[HN Gopher] America has a tungsten problem
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America has a tungsten problem
Author : noleary
Score : 80 points
Date : 2026-02-09 20:49 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.noleary.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.noleary.com)
| MisterTea wrote:
| 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
| noleary wrote:
| _Reserves_ 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 wrote:
| Yes, 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 wrote:
| > 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.
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| > 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.
| a2tech wrote:
| The 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.
| hunterpayne wrote:
| This isn't a pretty unhinged take.
|
| > China has 50 years of ore refinement development behind
| them.
|
| No it doesn't (at best its about 35 years) and it often
| (mostly) uses equipment made in the west. In fact, if you
| want to extract something from the earth, its very likely
| you need a US firm to help you do it (depends on how hard
| the material is to extract).
|
| > and ecological collapse
|
| You can do mining responsibly, it just costs more. US firms
| about 20 years ago tried to get the US government to
| subsidize their industries to compensate for the extra
| costs. The politicians said no and voiced environmental
| concerns. So those materials started coming from China and
| the 3rd world where they were extracted using even dirtier
| methods than the US was using at the time. It turns out
| that pollution doesn't obey international borders though.
|
| Finally, most of the material China exports is raw and its
| refined somewhere else. The only things China refines for
| themselves are either a) is easy and they need them
| domestically or b) the refining process is very dirty.
| Additionally, mining almost always takes place far from
| population centers. The basic reason for this is that all
| the material near population centers was extracted far in
| the past. Your entire take has little to no resemblance
| with reality.
| MisterTea wrote:
| > > China has 50 years of ore refinement development
| behind them.
|
| It's amazing how many people think China bootstrapped its
| industry from first principals when all it did was lure
| western companies to move their production over and
| "learned" by copying.
| nullhole wrote:
| > 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 a 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.
| petre wrote:
| > 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.
| aeternum wrote:
| It'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.
| josefritzishere wrote:
| 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
| tomondev wrote:
| Not surprising. In addition to Tungsten or rare earth materials,
| I am sure there are many more "problems" that America is
| dependent on China.
| irishcoffee wrote:
| Yeah, 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.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Fear not, we will Make America Great Again. Back to the
| "gilded age".
| Hikikomori wrote:
| China sounds a lot like a conservative wet dream. Are they
| just jealous?
| irishcoffee wrote:
| If you think there are actually conservatives and liberals
| at the billionaire level I have a bridge to sell you. The
| joke is on you, boss.
|
| Ignoring your ignorance for a moment, the logic you could
| have realized is, the US did it to save money and line
| their pockets. Political affiliations have nothing to do
| with it.
| Gravityloss wrote:
| 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.
| 01100011 wrote:
| 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.
| Gigachad wrote:
| With 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 wrote:
| The 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...
| bell-cot wrote:
| 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.
| HelloUsername wrote:
| Are they secretly building the "Rods from God"?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment
| a2tech wrote:
| 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.
| noleary wrote:
| Hey, 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.
| stevenwoo wrote:
| The formatting of the website on iOS safari moves the left
| margin off screen so I could not read all of your essay. But
| you may enjoy reading Material World by Conroy based on what
| I could read, he does not cover Tungsten.
| cumquat wrote:
| Landscape mode helps.
| themanmaran wrote:
| > Not an expert or a nefarious actor
|
| If it helps, I know @noleary and can confirm this is a true
| statement!
| dfee wrote:
| isn't that what a second non-expert or nefarious actor
| would say, though? :p
| hunterpayne wrote:
| Nice 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.
| dotancohen wrote:
| > how do you efficiently harness 1,000,000C heat?
|
| 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.
| hunterpayne wrote:
| I said efficiently, you would be lucky to get 1%
| efficiency there. Vacuums don't conduct heat very well do
| they.
| ben_w wrote:
| While true in isolation, that is the wrong reason to
| care.
|
| We get power from the sun very effectively over 150
| billion meters of vacuum.
|
| Biggest problem with fusion is doing the fusion for a low
| enough input power (or for pulsed, energy) cost.
| noleary wrote:
| I'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 :)
| montyanne wrote:
| Commonwealth 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.
| BigTTYGothGF wrote:
| > how do you efficiently harness 1,000,000C heat
|
| Very carefully.
| ericmay wrote:
| > 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.
| pixl97 wrote:
| A good way to put it as "China was very willing to subsidize
| the cost of mining these elements as environmental damage".
| a2tech wrote:
| People 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 wrote:
| But 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.
| wolvoleo wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| You 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).
| estearum wrote:
| Pretty sure consumers would still buy all the nice
| downstream products even if they damaged their own
| backyards.
|
| Evidence: Long history of us doing exactly that.
|
| Valuing convenience, modern products etc does not mean
| one "doesn't care" about the negative externalities, just
| like going out to eat at a nice restaurant doesn't mean
| someone "doesn't care" about saving money.
| tbossanova wrote:
| Individual EUers might care about the environment. It's
| pretty hard to personally avoid any dirty imported stuff
| as you just don't know where it all ends up. Though I
| guess overall voting patterns might back up your argument
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| It'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.
| terminalshort wrote:
| The worst part is that most of number 3 is self imposed by
| the ridiculous amount of environmental review and litigation
| delays surrounding that process. Sure, cost of labor is some
| of it, but really it's not very much in comparison.
| Supermancho wrote:
| Tungsten demand is real and bulk sources are quite scarce,
| today. It would be helpful if the historical charts went back
| farther than 2016. Where did the US get Tungsten in the 80s
| and 90s? South Korea, China, and Russia. The US and Canada
| had Tungsten mines, but the value wasn't there due to
| international pricing undercutting the industry. America's
| dogged federal agenda to break free of all Chinese influence
| or Capitalism, which will go first? We know the answer.
| incahoots wrote:
| >Now that China has become more adversarial
|
| I think it's the other way around here. I say that as China's
| policy has primarily focused on self-reliance to the degree
| that it's overshadowed the west in several sectors with the
| exception of a few (Tech/AI, Finance, Bio) and given their
| persistence to close the gap I'd say we aren't too far from
| being eclipsed entirely.
|
| One just has to look at the economics of it all and come to the
| conclusion that many have already arrived at...
| hunterpayne wrote:
| _cough_ Wolf warrior diplomacy _cough_
| tehjoker wrote:
| > Now that China has become more adversarial
|
| Just a nitpick, but it is the reverse, the United States has
| become more adversarial. China isn't kidnapping heads of state.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| 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?
| AceJohnny2 wrote:
| The US govt already tracks the geopolitical status of "Critical
| Minerals" at the USGS:
|
| https://www.usgs.gov/tools/critical-minerals-atlas
| sholladay wrote:
| So we are finally building the Rods from God
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinetic_bombardment
| chwtutha wrote:
| 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.
| goopypoop wrote:
| obligatory simpsons reference:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTLYris4kJU
| h4kunamata wrote:
| 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.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| > 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.
| maxglute wrote:
| 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.
| lovich wrote:
| Looking up details on this because I had never heard of the
| situation, and I was unaware that the ballpoint pen was only
| produced by so few countries.
|
| I didn't realize the tips were tungsten carbide either.
| fnord77 wrote:
| [delayed]
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(page generated 2026-02-09 23:00 UTC)