Metals

Wearing fireproof coveralls, Ilya Dmitriyev plods past a smelter that belches smoke and gushes molten metal, the chief product of this gritty patch of Arctic tundra where the air tastes of sulfur and concrete apartment blocks crumble on the shifting permafrost. This is the home of Norilsk Nickel, a former slave labor camp -- once part of the dictator Josef Stalin's infamous Gulag -- that is now the gray capital of Russia's glittering new metals empire. Since President Vladimir V.

Copper plunged the most in 14 years, part of a global decline in base metals, on concern that a slowing economy in China could erode demand that led to a 15-year high in prices last week. The slump in metals also hammered stocks of many commodity companies. Copper usage in China, the world's biggest buyer, fell 21% in July from a year earlier, leading a worldwide decline of 3.3%, the Lisbon-based International Copper Study Group said Tuesday.

It is not the sort of heavy metal that detonates from 20,000 watts oftri-amped JBL speakers, peels back your eyelids, ruptures an eardrum then pries open your head and slams your brain into goo. It will not make Def Leppard a few zillion dollars on their next album, Sonic Banshee. Nor does Jesse Helms want it banned. This kind of heavy metal makes no sound . . . unless you drop it. You cannot put it in your CD player. It will not scare the cat.

Gold, which glittered following the October stock market crash, has lost much of its luster, dropping to an eight-month low Wednesday with further declines feared. Gold for February delivery closed at $438.70 an ounce on New York's Commodity Exchange, down $15.20 for the day and off about 12% from its peak in December.

Exploding magnesium chips, burning white hot in a City of Industry warehouse Tuesday, fed an intense, spectacular fire with flames visible as far as 15 miles away, fire officials said. Because magnesium explodes upon contact with water, firefighters initially took up defensive positions around the Mark Metals warehouse at 15429 E. Proctor Ave., training their hoses on the one-story building's walls--rather than on the flames themselves--in an effort to prevent the walls from collapsing.

The rampant theft of copper and other metals in Southern California has begun hitting Inland Empire freeways hard, leaving motorists in increasing danger as traffic signals and lights in underpasses and rest areas have gone dark, law enforcement and Caltrans officials said Tuesday. Thieves also have swiped guardrails and irrigation systems along roadways.

These are times for people like Howard Ruff. The stock market is in turmoil. The junk bond market has crashed. And people are uncertain about prospects for the economy, inflation and interest rates. In the worst of all possible worlds for investors, the U.S. economy might fall into stagflation--a period of rising inflation and stagnant economic growth like that of the 1970s.

Gold prices, which rallied a bit on Friday after plummeting to a six-year low this week, may not have seen the worst of their doldrums. Many market experts, discouraged by relative worldwide stability and a lessened threat of inflation, see little hope for a near-term revival in the beleaguered gold market. "We are seeing everyone from the day traders to the leveraged purchasers to the fund managers unloading left, right and center," said Bruce Kaplan, president of Kaplan & Co.

Fears of wild gold selling by the Soviet Union pushed the precious metal to a five-year low Wednesday before prices recovered late in the day, causing some experts to forecast a bleak future for the lackluster gold market. The spot futures price of gold on New York's Commodity Exchange traded as low as $341 an ounce, its lowest price since June, 1986, before rising to close at $345.40 an ounce, down $4.50 from Tuesday's close.

Engineers do not allow this material to be used for building bridges or oil pipelines. They know it's not strong enough. But for the steel-frame structures that we live and work in, they have allowed builders to use it by the ton. Obscured beneath eye-pleasing finishings, the material is a weld metal that fuses thick beams, columns and plates of structural steel. Walk through most any steel building from San Diego to Seattle and it surrounds you.