Hacker News Reader

Because it's questionable whether that's even possible.

Of course it is possible! Around 25% of the world's steel is already produced by electric arc furnaces. 100% in some countries, and over 70% in the USA.

The UK exports 7-8 million tonnes of scrap steel every year, while producing about 5 million tonnes in blast furnaces. There's more than enough feedstock to replace all the UK blast furnace steel production with EAFs and still have some left over.

Does that apply in the case of war, which was intended by ‘strategic’? I’m reminded of Australia’s supply of iron to Japan before WWII. Which earned future prime minister Robert Menzies the nickname ‘Pig Iron Bob’.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1938_Dalfram_dispute

In the case of war we'd need to import iron ore anyway so, with this we can import scrap steel.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com