Quote:
Originally Posted by pj3000
I hope they don't ever restart them... at least not in their current form. US Steel lost its way long ago, and ceased to be a technological leader. Instead relying on milking century-old blast furnaces and coke ovens which are terribly inefficient and destructive to our air.
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for sure, the old blast furnace -> basic oxygen furnace method of turning iron ore into brand new steel is horribly inefficient and polluting, but purely from a national security standpoint, our nation needs to maintain some amount of legacy capacity to make new steel from mineral ore at fully integrated steel works like the now idled great lakes works on zug island.
it's indeed a very good thing that more and more steel continues to be made from recycled scrap at electric arc furnace "mini mills", as steel is such a relatively easy material to recycle, but we still need to be able to turn some mineral ore into brand new steel as well.
at last count, i think there are only 18 operating blast furnaces left in the US (and 11 of those are at the 3 giant steel mills in NW indiana). it would be nice to see USX and cleveland-cliffs invest the necessary billions to modernize those facilities using the much less toxic DRI -> EAF method for processing iron ore into steel, but with the way the US steel industry has taken it on the chin over the past handful of decades, that's probably a big ask. but we can hope, right?