

Mining and refining them is moreso about technological capacity
Economy of scale not technological capacity.
Essentially the problem is you have a yield of 84% iron 3% antimony for example. It only makes sense to use a nondestructive process to refine the antimony if you can make a profit on it, but with a 3% yield that is hard not only because of the small quantity, but it puts additional cost in refining out the iron later (or earlier). So sometimes you just say fuck it and only refine the iron.
The mine that the US just approved for antimony that’s an ecological disaster is a gold mine that’s like 2.5% antimony I think in terms of sampled yield.
The egregious thing here is they’ve arrested more Jews for antisemitism which is just actually Palestinian liberation protests, and yet neonazis can just do this shit.