Nickel pricing (~$6.50/lb)

Cited as the explanation for nickel alloys' expense relative to steel.

The problem with nickel alloys is they're expensive. You're talking around — I don't remember my numbers — about $6.50 a pound for nickel as a metal. We use commercially pure nickel for some situations, but like most pure metals it doesn't have very high strength. So we strengthen it by adding copper, molybdenum, iron, or chrome and iron. Nickel-chrome-iron is like saying stainless steel, except instead of eighteen percent chrome, eight percent nickel, and seventy-two percent iron, it's got seventy-two percent nickel and eight percent iron. We just switched the iron-nickel ratios. Then nickel-chrome-moly, nickel-iron-chrome-moly, and the cobalt alloys.