tons of tungsten per year, and has no active production, so that's also its current usage.
Tungsten costs about $200/kg [0]
So the total US tungsten usage is $2 billion/year.
If the price goes up 20x overnight, and nobody changes their purchasing behaviours, that costs US businesses, consumers and government $38 billion.
That's a lot of money for most people, but it's being spread over a wide base.
For a comparison, the US uses about 20 million barrels of oil per day [1] or 7 billion per year. So a 20x shock in tungsten would be roughly equivalent to oil prices going up $5/barrel. In fact oil fluctuates by that much most quarters [2], if not most months. People complain a little when it goes up, but it takes more than that to really have a noticeable effect on the economy.
A 2x or 5x price increase - a huge shock in any context - would be problematic for a few companies, but really business as usual for the US as a whole.
[0] https://www.metal.com/tungsten
[1] https://ycharts.com/indicators/us_oil_consumption
[2] https://www.macrotrends.net/1369/crude-oil-price-history-cha...
- josefritzishere 1 hour agoIt's worth mentioning that the US has tungsten mines, but they are not operating currently. https://www.usgs.gov/data/tungsten-deposits-united-states
- goopypoop 8 minutes agoobligatory simpsons reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTLYris4kJU
- Gravityloss 1 hour agoBetween stable and contract honoring entities it's also possible to trade for things that not everyone produces, or do large long term investments in things like mines or refineries outside your own territory.
- tomondev 1 hour agoNot surprising. In addition to Tungsten or rare earth materials, I am sure there are many more "problems" that America is dependent on China.[-]
- irishcoffee 1 hour agoYeah, the US let China do the dirty work because it was cheaper. And it was cheaper because China doesn’t care about dumping waste wherever they’d like and building suicide nets for their employees because of how they’re treated.
America depended on China to not care about the environment or people. China is pretty good at that.
[-]- Hikikomori 56 minutes agoChina sounds a lot like a conservative wet dream. Are they just jealous?
- actionfromafar 57 minutes agoFear not, we will Make America Great Again. Back to the "gilded age".
- bell-cot 1 hour agoBetween the critical strategic/military need, the by-far largest producer being an unfriendly rival power, and commercial production looking like a very poor fit for the use case - the Old School solution would be for the gov't to own & probably operate the needed mines, refining facilities, and stockpiles.
But between our low-functioning gov't and our lower-functioning Capitalist-Ideological Complex, I'd be surprised if such a solution was even mentioned.