Comment by adrian_b
12 hours ago
That is exactly the conclusion of TFA, that in order to avoid such risks purification plants should also be built in other places, including in USA where the local producers of bromine can provide the raw material.
However, the construction of such a purification plant can take years, so TFA argues that it should be done ASAP, instead of waiting for some catastrophe that would destroy the existing plants, when this would be too late.
That’s not the issue. Someone could build the plant domestically (US), sure. It would take time, but getting a plant build isn’t hard. But who would do that? If the plant isn’t financially stable during non-crisis situations, then it won’t get built without subsidies. A plant that can’t offer a competitive price will never be used during “normal” times, so it becomes financially untenable.
We had the same issue with PPE manufacturing during Covid. We lack production capacity locally (US) because it’s normally cheaper to source from outside suppliers. When we try to build that capacity locally, it fails in the marketplace as soon as the crisis is over and the company is left with an expensive unused factory.
The hard part isn’t building a new plant. It is the commitment to ongoing support for maintaining a diverse supply chain that is more robust to geopolitical disruptions. We are not good at factoring risk into pricing, so we only accept the cheapest prices, to the detriment of a robust supply chain.