Charlotte Brumpton-Childs, a national officer with the trade union GMB, said: “Recent history has shown we must retain control over crucial industries like steel. Leaving domestic production to the whims of the open market is sheer folly.
What bit of recent huistory is this? Other than the bit where your union members lose jobs that is?
The ghosts of Bill Sirs and Ian McGregor would like a word with the young lady.
Charlotte Brumpton-Childs
Lordy, even the shop stewards are posh these days…..
Nationalised industries aren’t much cop to be sure, but perhaps they are a better option than industries owned by hostile powers.
Being able to make primary steel in the UK is important you say? Perhaps we should open a coking coal mine so we can fuel the blast furnaces….oh wait 🙁
Coke isn’t to fuel the blast furnaces, it’s an ingredient to make the steel. Any energy can fuel the fuenace.
Ah no, rupert… They’ll still be building and using new arc furnaces, powered by Unreliables.
And since it’s now Government Owned, at three times the cost with ten times more overhead, taking twice as long to become operational.
And that is before the H&S and DEI committees have had their opportunity to interfere..
They haven’t seen anything yet. Net zero industry is a government target. The government they support.
You can’t make steel with an arc furnace: you need a blast furnace with coke to produce the reducing agent.
Arc furnaces merely recycle scrap steel into low grade steel.
Hydrogen furnaces, very expensively, produce hydrogen-embrittled scrap.
Weapons use high grade steel, which we nolonger produce in the UK. We buy it from India and China. If they approve of its use.
“Lordy, even the shop stewards are posh these days…..”
Not necessarily. Increasingly the double barrelled name is less a mark of the landed gentry class, and more of the ‘my parents shacked up together and never got married so I’ve got both their surnames’ classes. Which tend to be considerably further down the social ladder. As shown by the number of double barrelled professional footballers these days.
I’m just wondering what the next generations will be when two of these people produce offspring – quadruple barrelled names?
TtC – Weapons use high grade steel, which we nolonger produce in the UK. We buy it from India and China. If they approve of its use
Dec 3 (Reuters) – China on Tuesday banned exports to the United States of the critical minerals gallium, germanium and antimony that have widespread military applications, escalating trade tensions the day after Washington’s latest crackdown on China’s chip sector.
Most of the media is trying to blame this on Trump, but trade war with China is a bipartisan effort and the Biden admin has continued to rile the Chinee:
A Chinese Commerce Ministry directive on dual-use items with both military and civilian applications cited national security concerns. The order, which takes immediate effect, also requires stricter review of end-usage for graphite items shipped to the U.S.
“In principle, the export of gallium, germanium, antimony, and superhard materials to the United States shall not be permitted,” the ministry said.
Gallium and germanium are used in semiconductors, while germanium is also used in infrared technology, fibre optic cables and solar cells. Antimony is used in bullets and other weaponry, while graphite is the largest component by volume of electric vehicle batteries.
This is how everyone’s favourite Austrian idealist lost WW2: lack of critical resources. The Krauts were ahead of us in developing jet engines, but they were horribly unreliable due to the lack of high quality metallurgical products.
The US – unlike Germany – occupies a vast continent and has the ability to source all of its own needs, but rejigging global supply chains and rebuilding industrial capacity will be an expensive and time consuming process. In the meantime, China is building its fourth aircraft carrier.
At least the US is beginning to address the deteriorating strategic situation. Europe and the UK are run by the world’s least impressive lawyers, who still think they can change reality using words.
jgh: a blast furnace reduces (mined) iron oxides to iron, for which it needs carbon (coke) to reduce the oxides to the metal. You end up with iron with lots of carbon in it (pig iron), which then needs much of the carbon removed to make steel unless you want to build the bridge at Ironbridge. That’s what Bessemer invented. The product of *that* then needs a few alloying metals to be added to make interesting & useful steels.
The US has large sources of gallium and germanium as a byproduct of other mining. They never bothered developing them because the world price was too low to make it economic. The Chinese kept the price low by using ecologically unfriendly processing, with which the US couldn’t/wouldn’t compete. It’s is the same story as with the rare earth metals.