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This is technically false - it means that the UK would be the only G7 country unable to manufacture its own pig iron for conversion into steel. And this explains what is going on. Because of our early industrialisation and early deindustrialisation, the UK is the Saudi Arabia of scrap steel.
Mass of available steel decreases very slowly - a bit gets lost to rust, and a bit gets lost to landfill, but most of the steel in a manufactured object or a steel-framed building is available for recycling at the end of its life. The total stock of steel the UK needs is increasing very slowly - the total weight of steel in manufactured goods in the UK has been high for a very long time. (The value-to-weight ratio of manufactured goods continues to increase so a lack of mass growth isn't necessarily a sign of impoverishment) and although I support a big increase in steel-framed building construction, the median voter doesn't. And the rate at which the stock of steel in the UK increases is covered by imports of imbedded steel in manufactured products. So we can meet our domestic needs for steel entirely by recycling scrap in electric arc furnaces.
The physical logic of keeping a blast furnace in the UK is based on us being a net exporter of refined steel products - and in practice those exports had to go to the EU because every country protects its domestic steel industry. So post-Brexit the blast furnaces were on borrowed time - the money for the next needed major renovation was never going to be invested on commercial terms.
Recycled steel can't be used in certain areas. If you want a gun barrel or a nuclear reactor or anything important and high-performance, you want virgin steel. It's a key capability for a major economy. A strong steel industry has flow on effects in construction, advanced engineering, munitions, shipbuilding, energy...
Every country protects its steel industry for a reason!
This is FUD from the legacy steelmakers in the US. In the UK, the speciality steel business (mostly based in Sheffield, as it has been since the Middle Ages, which is why Henry Bessemer moved there to found the modern steel industry) went electric arc first. The blast furnaces at Scunthorpe are fueling a long products mill - i.e. general construction grade steel.
We already have a company making gun barrels and nuclear reactor parts out of recycled steel.
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