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A comment on HH70, the first high-temperature superconducting Tokamak achieves first plasma. Parent comment

Re:HH70, the first high-temperature superconducting Tokamak ... by TaylorAlexander on Saturday June 22, 2024 @10:38PM (#40764289)
I don’t know if the statement you are replying to is correct “we don’t have enough steel” but what I can say is steel (well, iron) is about the most common material on earth. I’m surprised to see that aluminum is slightly more abundant, but they are similar.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_crust

However this chart shows that iron represents more than 94% of all metals mined. That is, iron (used to make steel) is the most commonly mined metal by far. So actually more common materials can’t be used as no more common metal exists.

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Re:HH70, the first high-temperature superconducting Tokamak ... by willis936 on Sunday June 23, 2024 @07:15AM (#40766553)
Earth is almost entirely iron, but Aluminum floats in iron so it ends up being a large amount of the crust. But yeah, if we're ever like "gee we don't have enough iron" then we've far surpassed all other possible natural resource limits of the planet.
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