I suspect that nowadays, primary steel is kind of a niche market, precisely for the sort of application you describe below:
"All steel is not simply steel, and items like a deep drawing steel can have purity requirements that exceed what an arc furnace operating on scrap can produce.
Which is why I made the point....use coal where it makes economic sense. But the days of massive coal production in the US are done with for the foreseeable future. If the coal miners need jobs, it seems to me that the thing to do is put them to work developing the Marcellus and Utica shales, which are right under their feet.
The transition from massive to not massive must have happened last year when U.S. coal production dropped to 740 million tons.
Lack of takeaway capacity in the Marcellus/Utica basin makes finding a job in that game quite an undertaking.
US BOF steel production was 1/3 of the total last year. Not sure if that counts as a niche or not. However, the book about Nucor from 25 years ago and the tendency for arc furnace plants to operate as open shops made them heroes in some circles.