Nappies To Asia

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Originally Posted by Ean Austral

Educate the population to buy local first , if and when you can do that then you can look at the rest.

We are all guilty of buying the cheapest no matter where its made or from , and wanting to be paid the most for what we do. Change that attitude and businesses may decide to stay. no one to blame but ourselves.

Cheers Ean

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I think organisations like the WTO, IMF are to blame as they sold the world globalisation as as a utopian dream, in that each country would do what they were best at, so in theory the 1st world would do manufacturing, financial services etc, and the 3rd world would do fishing, forestry, food crop production, etc. This would all be very efficient, the best people doing the best job with best resources, but then the companies realised they could get things made much cheaper in the 3rd world due to labour costs, so countries began competing on labour cost alone. It didn't matter that transport costs were higher or energy production was not quite as efficient, or pollution regulations were almost non-existent, as long as the labour cost reduction made up for it.

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Originally Posted by DiscoMick

I like the idea of making lithium batteries here, since we have all the raw materials here.

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Where are the other elements/minerals mined in Oz?

I guess we can make synthetic Graphite - good thing we have coal mines available [emoji6]

Tombie asks what other opportunities are there for Australia to downstream process minerals.

I'd suggest the rare Earth Elements (REE) and Uranium are two obvious contenders. Currently REE concentrates are produced in Australia and being processed, rather contentiously, in Malaysia. It is possible that a new owner of the REE mine may bring production back to Australia. We should embrace that as REEs are controlled by Chinese producers so there is a good deal of opportunity in producing REEs since countries like the US and Japan will be willing to pay to avoid being totally dependent on Chinese supplies. Moreover REE processing is a complex, reasonably technologically advanced process - something we should focus on.

Another obvious opportunity is to convert yellowcake into Uranium, enrich the Uranium to the levels required for reactors, and then take back the fuel rods after use to store the radioactive waste safely in our unusually stable environment. That is we offer a closed loop to countries we sell Uranium to, and make good money from it.

Both REE processing and Uranium enrichment and waste storage require sensible storage of radioactive waste (REE ores contain Thorium which produces a mildly radioactive waste that needs to be managed carefully). We have, or could develop the capacity, to manage these processes safely and build on our political and geological stability as an asset. To do so would require a grown up discussion of the risks associated with such industries, but I'd suggest it can be done and the benefits (export income, well paid technologically advanced jobs, some if not all in regional areas) would be large.

Incidentally in truth I think that due to escalating power prices we will actually see the reverse of more downstream processing - we will see less since our Aluminium smelting industries must now be under real threat due to the huge electricity consumption associated with converting alumina to aluminium.

Cheers

Michael

Slight misinterpretation Michael.

I was referring to making the batteries here. We don’t have the other required elements for Lithium battery production in sufficient volume so would be importing to our expensive labour.

Or we use coal and make the graphite. [emoji846]

As for additional processing, I’m all for it. But with Australian wages as high as they are its damn near unlikely to ever happen. Some of my employees are on +$65 an hour.

I know this thread started about nappies but its come back to industry , utilisation then to uranium processing.

Not far from Olympic Dam is Broken Hill.

If yellowcake was processed locally and spent fuel rods were returned they could be stored forever at the bottom of 2 or 3 of the world's deepest ...now unused... mine shafts. It could be taken down around 2 1/2 miles and out into one of the drives (they go for a long way under Broken Hill) and sealed for purpetuity.

It would create an ongoing world industry or 2 or 3 that would see again thousands of workers employed across that area of Australia.

Another mine could establish a huge stored hydro system falling several thousand feet (think 12,000')with a number of turbines on the way down...in fact you could have one on every level , which were around 180' feet apart. Not a problem to pump the water back , they have always had pumps in several stages pumping water out of the mines there. The system could operate perpetually with one generator dedicated to the power to return the water to the surface. Half the infrastructure needed is already there.

Problem with storing radioactive material deep in mines is if the mine flooded it might pollute the water aquifer, which could spread the contaminated water over a wide area.
Pumped hydro in mines seems to be very viable and I have read about several proposals.
As for making lithium batteries here, I wonder if Century will expand its range to produce them.

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Originally Posted by DiscoMick

Problem with storing radioactive material deep in mines is if the mine flooded it might pollute the water aquifer, which could spread the contaminated water over a wide area.
Pumped hydro in mines seems to be very viable and I have read about several proposals.
As for making lithium batteries here, I wonder if Century will expand its range to produce them.

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I’ve worked on a pumped hydro project, interesting stuff.
The project uses a currently active mine which is being opened up to improve its future capacity as Hydro.

I don’t know how the numbers for Lithium batteries would stack up here - we would either need to import Graphite or synthesise it from Coal.

Processing the stuff is neither cheap, nor clean.

the more that wages rise, the more jobs that will be sent offshore. (for jobs that can be sent offshore)

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Originally Posted by Eevo

the more that wages rise, the more jobs that will be sent offshore. (for jobs that can be sent offshore)

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Not necessarily. Germany has kept manufacturing despite high wages.

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Originally Posted by DiscoMick

Not necessarily. Germany has kept manufacturing despite high wages.

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we're a long long way from being like germany my friend.