Running on Empty: Copper

Hydro power as well, and usually they put the smelter rather close to the power source to minimize transmission.

But maybe we're still low on copper, IDK, but making aluminum should be rather possible.

> Second, all that electricity, even if you generate it with nuclear reactors, have to be delivered via copper wires.

This is indeed a massive red flag. You need conductors, but the material they are made of is pretty much irrelevant.

These days you'd have to search quite a bit to find not-ancient copper conductors in the larger electric grid. Aluminium might have a slightly higher resistance, but when you can just use a thicker wire it's almost always the more attractive choice.

If you don't even know that the grid mostly uses aluminium, you probably shouldn't be making big claims about what is and isn't possible with copper wiring.

Indeed.

Aluminum is actually a (far) superior conductor to copper per unit mass. It would be used on transmission lines even if it was the same price as copper, because the towers can be cheaper and farther apart. It's in increasing use in EVs due to the lower mass.

Copper is still used when the conductive density matters, like the windings of an electric motor. But if copper prices increase further, manufacturers will make sacrifices to efficiency and power density in order to save cost. And they'll figure out how to better balance the use of Al vs. Cu, perhaps using Cu only for the conductors closest to the core.

We also use copper for transformers, which are fairy "dumb" in their usual design. Solid-state transformers exist, which use much less copper, but are currently more expensive. They will no longer be more expensive if the price of copper goes up too much. And they'll probably get cheaper in the long run anyway, regardless of copper price, in the same way that switch mode power supplies have totally replaced linear supplies in the consumer space.

I've seen increasing use of copper in fairly mundane uses, like computer heat sinks, that used to be aluminum. The performance is a little better, but it won't be worthwhile if copper gets way more expensive. They'll just go back to aluminum, or use some other innovation (carbon heat spreaders, etc.) if price becomes an issue.

> First, no, power can be delivered by wires made out of aluminum and indeed, it often is, I don't think that much of the transmission grid is copper

Seconded, aluminum works just fine as a conductor. I’m pretty sure that all overhead utility distribution conductors are a steel core wrapped with aluminum conductors and air for insulation, and I’d bet that underground distribution conductors are also aluminum.

SER cable from the utility transformer secondary to your meter socket also uses aluminum conductors.

You usually need to go up a couple of sizes for aluminum vs copper (#1/0 Cu ~= #3/0 Al) but it depends on the specific ampacity.

I don't know about other countries but in Canada, I can think of a few aluminum smelting operations and they're all geolocated in close proximity to hydroelectric dams.

>This seems to be trying to say that we can't make aluminum without copper, but that seems nonsensical.

The far better argument is that, if it were simple to replace copper with aluminum, this would create a ceiling on the price of copper. However, this hasn't happened. Many applications of copper can theoretically be replaced by copper, but in practice the reactivity and thermal performance issues of aluminum can be challenging. Aluminum wiring in homes, for example, has a very bad reputation.

This isn't fatal, but it is a problem. And if society doesn't plan for it, it could become a more painful problem.

> as “renewables” cannot provide the stable current

Stopped reading right after that nonsense.

The mining majors, BHP, Rio Tinto, et al have petabytes of surface geochemistry, samples, near surface magnetic maps that penetrate into the crust, 3D seismic maps, drill cores, technical reports on every mine ever, surrounding geology, and good models on where economic feasible (at particular price points) amounts of desirable metals can be found.

For example, there are only so many places significant masses of porphyry copper deposit will be found (although these aren't the only types of copper deposit).

For people interested in subscribing, there are databases such as the S&P portal that scratch some of that industry knowledge.

https://www.spglobal.com/en/research-insights/market-insight...

although they seem to have backed off from a public page about the GIS portal to the mining databases they purchased.

So; pretty much most areas have been scratched - Antartica is still open, the Artic has possibilities .. but should we.

There are known untapped masses of copper, eg: in the US there's a mass that will take 64 years to mine .. that's on Indian land so, you know, it'll be US history all over again poking that one.

We don’t know. The entire article is garbage.

Copper is also widely recycled and reused, Google told me that the amount of copper recycled each year in the US is about 1/3rd of what is used that year, so for every 3 pounds of copper sold each year, 1 pound finds its way to a recycler.