In the August Trains p29, they mention that a prospect for Northshore Mining is a “higher grade pellet for use in hot-briquetted-iron plants that make feedstock for modern electric arc furnaces.” From what I can find this seems like a slightly lower temperature process than iron nuggets. Northshore is owned by Cleveland-Cliffs. Most of the other taconite producers are part of intergrated steel companies with their own blast furnaces. Cliffs is just an ore producer/shipper, and wants to also participate in the electric furnace feedstock side of the industry.
Cleveland Cliffs just built an HBI plant in Toledo near the docks. I’m not sure if it’s in production yet.
Although I was aware of some limited salvage at Scapa Flow of German wrecks for such use, I didn’t give it much thought past that. I wonder if this is why illegal salvage of some coastal wrecks like HMS Prince of Wales and USS Houston have been happening.
Some recent discoveries are now little more than a depression in the seabed like HMAS Perth, the submarine USS Perch (Luckily not a war grave thanks to the whole crew being able to abandon ship), and several Dutch naval vessels.
Before the money ran out and shuttered the program, I was always relieved to hear a wreck was in deep water when the late Paul Allen’s team on the Petrel was on a roll with their WWII shipwreck discoveries. Being a few miles down is the best protection there is for a shipwreck, with only Titanic ever having been disturbed to any degree to my knowledge.
Cleveland Cliffs owns Northshore Mining, United Taconite, Minorca Taconite, and a percentage of Hibbing Taconite (which it manages) in Minnesota, plus the Tilden Mine in Michigan. It owns the HBI plant in Indiana, AK Steel in Ohio, and has bought the US operations of ArcelorMittal giving it Blast Furnaces at Burns Harbor and Indiana Harbor, both in Indiana, and also at Middletown and Cleveland in Ohio. I think this makes CCI the largest producer of steel from blast furnaces in the US. The only other integrated steel producer is US Steel.
I was referring to significant disturbance by man (Like the theory in that 2nd video about submersibles landing on Titanic to deploy ROV’s to explore the forward grand staircase area has caused significant damage to the wreck). Obviously some deepwater wrecks are undergoing significant natural deterioration like the Titanic herself is (While others like the Yorktown off Midway are almost in a state of suspended animation).
But for shipwrecks at substantial depths, only Titanic to the best of my knowledge has generated enough interest where quite a bit of salvage has been done, lots of interior exploration has been undertaken, and lots of bumps and bruises have happened to the wreck during the course of exploration by various groups.
In the future, being discussed is cutting into the bow section itself to retrieve components of Titanic’s wireless system (Which I believe is still going through the courts). Not necessarily against what has happened with Titanic, but she’s definitely in a class of her own where human intrusion at a depth of ~12,000’ is concerned.
For other deepwater wrecks at extreme depths, the depth they rests in is a great asset for the preservation of the wreck and protecting the gravesite that it represents from activities like illegal salvage.
Historically, the mining companies in Minnesota and Michigan were subsidiaries or in some way affiliated with one of the large eastern steel corporations. In past times on Minnesota’s Mesabi Range you could usually tell who owned what since the Duluth Missabe & Iron Range was owned by United States Steel, and served mining operations owned (directly or indirectly) by U.S. Steel. Non-U.S. Steel mining operations would be served by Great Northern.
What’s interesting is that Ford Steel used to get their taconite from the Missabe range. In fact, the Fairlane Taconite Plant was named because of the partial Ford ownership. Now, with Ford Steel was spun off into Rouge Steel, then Severstal and now AK Steel, their ore comes from the Tilden Mine near Marquette, MI and is shipped via Interlake. There are 2-3 ships always in rotation between Marquette and Dearborn. It’s usually either the Herbert C. Jackson, Kay E. Barker and Hon. James L. Oberstar. Two are usually needed with the third doing something else but alternating.
I see they have deversified quite a bit in the last year and a half.
Last week I noticed that the Arcelor finishing mill in Riverdale (ex-Interlake, ex-Acme Steel) is now lettered for Cliffs.
Do they still get the thermos bottles of molton steel over the former PRR line?
The bottle train still operates but its current route is over IHB from the the former Inland Steel plant at Indiana Harbor to Riverdale.
I have relatives with dump trucks. They would unload scrap metal from barges into dump truck and, the transfer to a Nucor mill. One mans truck would always trip the alarm for radioactive material. Problem was, at that time they were hauling gravel for construction at the mill. Next load scale person asked the driver to exit and allow them to search his truck for the source of radiation. Nothing found. Yep the driver had a medical condition and HE was causing the alarm since they used radioactive medicine to treat/diagnoise his medical problem. endmrw0817211016
Nucor has a DRI plant in Louisiana to supply DRI to its mills.
Been to Riverdale by CSX Barr Yrd and have seen them pour molten steel by the plant there