Numlock Sunday: Alexander C. Kaufman on the secret body that stymied green homes
By Walt Hickey
Welcome to the Numlock Sunday edition.
This week, I spoke to Alexander C. Kaufman, who helped write “The U.S. May Have Just Scored a Win Against China in the Battle Over a Key Mineral” for HuffPost. Here's what I wrote about it:
A company in Utah is reporting an exciting find of gallium reserves, a soft metal that’s used in all sorts of electronics and defense applications. As it stands, 98 percent of the production of gallium worldwide is controlled by China, and with new trade restrictions that’s causing consternation in the U.S. as prices spike. The company that announced the find, U.S. Critical Materials Corp., needed a gallium concentration of 50 parts per million in the ore to turn a profit. The Sheep Creek deposit in Montana has gallium in 27 times that concentration. The company was originally hunting for thorium deposits when they happened upon this mother lode of gallium.
I wanted to have Alexander on today to talk about a sligh…