Britain must retain the means of making iron, says Sir Andrew Cook
'Iron, Cold Iron, is the master of men all'. So reads Rudyard Kipling's memorable poem, and so might the steel men of Scunthorpe have recited with relief when learning their jobs had been saved from the Chinese wrecking ball.
This steelworks, and its blast furnaces in particular, has been much in the news recently, the commentary fuelled more by ignorance and emotion than plain fact.
For that fact is that a blast furnace, for all its association with the crag-jowelled ironmasters of nineteenth century England, is essential to any modern nation wishing to remain in what we still call the first world.
Put aside the issues of pollution and climate change and consider instead the reality. You cannot make steel without iron, and you cannot make iron without a blast furnace.
For iron does not exist naturally in its pure state. It is embedded within a brownish-coloured rock called iron ore.
To extract the iron from the rock, the rock has first to be smelted.
The term 'smelting', as you would expect, refers to melting plus something more.
The 'something more' in this case is a chemical reaction which changes the fundamental composition of the material being smelted.
In chemistry terms, the composition of the rock – iron ore – is changed into two separate materials, iron itself, and a residue which we call slag.
This process can only be done in a blast furnace using coke, a fuel derived from coal, which provides both the heat and the carbon, the two being essential to the reaction.
Iron ore plus carbon plus heat gives you iron plus slag. The slag goes mostly to waste – some is used to make roads. The iron is now ready to be made into steel.
'But can't you also make steel in an electric arc furnace? This is what we are told, and the arc furnace is so much greener. Isn't all that carbon dioxide that the blast furnace spews out avoided with the arc furnace?'
I am sorry to disappoint you but the answer is 'No' on both counts. An electric arc furnace can only reprocess old scrap steel. Iron ore, being a rock, doesn't conduct electricity.
Moreover, repeated recycling of old steel gradually de-purifies it, with levels of contaminants building up to a point where the steel cannot be used for certain essential purposes, notably military and medical use.
So if you need pure steel, you need iron, and if you cannot supply the iron yourself, you have to import it.
Someone, somewhere, has to use a blast furnace to make the iron from which is made the steel.
Who is that someone? Well, if Britain has no blast furnaces, it has to be from across the English Channel, and possibly from a distant, and maybe potentially hostile part of the world.
They can refuse to supply or charge us what they like. China uses its vast steel industry as a geo-political tool, its objective being to destroy those of weaker countries unwilling or unable to defend their own.
Moreover, it is a known fact that the quality of Chinese steel cannot be trusted – just ask any construction worker.
'OK' you say, 'but what about the massive carbon footprint of the blast furnace?' Let there be no doubt, the blast furnace does emit a large quantity of carbon dioxide.
But set this against three facts. Firstly, carbon dioxide is not a poison. It is an inert gas essential to plant growth.
Without it, there is no food and the human race dies out. Secondly, if Britain does not have a blast furnace, the country's needs must be satisfied by someone else's. Global iron production indelibly emits a set quantity of CO2.
The effect of Britain closing its blast furnaces on worldwide carbon emissions is precisely zero.
And thirdly, don't get the idea the electric arc furnace is carbon-free. It also emits CO2, produced by its carbon electrodes, which steadily turn into gas as the melting process consumes them.
As in most things, a balance must be struck. If Britain wishes to remain in the first rank of nations, it needs a steel industry, and this has to include at least one blast furnace.
If it wishes to be self-sufficient in the manufacturing of steel products, essential to national security and well-being, it must retain the means of making iron.
Britain has the skills, the equipment, and the essential coking coal from the Cumberland mine that has been short-sightedly refused planning permission by the authorities. Let common sense now overcome ignorance and emotion.
The nation's security and industrial well-being are at stake.
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