4 ms·

I'm just shocked your even smelting in the US still, surely that's done in the near east where power + labour is far, far cheaper.

dilyevsky 3y ago
Cheap power requires good infrastructure which countries with cheap labor generally dont have. There are locales in US with pretty good electricity rates
hinkley 3y ago
Does anyone know if that steel recycling plant is still operating below the west Seattle bridge?
mattnewton 3y ago
I feel like _some_ domestic aluminum refining capability has to be a national security requirement, though no idea if we do treat it that way.
- swarnie 3y ago
  Yep that's true, fully accept that.
celestialcheese 3y ago
Alcoa had a pretty large aluminum smelter on the west coast in Ferndale WA, but it shut down near the beginning of covid. The bonneville power contracts with Alcoa were pretty generous, somewhere around $0.035/kWh for ~300MW, and even then, they couldn't make it work. A PE firm is trying to buy it up, but the bonneville administration isn't playing ball and giving them the same rates, so it'll likely sit empty.
lostlogin 3y ago
We do it in New Zealand. The power source is renewable and dirt cheap thanks to the games Rio Tinto play, which have resulted in the population subsidising them. Rio Tinto have a poor record and leave toxic waste in various places. It seems possible that the taxpayer will be tidying up their mess.
- Scoundreller 3y ago
  Quebec too. And Quebec is far from landlocked, so an abundance of hydroelectricity has alternative markets. The subsidies are staggering: > The total cost of $2.7 billion comes to $274,338 per job per year during 35 years for the 740 jobs in the new plant. If we use the figure of 10.0 cents/kWh, which is the expected cost of new projects under study, the cost per job per year rises to $370,864 And these are 2007 number!!! And no, the smelters aren't paying their employees FAANG wages. > It is far more profitable to export electricity directly through interconnections than indirectly through aluminum ingots. https://www.iedm.org/files/avril07_en.pdf https://www.iedm.org/files/avril07_en.pdf
  - lostlogin 3y ago
    That’s a really fixed way of looking at the subsidies. Thanks.

dilyevsky 3y ago

Cheap power requires good infrastructure which countries with cheap labor generally dont have. There are locales in US with pretty good electricity rates

hinkley 3y ago

Does anyone know if that steel recycling plant is still operating below the west Seattle bridge?

mattnewton 3y ago

I feel like _some_ domestic aluminum refining capability has to be a national security requirement, though no idea if we do treat it that way.

swarnie 3y ago
Yep that's true, fully accept that.

celestialcheese 3y ago

Alcoa had a pretty large aluminum smelter on the west coast in Ferndale WA, but it shut down near the beginning of covid. The bonneville power contracts with Alcoa were pretty generous, somewhere around $0.035/kWh for ~300MW, and even then, they couldn't make it work. A PE firm is trying to buy it up, but the bonneville administration isn't playing ball and giving them the same rates, so it'll likely sit empty.

lostlogin 3y ago

We do it in New Zealand. The power source is renewable and dirt cheap thanks to the games Rio Tinto play, which have resulted in the population subsidising them. Rio Tinto have a poor record and leave toxic waste in various places. It seems possible that the taxpayer will be tidying up their mess.

Scoundreller 3y ago
Quebec too. And Quebec is far from landlocked, so an abundance of hydroelectricity has alternative markets. The subsidies are staggering: > The total cost of $2.7 billion comes to $274,338 per job per year during 35 years for the 740 jobs in the new plant. If we use the figure of 10.0 cents/kWh, which is the expected cost of new projects under study, the cost per job per year rises to $370,864 And these are 2007 number!!! And no, the smelters aren't paying their employees FAANG wages. > It is far more profitable to export electricity directly through interconnections than indirectly through aluminum ingots. https://www.iedm.org/files/avril07_en.pdf https://www.iedm.org/files/avril07_en.pdf
- lostlogin 3y ago
  That’s a really fixed way of looking at the subsidies. Thanks.