6 ms·

Don't these fabs need like an insane amount of water? Why would they build it of all places in arizona which as far as I know barely meets drinking water requir

by _8j50 4y ago

Don't these fabs need like an insane amount of water? Why would they build it of all places in arizona which as far as I know barely meets drinking water requirements (at least at some cities) and is basically mostly a desert?

tony_cannistra 4y ago
I came here for this comment. Thank you for bringing this up. Although Phoenix is one of America's most progressive cities with regard to minimizing per-capita water usage, the whole prospect of the city of Phoenix was ill-conceived from the beginning. Of course that doesn't matter now -- the city is there. But I hope that TSMC knows what they're getting themselves in to.
- shagie 4y ago
  An article from August 2021: Water shortages loom over future semiconductor fabs in Arizona https://www.theverge.com/22628925/water-semiconductor-shortage-arizona-drought https://www.theverge.com/22628925/water-semiconductor-shorta... > Chipmakers are setting up shop in Arizona as drought worsens > Major semiconductor manufacturers looking to expand in Arizona will likely be spared from water cuts induced by an unprecedented water shortage in the Southwest, at least for now. As part of the scramble to end a shortage of another kind — the global dearth in semiconductor chips — both Intel and TSMC plan to open new facilities in Arizona. But they’re setting up shop just as one of the worst droughts in decades grows worse across the Western US. > ... > While Intel recycles much of its water, more fabs will mean it will need to send even more water through its systems. The company says that Arizona has been “vital” to Intel’s operations for more than four decades. The state is already home to its first “mega-factory network” and its newest semiconductor fab. Intel used more than 5.2 billion gallons of water in Arizona in 2020 — roughly 20 percent of which was reclaimed water, according to its most recent corporate responsibility report. > ... > TSMC said in an email to The Verge that for now it doesn’t expect the water shortage to have “any impact” on its plan to build a new fab in Arizona, although it says it will “continue to monitor the water supply situation closely.”
  - gdilla 4y ago
    I was also wondering about the added energy needed to keep the fab cool enough to work in during the punishing summer months in phoenix. Seems like an odd choice.
    - coredog64 4y ago
      If only there was a way to turn energetic photons into electricity?
  - tony_cannistra 4y ago
    Thanks for sharing that. At the very least, Arizona has "water budget" in the form of severely curtailing water-intensive agriculture. I am hopeful that the politicians there are smart enough to realize that semiconductor fabs are an industry whose water needs are worth prioritizing more than farming alfalfa in the desert. The problem is that these agricultural water rights are old, and the folks who hold them are often disenfranchised. Using a ton of water in the desert to farm is their whole livlihood; we don't just pull people's generational careers out from under them any more, like we used to. Not without a chance at an alternative.
    - coredog64 4y ago
      Farmers are selling their farmland to developers who then turn it into housing. Everyone wins: Residential water use is significantly lower than agricultural, the farmers get rich, and more housing is being built.
      - Mistletoe 4y ago
        Should people live in an area with no water? It feels like we have so many problems caused by people just not living in the locations in the USA where there is lots of rainfall and water. I have tons of water, my state just uses lakes filled by rainwater. We make electricity with it too. https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Average_precipitation_in_the_lower_48_states_of_the_USA.png https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Average_precipitat... I always find it interesting that people keep cramming into the western and specifically southwestern part of the USA. Like the original settlers just kept going that way due to the human natural urge to keep going further and hope things would be better over the horizon. I often wonder what America would be like if the western US was settled first. I imagine people would have noticed how awful and non-conducive to human life it is and kept on trucking to the promised land in the East.
- downrightmike 4y ago
  These plants will be 100% recycling on water and Phoenix gives a lot of water to Tucson to store that they could pull back as needed. Central Arizona Project is a good read. reply
- icey 4y ago
  There have been people living where Phoenix sits today for at least 1,500 years. The canals in Phoenix were originally dug by the Hohokam 1,400+ years ago. Dutch settlers used what remained to design the canal system that's used today. Here's a cool article that describes some of what they built http://www.azheritagewaters.nau.edu/loc_hohokam.html http://www.azheritagewaters.nau.edu/loc_hohokam.html
dsr3 4y ago
Some people said because Arizona is in relatively stable seismic region in the US. But I don't buy it. TSMC fab in Taiwan is also located in seismic prone region. Compared to the cost of the fab itself, seismic isolation system is relatively affordable.
- akiselev 4y ago
  They need seismic isolation regardless of where they build. Cutting edge fabs require such precision that a poorly shielded USB port can cause enough noise to create problems, let alone the vibrations from distant earthquakes. (Source: previous work with electron microscopes) Fabs are expensive because every part of building it from the electrical wiring to the seismic isolation to the HVAC system needs to be perfectly tuned to remove all sources of noise. Most of these costs are superlinear if not exponential with the magnitude of noise.
- dharbin 4y ago
  I heard a story about an Intel fab in Arizona that would always produce bad silicon at a certain time a day. After some investigations it was determined that a train passed by at that time every day causing enough seismic activity to disrupt the manufacturing process.
- foobiekr 4y ago
  Logistics risks around the plant are not nearly as easily done. There is an inherent benefit to not being exposed to seismic and weather issues. AZ isn’t a bad choice.
jimbob45 4y ago
I was curious about this a while back. My cursory research showed that these facilities are actually phenomenal at recycling water to the point that they're not actually guzzling water at the rate you might expect. ...deputy spokesperson Nina Kao said via email that “approximately 65% of the water used in the Arizona fab will come from TSMC’s in-house water reclamation system... https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/joannaallhands/2022/03/04/arizona-semiconductor-intel-tsmc-water-use/6915685001/ https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/joannaallhands...
adam_arthur 4y ago
Water can be piped around cheaply. Worst case they pump it in from nearby states
- tony_cannistra 4y ago
  Arizona actually already does this, in profound quantities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Arizona_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Arizona_Project The problem isn't the pipes, obviously. It's the fact that the 1922 agreement that divided up the water in the Colorado River (upon which Arizona depends) incorrectly calculated the amount of water available in the river every year. The Colorado River Compact divides up 20 million acre-feet of water. Modern analyses show that the Colorado river's average flow is about 15.5 million acre feet, and has been less than 13 million acre-feet during the last decade or so. These reductions curtail who gets what water. https://www.5280.com/how-the-100-year-old-colorado-river-compact-laid-the-foundation-for-the-wests-current-water-crisis/ https://www.5280.com/how-the-100-year-old-colorado-river-com...
  - adam_arthur 4y ago
    And the Colorado River is the only water source in North America right? People have a fetishization with hyping up disappearing water sources as leading to mass forced desertions of population centers, which is not rooted in any kind of reality. We can already pipe oil from texas to Canada with ease, we can do the same from Canada to Arizona with water. Or wherever else. The economics and viability of it is obvious and clear. Residents of water scarce areas would pay marginally higher taxes to support this
    - tony_cannistra 4y ago
      > People have a fetishization with hyping up disappearing water sources as leading to mass forced desertions of population centers, which is not rooted in any kind of reality. I have never heard this. Where are you reading that? Disappearing water sources are a reality. Time and time again, long pipelines like what you suggest just aren't viable. I'd suggest you enjoy some fact-based reporting on the topic: https://grist.org/agriculture/drought-water-pipeline-cost-west-solution-infrastructure/ https://grist.org/agriculture/drought-water-pipeline-cost-we... The near- and medium-term solutions we need are solely in use reduction. Period.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
treesknees 4y ago
They do need a lot of water, initially, but it was pointed out that it's similar to filling a swimming pool [1]. Yes you need a lot of water at first, however it's not as though all that water is just being dumped outside to evaporate. It's cleaned and recycled, and recaptured from the air within the plant. While Arizona doesn't have an abundance of excess water, they do have pretty strict usage guidelines and rules in place from the Department of Water Resources [2]. Assuming we can trust the government's call on this (are they being objective and fair, or tilting the reports to bring in Billions of dollars of corporate revenue and jobs) then these fabs should have no problem being supplied with water or impacting others in the area. [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/04/why-intel-tsmc-are-building-water-dependent-chip-plants-in-arizona.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/04/why-intel-tsmc-are-building-... [2] https://www.arizonawaterfacts.com/water-your-facts https://www.arizonawaterfacts.com/water-your-facts
- Analemma_ 4y ago
  This seems wrong. Didn't TSMC have to throttle down production recently because Taiwan had a drought? Why would they have had to do that if the plants don't need new water after the "initial fill"?
  - labrador 4y ago
    Apparently they've figured it out: TSMC tackles Taiwan drought with plant to reuse water for chips https://archive.ph/XIff9 https://archive.ph/XIff9
    - treesknees 4y ago
      Yes, exactly. In places like Taiwan TSMC just didn't need to account for recycling/treating the water - I'm sure it's cheaper not to do so. In Arizona it's a requirement so it's built into the cost of investment.
      - yellow_lead 4y ago
        It depends on how many typhoons fill the reservoirs though. This year we only had a few.
king_magic 4y ago
Access to plentiful, cheap water was a major reason why Micron chose Upstate NY for their new fabs.
totalZero 4y ago
Yes, but the cost of ultrapure water is essentially represented by the cost of electricity used for purification.
duped 4y ago
Arizona paid them more in subsidies than the other states would
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
jasonwatkinspdx 4y ago
They need a lot of water initially but recycle it as they operate. Intel and ASML already have facilities in Arizona. I'd assume TSMC chose partly based on that allowing them to hire out of the local talent pool, along with incentives from the state.
scythe 4y ago
While water does seem like a serious issue, it also feels very Monday-morning quarterback: of course the largest semiconductor manufacturer in the world knows that Arizona has low rainfall. What I'm curious about is what makes Arizona preferable over, say, Idaho or Tennessee. Proximity to California? No freeze-thaw cycle? Solar energy?
- robotnikman 4y ago
  Energy might be a big one. Solar is plentiful here in a state where cloudy days are rare, and there is also the Palo Verde nuclear power plant
downrightmike 4y ago
These plants will be 100% recycling on water and Phoenix gives a lot of water to Tucson to store that they could pull back as needed. Central Arizona Project is a good read.
phpisthebest 4y ago
>Why would they build it of all places in arizona for the Cynical person: Ensuring a future crisis is a sure fire way to get a nice Big Government Bailout in a few years to pay off the rest of the Capital costs that were not already covered by CHIPS....

by _8j50 4y ago

tony_cannistra 4y ago

I came here for this comment. Thank you for bringing this up. Although Phoenix is one of America's most progressive cities with regard to minimizing per-capita water usage, the whole prospect of the city of Phoenix was ill-conceived from the beginning. Of course that doesn't matter now -- the city is there. But I hope that TSMC knows what they're getting themselves in to.

shagie 4y ago
An article from August 2021: Water shortages loom over future semiconductor fabs in Arizona https://www.theverge.com/22628925/water-semiconductor-shortage-arizona-drought https://www.theverge.com/22628925/water-semiconductor-shorta... > Chipmakers are setting up shop in Arizona as drought worsens > Major semiconductor manufacturers looking to expand in Arizona will likely be spared from water cuts induced by an unprecedented water shortage in the Southwest, at least for now. As part of the scramble to end a shortage of another kind — the global dearth in semiconductor chips — both Intel and TSMC plan to open new facilities in Arizona. But they’re setting up shop just as one of the worst droughts in decades grows worse across the Western US. > ... > While Intel recycles much of its water, more fabs will mean it will need to send even more water through its systems. The company says that Arizona has been “vital” to Intel’s operations for more than four decades. The state is already home to its first “mega-factory network” and its newest semiconductor fab. Intel used more than 5.2 billion gallons of water in Arizona in 2020 — roughly 20 percent of which was reclaimed water, according to its most recent corporate responsibility report. > ... > TSMC said in an email to The Verge that for now it doesn’t expect the water shortage to have “any impact” on its plan to build a new fab in Arizona, although it says it will “continue to monitor the water supply situation closely.”
- gdilla 4y ago
  I was also wondering about the added energy needed to keep the fab cool enough to work in during the punishing summer months in phoenix. Seems like an odd choice.
  - coredog64 4y ago
    If only there was a way to turn energetic photons into electricity?
- tony_cannistra 4y ago
  Thanks for sharing that. At the very least, Arizona has "water budget" in the form of severely curtailing water-intensive agriculture. I am hopeful that the politicians there are smart enough to realize that semiconductor fabs are an industry whose water needs are worth prioritizing more than farming alfalfa in the desert. The problem is that these agricultural water rights are old, and the folks who hold them are often disenfranchised. Using a ton of water in the desert to farm is their whole livlihood; we don't just pull people's generational careers out from under them any more, like we used to. Not without a chance at an alternative.
  - coredog64 4y ago
    Farmers are selling their farmland to developers who then turn it into housing. Everyone wins: Residential water use is significantly lower than agricultural, the farmers get rich, and more housing is being built.
    - Mistletoe 4y ago
      Should people live in an area with no water? It feels like we have so many problems caused by people just not living in the locations in the USA where there is lots of rainfall and water. I have tons of water, my state just uses lakes filled by rainwater. We make electricity with it too. https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Average_precipitation_in_the_lower_48_states_of_the_USA.png https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Average_precipitat... I always find it interesting that people keep cramming into the western and specifically southwestern part of the USA. Like the original settlers just kept going that way due to the human natural urge to keep going further and hope things would be better over the horizon. I often wonder what America would be like if the western US was settled first. I imagine people would have noticed how awful and non-conducive to human life it is and kept on trucking to the promised land in the East.
downrightmike 4y ago
These plants will be 100% recycling on water and Phoenix gives a lot of water to Tucson to store that they could pull back as needed. Central Arizona Project is a good read. reply
icey 4y ago
There have been people living where Phoenix sits today for at least 1,500 years. The canals in Phoenix were originally dug by the Hohokam 1,400+ years ago. Dutch settlers used what remained to design the canal system that's used today. Here's a cool article that describes some of what they built http://www.azheritagewaters.nau.edu/loc_hohokam.html http://www.azheritagewaters.nau.edu/loc_hohokam.html

dsr3 4y ago

Some people said because Arizona is in relatively stable seismic region in the US. But I don't buy it. TSMC fab in Taiwan is also located in seismic prone region. Compared to the cost of the fab itself, seismic isolation system is relatively affordable.

akiselev 4y ago
They need seismic isolation regardless of where they build. Cutting edge fabs require such precision that a poorly shielded USB port can cause enough noise to create problems, let alone the vibrations from distant earthquakes. (Source: previous work with electron microscopes) Fabs are expensive because every part of building it from the electrical wiring to the seismic isolation to the HVAC system needs to be perfectly tuned to remove all sources of noise. Most of these costs are superlinear if not exponential with the magnitude of noise.
dharbin 4y ago
I heard a story about an Intel fab in Arizona that would always produce bad silicon at a certain time a day. After some investigations it was determined that a train passed by at that time every day causing enough seismic activity to disrupt the manufacturing process.
foobiekr 4y ago
Logistics risks around the plant are not nearly as easily done. There is an inherent benefit to not being exposed to seismic and weather issues. AZ isn’t a bad choice.

jimbob45 4y ago

I was curious about this a while back. My cursory research showed that these facilities are actually phenomenal at recycling water to the point that they're not actually guzzling water at the rate you might expect. ...deputy spokesperson Nina Kao said via email that “approximately 65% of the water used in the Arizona fab will come from TSMC’s in-house water reclamation system... https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/joannaallhands/2022/03/04/arizona-semiconductor-intel-tsmc-water-use/6915685001/ https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/joannaallhands...

adam_arthur 4y ago

Water can be piped around cheaply. Worst case they pump it in from nearby states

tony_cannistra 4y ago
Arizona actually already does this, in profound quantities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Arizona_Project https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_Arizona_Project The problem isn't the pipes, obviously. It's the fact that the 1922 agreement that divided up the water in the Colorado River (upon which Arizona depends) incorrectly calculated the amount of water available in the river every year. The Colorado River Compact divides up 20 million acre-feet of water. Modern analyses show that the Colorado river's average flow is about 15.5 million acre feet, and has been less than 13 million acre-feet during the last decade or so. These reductions curtail who gets what water. https://www.5280.com/how-the-100-year-old-colorado-river-compact-laid-the-foundation-for-the-wests-current-water-crisis/ https://www.5280.com/how-the-100-year-old-colorado-river-com...
- adam_arthur 4y ago
  And the Colorado River is the only water source in North America right? People have a fetishization with hyping up disappearing water sources as leading to mass forced desertions of population centers, which is not rooted in any kind of reality. We can already pipe oil from texas to Canada with ease, we can do the same from Canada to Arizona with water. Or wherever else. The economics and viability of it is obvious and clear. Residents of water scarce areas would pay marginally higher taxes to support this
  - tony_cannistra 4y ago
    > People have a fetishization with hyping up disappearing water sources as leading to mass forced desertions of population centers, which is not rooted in any kind of reality. I have never heard this. Where are you reading that? Disappearing water sources are a reality. Time and time again, long pipelines like what you suggest just aren't viable. I'd suggest you enjoy some fact-based reporting on the topic: https://grist.org/agriculture/drought-water-pipeline-cost-west-solution-infrastructure/ https://grist.org/agriculture/drought-water-pipeline-cost-we... The near- and medium-term solutions we need are solely in use reduction. Period.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

treesknees 4y ago

They do need a lot of water, initially, but it was pointed out that it's similar to filling a swimming pool [1]. Yes you need a lot of water at first, however it's not as though all that water is just being dumped outside to evaporate. It's cleaned and recycled, and recaptured from the air within the plant. While Arizona doesn't have an abundance of excess water, they do have pretty strict usage guidelines and rules in place from the Department of Water Resources [2]. Assuming we can trust the government's call on this (are they being objective and fair, or tilting the reports to bring in Billions of dollars of corporate revenue and jobs) then these fabs should have no problem being supplied with water or impacting others in the area. [1] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/04/why-intel-tsmc-are-building-water-dependent-chip-plants-in-arizona.html https://www.cnbc.com/2021/06/04/why-intel-tsmc-are-building-... [2] https://www.arizonawaterfacts.com/water-your-facts https://www.arizonawaterfacts.com/water-your-facts

Analemma_ 4y ago
This seems wrong. Didn't TSMC have to throttle down production recently because Taiwan had a drought? Why would they have had to do that if the plants don't need new water after the "initial fill"?
- labrador 4y ago
  Apparently they've figured it out: TSMC tackles Taiwan drought with plant to reuse water for chips https://archive.ph/XIff9 https://archive.ph/XIff9
  - treesknees 4y ago
    Yes, exactly. In places like Taiwan TSMC just didn't need to account for recycling/treating the water - I'm sure it's cheaper not to do so. In Arizona it's a requirement so it's built into the cost of investment.
    - yellow_lead 4y ago
      It depends on how many typhoons fill the reservoirs though. This year we only had a few.

king_magic 4y ago

Access to plentiful, cheap water was a major reason why Micron chose Upstate NY for their new fabs.

totalZero 4y ago

Yes, but the cost of ultrapure water is essentially represented by the cost of electricity used for purification.

duped 4y ago

Arizona paid them more in subsidies than the other states would

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

jasonwatkinspdx 4y ago

They need a lot of water initially but recycle it as they operate. Intel and ASML already have facilities in Arizona. I'd assume TSMC chose partly based on that allowing them to hire out of the local talent pool, along with incentives from the state.

scythe 4y ago

While water does seem like a serious issue, it also feels very Monday-morning quarterback: of course the largest semiconductor manufacturer in the world knows that Arizona has low rainfall. What I'm curious about is what makes Arizona preferable over, say, Idaho or Tennessee. Proximity to California? No freeze-thaw cycle? Solar energy?

robotnikman 4y ago
Energy might be a big one. Solar is plentiful here in a state where cloudy days are rare, and there is also the Palo Verde nuclear power plant

downrightmike 4y ago

These plants will be 100% recycling on water and Phoenix gives a lot of water to Tucson to store that they could pull back as needed. Central Arizona Project is a good read.

phpisthebest 4y ago

>Why would they build it of all places in arizona for the Cynical person: Ensuring a future crisis is a sure fire way to get a nice Big Government Bailout in a few years to pay off the rest of the Capital costs that were not already covered by CHIPS....