Word: columbium
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Reagan has given the General Services Administration $100 million to start buying as many as 15 materials for the National Defense Stockpile. In addition to high-temperature metals used in jet engines, such as cobalt, titanium and columbium, the Government will consider buying oddities like sisal fibers, a key ingredient for rope; castor-bean oil, a high-quality lubricant; and pyrethrum, an insecticide. While the amounts are not yet great, they represent a new direction in policy. Said Congressman James Santini, a Democrat from Nevada, "This is both a substantive and symbolic beginning. It's long overdue...
...liquid lithium flows through the hot reactor core and emerges at 2,000° F. The tubes that carry it, made of zirconium-columbium alloy, run at near white heat. The lithium is piped through a heat exchanger and turns liquid potassium (boiling point, 1,400° F.) to high-pressure gas that runs a turbine producing 300 kw. to 1,000 kw. of electricity. The potassium gas goes to a wide, flat condenser to be turned back into a liquid (see diagram...
...bigger National Distillers, with assets of $625 million. As unlikely at first glance as marriage of a parson and a show girl, merger would actually make good sense because National, second biggest U.S. maker of polyethylene (first: Union Carbide), also owns 60% of Reactive Metals, Inc. (zirconium, titanium, tantalum, columbium), managed by Bridgeport...
Until recently, one of the scarcest and hardest-sought metals was columbium. Although not extraordinarily tough in itself, it mixes with steel, nickel and other metals to make alloys that can withstand the tremendous jet heat. The U.S. must depend on Africa, however, for 95% of its limited supply. Accordingly, a big hunt was started for substitutes and yielded the most promising wonder metal of all-titanium...
...Government subsidized experimental pilot plants to process small batches of titanium into sheets, rods, etc. and commercial production of titanium was started by Du Pont and Titanium Metals Corp. But the Air Force wanted titanium desperately not only in its pure state but as an ideal substitute for columbium as a hardening agent in alloys. It pressed for a huge program to boost production to 22,000 tons by 1955 (current production: 3,400 tons a year). A long fight ensued. Some defense officials argued that with sheet titanium costing as much as $20 a lb., such a program, with...