`Continuous casting and steel industry capacity collapse`

Today ~97% yield via continuous casting; eight-story-tall plants pouring I-beams via a curved water-cooled copper mold, cut to length with oxygen torches (no fuel gas needed). Tom uses a photograph as a teaching aid. Lineage note: gold and copper were continuously cast decades before steel.

Today, because of continuous casting, we're in the ninety-seven percent yield range. With continuous casting you don't have to cut anything off — you just keep pouring into a mold, which is a water-cooled copper mold, slightly tapered, actually curved. You have your pipe, but you just keep going — as it comes out you cut it off.