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Soviet Union [USSR] Metallurgy Planning and Problems
Plans for the metallurgical industry for the 1990s stressed
rebuilding older steel plants, vastly increasing the volume of
continuous steel casting, and replacing open-hearth furnaces with
oxygen or electric furnaces. In the period through the year 2000,
a projected 52 percent of investment was to go for new equipment.
This degree of investment would be a drastic turnaround because
from 1981 to 1985 five times as much money was spent on equipment
repair as on equipment purchase. Furthermore, to make highly pure
steel, economical removal of sulfur is critical, but the scarcity
of low-sulfur coking coal requires new purification technology.
Although Soviet experts agreed that all these steps were necessary
to enhance the variety and purity of ferrous metallurgy products,
serious obstacles remained. Bottlenecks were chronic in overall
administration, between research and production branches, and
between the industry and its suppliers in the machine-building
sector. Meanwhile, a shortage of
hard currency (see Glossary)
hindered the purchase of sophisticated metal-processing equipment
from the West.
Bottlenecks have also affected the Donetsk metallurgical plant,
where a heralded program installed new blast furnaces in the
mid-1980s but where no auxiliary equipment arrived to run them as
designed. In many cases, industry spokesmen have blamed the
research community for neglecting practical applications in favor
of theoretical projects. Whatever the causes, large-scale
improvement of Soviet metallurgical technology was spotty rather
than consistent during the 1980s.
Data as of May 1989
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