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Gold/Mining/Energy : Silver prices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Judy who wrote (3796)	9/9/2001 10:09:12 AM
From: Real Man	Respond to of 8010

Looks like a true story. Making wires of high-temperature superconductors has been a problem for almost 15 years now. However, 1) Silver is not part of the superconductor itself. I guess, it may not be the most expensive element there. 2) These systems will have to be cooled down to liquid nitrogen temperatures. So they will be significantly more widespread (liquid helium is also more expensive than silver :) ) than before, but still, for a limited class of applications, such as magnets. Magnets for MRI imaging should be used in every hospital, though It's unclear how much silver these things will consume

To: Judy who wrote (3796)	9/9/2001 9:05:01 PM
From: The Vet	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 8010

Judy, the superconductors that are presently in use are all very brittle, hard to work, ceramic type materials. In order to be useful they must be encased in, or deposited on a suitable metal to provide strength and flexibility. Silver has been proven to be very suitable for this and because of silver's inherent low resistance to electric current it makes the task of connections to the super-conducting cable significantly easier. It also has suitable chemical properties. Newer processes that use nickle in a tape rather then a wire have been tried but to date the only process that I am aware of that has been made into a commercial success has involved silver as a significant portion of the wire produced. It is not surprising that the companies who make the wire would rather not make an issue of this, as they would obviously prefer to keep the price of a critical raw material as low as possible.