America has a tungsten problem

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 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.

Btw, the paper referenced for tungsten production is co-funded by a US tungsten exploration/mining company: https://www.innovationnewsnetwork.com/harnessing-tungsten-fo...

I can only read the free part of the paper (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09203...). I wish it would elaborate more on the challenges with recycling.

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 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

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.

1. 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?

Just 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.

PRC tungsten reserves are also depleting, mines are processing more rocks for same output and sooner or later PRC going to quota tungsten exports even more for domestic stockpile and prevent over extraction.

Also related tangent, remember that anecdote about PRC finally making ball point pen tips? That was basically central gov slapping PRC metallurgists to speedrun tungsten carbide precision manufacturing for advanced munitions (penetrators), not ball point pen tips which was rounding error consideration.

The US govt already tracks the geopolitical status of "Critical Minerals" at the USGS:

https://www.usgs.gov/tools/critical-minerals-atlas

So we are finally building the Rods from God

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment

Are they secretly building the "Rods from God"? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment

Between 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.

There 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.

Not surprising. In addition to Tungsten or rare earth materials, I am sure there are many more "problems" that America is dependent on China.

Fort Knox is full of tungsten

It's worth mentioning that the US has tungsten mines, but they are not operating currently. https://www.usgs.gov/data/tungsten-deposits-united-states

> One wonders: Why does China produce >80% of the world's tungsten? Why has there been zero domestic tungsten mining in the United States?

Mining and refining rare earth is a dirty process. NIMBYs pushed it farther and farther away until it was on the other side of the world.

obligatory simpsons reference: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTLYris4kJU

Between 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.