Low-background Steel

Commenters debate steel's suitability for certain applications, highlighting challenges in production and purity, with repeated references to low-background steel due to its low radioactivity from pre-nuclear era manufacturing.

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#1445
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Keywords

e.g US ZDP LLM archive.org archive.ph CO2 GHG economist.com wikipedia.org steel carbon ore iron fossil taste folding scrap deposits renewable

Sample Comments

justincormack Oct 2, 2025 View on HN

Seems that some steel production is suitable.

jhgb Sep 24, 2021 View on HN

Steelmaking is useful; you can build stuff out of steel.

WheatMillington Sep 19, 2023 View on HN

As if it's trivial to process steel.

thsksbd Jan 13, 2024 View on HN

Steel can work. Just not that steel.

adrianN Apr 10, 2021 View on HN

Steel is too difficult, let's instead use something that was invented in the 1960s?

p-s-v May 18, 2025 View on HN

are you interested in steels? what do you think would be better?

toolslive Jun 22, 2022 View on HN

It depends on what you want: we don't know exactly what they did. However, we can produce better steel no matter what criterium you have for stiffness, strength, corrosion or oxidation resistance (sorry I'm just guessing the English terminology here, I'm not a native speaker)

fatihpense Feb 11, 2024 View on HN

reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel

hiven Sep 12, 2017 View on HN

I think steel is easier to manufacture and more abundant.

nharada Jul 20, 2022 View on HN

Reminds me of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Low-background_steel