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A comment on Battery Reality: There’s Nothing Better Than Lithium-Ion Coming Soon. Parent comment

Re:Battery Reality: There’s Nothing Better Than Lithium-Ion ... by andy_ppp on Saturday April 06, 2019 @01:44PM (#19591974)
I find it astonishing how much iron ore is shipped from Western Aus to China, it would be far more ecologically sounds to smelt it there, same is true with most of the things dug out of the ground. I suppose in the scheme of things this is the thin end of the wedge but shipping unrefined iron ore at a 30% weight premium is desirable so that China has a steel industry without depleting their own reserves of Iron ore.
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Re:Battery Reality: There’s Nothing Better Than Lithium-Ion ... by winter_blue on Saturday April 06, 2019 @01:54PM (#19592033)
It's probably down to the labor cost of smelting. Unskilled labor is prohibitively expensive in Australia compared to China. If they manage to fully automate smelting, end to end, I don't see why the smelting wouldn't be done locally in Australia.
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Re:Battery Reality: There’s Nothing Better Than Lithium-Ion ... by vbezhenar on Saturday April 06, 2019 @02:03PM (#19592102)
You have an assumption that automatics is always cheaper than human labor. This is not obvious to me. You can have humans working 8 hour/day for as cheap as $100/month in some poor regions. And automatics still require R&D, service, electricity.
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Re:Battery Reality: There’s Nothing Better Than Lithium-Ion ... by jcampbell1 on Saturday April 06, 2019 @02:31PM (#19592247)
I don't think Australia has much metallurgical coal. Steel making is dirty, though Australia has plenty of places to make steel where it wouldn't cause a serious local air quality problem.
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Re:Battery Reality: There’s Nothing Better Than Lithium-Ion ... by dredmorbius on Saturday April 06, 2019 @02:38PM (#19592288)
Australia does have a lot of coal, also exported.

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

Metallurgical coal tends to be biuminous, which AU has much of.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metallurgical_coal Also:

http://minerals.org.au/sites/default/files/181012%20Commodit...

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Re:Battery Reality: There’s Nothing Better Than Lithium-Ion ... by andy_ppp on Saturday April 06, 2019 @05:16PM (#19593048)
They export the coal and the iron ore which I thought was super weird, different sides of the country but still...
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Re:Battery Reality: There’s Nothing Better Than Lithium-Ion ... by throwaway2048 on Sunday April 07, 2019 @12:01AM (#19594756)
China also massively subsidizes its steel industry, and produces it below cost.
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