USS Great Lakes: More Questions than Answers

The word out of U.S. Steel has been silence since they reported a collection pipe (collector main) falling onto and collapsing part of the roof over their #2 BOP Shop at Great Lakes Works on Thursday evening. Our understanding continues to be that all three blast furnaces are in hot idle (not producing pig iron) and the two BOF’s (or BOP’s) are not operating. This means that steel making operations are temporarily suspended.

The Great Lakes plant has three blast furnaces of which two were operating at the time of the incident. The two furnaces produce about 8,000 tons per day of pig iron. To this the mill we’ll add approximately 30 percent scrap charge. All told we believe the impact to be approximately 11,000 tons per day of lost steel production. We are keeping track of the blast furnace status on our website. You can locate the furnace status tab when logged into the website under Resources – Steel Mills – Furnace Status.