Great summary of candidate info from EPI:

energyandpolicy.org/georgia-psc-...

3 of the 5 PSC commissioners have stayed in power since 2022 after the 2022 election was cancelled

GA's PSC has voted to raise rates 6 times since the cancelled election

Monthly electric bills for residents served by Georgia Power are $43 more than they were 2 years ago

Rare earths actually enable lasers of all kinds used in:
- LiDAR
- Self-driving cars
- LASIK
- Breaking up kidney stones
- Photolithography & chip-making

As a 23 y/o who will be having my mid-life crisis in 2050, I feel uniquely justified in saying: “screw the 2050 deadline”

I'm very interested in hearing more about the rationale behind designating REE investments as uneconomical...

An interesting note: "A former U.S. official said the Biden administration considered using CHIPS Act grants for rare earths but decided it was uneconomical, required many environmental exemptions and was best left for the Department of Energy to handle."

They mention earlier "Other countries, most notably China, offer massive industrial subsidies, overproduce exports, and disregard labor rules and environmental concerns."

These factors (among many others) underpin the Chinese manufacturing behemoth. Not autonomous robot arms & Boston robotics dogs

So yeah, that's how rare earth magnets get made. It's niche, advanced metallurgy that needs well-trained technicians to operate equipment

Also materials/mechanical/chemical engineers to do rigorous quality tests and certify the product as industrial grade

From there, the magnets get shaped, coated to protect against oxidation and then magnetized in a 3~5 Tesla field to "lock in" the magnetic properties

The last big step is annealing. Basically, slowly cooling the 1000°C metal in stages (still like 600°C). This "massages" out tension in the microstructure, giving the magnet even MORE magnetic power

Sintering lets us control the atomic/crystal structure of the material

Crystal structure matters for the same reason why diamond and graphite/pencil led are both carbon but have such different properties