4 ms·

Ah, this week's iteration of "we're running out of sand". I'm sure one of these predictions will eventually come true, but we have articles that overstate the l

Ah, this week's iteration of "we're running out of sand". I'm sure one of these predictions will eventually come true, but we have articles that overstate the likelihood and consequences of running out of <some basic material> pretty much every month. I'm not keeping track, but some of the things we ran out of include sand, helium, tellurium, tantalum, niobium, bees...

baq 6mo ago
Nothing ever happens eh?
- ACCount37 6mo ago
  Nothing Ever Happens Bias has served me pretty well on those dubious semiconductor supply chain claims. The main reason being: materials are cheap - plant time is what's expensive. First, raw materials are such a small fraction of chip costs that even if the market price of a given material spikes up two orders of magnitude briefly, the market can eat the spike. For many broadly used materials, this alone is "end of story" - the majority of consumers will balk at the price and exit the market long before semiconductors supply chains will. And second, between the costs of halting production and the low volumes of actual materials involved, supply buffers exist on sites. That plays against supply chain fragility. It's one thing to have everything JITted within an inch of its life on a razor thin margins car plant. It's another matter entirely to have a "potential supply disruption" in semiconductor manufacturing that will, if all supply truly and fully stopped tomorrow, convert to actual stopped plants in 4 months unless something is done about it in the meanwhile. And that "unless something is done" bites hard when you have a lot of engineering capability underlined by general price insensitivity. As semiconductor industry does.
  - deleted 6mo ago
    [deleted]
csnover 6mo ago
The article isn’t arguing that if ICL facilities are disrupted, that’s it, no more bromine forever. It is saying that if these facilities are disrupted there will be an even bigger problem with DRAM supply than already exists because there is no excess supply, no good alternative, and no quick way to ramp up production. This dismissive contrarian Pollyanna attitude might serve well to minimise your personal anxiety, but I do not see how what you are saying is in any way the correct approach for making decisions or managing risk. This is not some article saying that the sky is falling without evidence. It is not even an article saying the sky is falling with evidence. It is an article that says that there is a significant risk, due to an entirely preventable man-made problem, where steps can be taken now to reduce the medium-term impact of the problem. And then it lists those steps. Why is this not OK to you?
- chromacity 6mo ago
  > The article isn’t arguing that if ICL facilities are disrupted, that’s it, no more bromine forever. It is saying that if these facilities are disrupted there will be an even bigger problem with DRAM supply than already exists because there is no excess supply, no good alternative, and no quick way to ramp up production. This is literally the thesis of each and every one of these articles. Only one mine in the world can produce sand for semiconductors, etc. It makes the arguments incredibly persuasive and the predictions almost always wrong. In reality... I'd wager that the semiconductor industry uses very little bromine compared to say, plastics; and that it can be recycled or sourced from other places with minimal technological investment (e.g., as a simple byproduct of salt production in the US).
  - weird_tentacles 6mo ago
    [dead]
  - zasz 6mo ago
    I clicked through on the link that the article said showed that bromine was impossible to recycle. The abstract says "Here we propose a catalytic strategy that enables the selective and mild-condition conversion of all organobromides present in wastes into renewed bromides for Br recycling. It employs Ullmann-type reactions enabled by inexpensive Cu(I), simple ligands and hydroxides in DMSO–H2O solvent. This strategy achieved >95% bromide yields at a temperature ≤120 °C for complex real-world Br-laden wastes." I'm sure it would take a long time to make this process fit for mass bromine recycling, but it's a bit hard to take the rest of the article seriously.
vlovich123 6mo ago
Helium has been increasing in price at about 8% per annum compared with 2% for inflation, so it seems like a strong case that we are actually running out of easily accessible, cheap helium access. Since 2006 there have been 4 global supply disruptions and it’s now believed to be a regular occurrence vs not really happening before. It only seems like nothing happens if you stop paying attention.
- rootusrootus 6mo ago
  As long as we're still throwing away the lion's share of what comes out of the ground, it seems easy to dismiss the problem. Perhaps we were just paying a subsidized price and now the market is getting involved?
- nradov 6mo ago
  Helium isn't a good example. Prices were artificially low for a long time due to the US federal government gradually selling off their strategic reserve. As a scuba diver it was great but we knew it couldn't last.
  - vlovich123 6mo ago
    That wouldn’t explain the 8% growth per year from before the sell off of the government strategic reserve which should have provided downward pressure. In fact, the supply chain shocks started happening just as the reserves got depleted. Shocker that.
nradov 6mo ago
I think I heard we're also running out of attention span?
- weird_tentacles 6mo ago
  [dead]
jubilanti 6mo ago
This argument chain in this article is 100% speculative and circumstantial. The fearmongering that this could "halt production of the world's supply of memory chips" is absurd and irresponsible. But you don't get to the front page of HN with "bromine is important, the current cheapest and highest volume producer is in a war zone, so we should make sure the supply chain is robust, here are some ideas." The article cites "multiple occasions" in which Iranian missiles got through and hit the Negev region. Follow the link and that's two incidents almost a month ago, when Iran tried to hit the nuclear research facility. They hit one town 35km north and another 20km to the west. Those are the only strikes the article cites in the area. That was in the early days of the war, when Iran was firing their most precise missiles, in direct response to US-Israeli attacks on Iran's Natanz nuclear facility and still... The ICL bromine facility is another 25km to the west of that town, or 40km from the nuclear research facility. There's not a lot of industrial or residential in the area. If they manage to hit anything, it'll almost certainly be the evaporation pools. Okay but then "The mechanism of disruption does not require a direct hit on an ICL facility" but then that paragraph is the most circumstantial. The mechanism is insurance rates, which apply for any ship that docks at an Israeli port? How are those going to go up any more than they already are with a near miss, and if so, how is that not just standard above-average wartime inflation? How are the ships with the bromine not going to get to South Korea via the Mediterranean if insurance rates rise? But really what's the likelihood that Iran is going to fire off whatever of its remaining stocks of still very imprecise missiles are left, to try to hit a needle in a haystack target with nothing else around for collateral damage?
- chasil 6mo ago
  As I posted elsewhere today, Iran has already inflicted significant damage on two regional aluminum smelters. This is a difficult target, with far more defences to overwhelm. Doing so would have far-reaching consequences. https://www.recyclingtoday.com/news/aluminum-association-comments-on-attacks-on-persian-gulf-industry-infrastructure/ https://www.recyclingtoday.com/news/aluminum-association-com...
- refurb 6mo ago
  You’d think after a couple dozen “interrupted supply of X could halt Y industry” articles per year, yet these things never actually happen, would cause readers to grow skeptical. I guess not.
HerbManic 6mo ago
We will never run out of almost anything but pricing can go up (and down) as availability relative to demand changes. So for some people it will run out based on that, but it will never be gone.
dimaggiosghost 6mo ago
I have a half-serious theory these shortages are submarine articles to drum investor interest so smart people like this forum get a feeling they should go invest in industry X, because of course it's a key shortage. Marketed to an audience that likes to think they're one step ahead. How many of us thought "hmm I wonder what the next one of these is, and how do I invest"?
cess11 6mo ago
There's a difference between "sand" in the general, and sand suitable for construction purposes. There's sharp sand and soft sand, and you need sharp sand for e.g. concrete, else it will crack and rot. There is manufactured sand, but obviously it's more expensive than good old extraction of river beds and beaches, which is scarce. https://web.archive.org/web/20140705163239/http://na.unep.net/geas/getUNEPPageWithArticleIDScript.php?article_id=110 https://web.archive.org/web/20140705163239/http://na.unep.ne...

baq 6mo ago

Nothing ever happens eh?

ACCount37 6mo ago
Nothing Ever Happens Bias has served me pretty well on those dubious semiconductor supply chain claims. The main reason being: materials are cheap - plant time is what's expensive. First, raw materials are such a small fraction of chip costs that even if the market price of a given material spikes up two orders of magnitude briefly, the market can eat the spike. For many broadly used materials, this alone is "end of story" - the majority of consumers will balk at the price and exit the market long before semiconductors supply chains will. And second, between the costs of halting production and the low volumes of actual materials involved, supply buffers exist on sites. That plays against supply chain fragility. It's one thing to have everything JITted within an inch of its life on a razor thin margins car plant. It's another matter entirely to have a "potential supply disruption" in semiconductor manufacturing that will, if all supply truly and fully stopped tomorrow, convert to actual stopped plants in 4 months unless something is done about it in the meanwhile. And that "unless something is done" bites hard when you have a lot of engineering capability underlined by general price insensitivity. As semiconductor industry does.
- deleted 6mo ago
  [deleted]

csnover 6mo ago

The article isn’t arguing that if ICL facilities are disrupted, that’s it, no more bromine forever. It is saying that if these facilities are disrupted there will be an even bigger problem with DRAM supply than already exists because there is no excess supply, no good alternative, and no quick way to ramp up production. This dismissive contrarian Pollyanna attitude might serve well to minimise your personal anxiety, but I do not see how what you are saying is in any way the correct approach for making decisions or managing risk. This is not some article saying that the sky is falling without evidence. It is not even an article saying the sky is falling with evidence. It is an article that says that there is a significant risk, due to an entirely preventable man-made problem, where steps can be taken now to reduce the medium-term impact of the problem. And then it lists those steps. Why is this not OK to you?

chromacity 6mo ago
> The article isn’t arguing that if ICL facilities are disrupted, that’s it, no more bromine forever. It is saying that if these facilities are disrupted there will be an even bigger problem with DRAM supply than already exists because there is no excess supply, no good alternative, and no quick way to ramp up production. This is literally the thesis of each and every one of these articles. Only one mine in the world can produce sand for semiconductors, etc. It makes the arguments incredibly persuasive and the predictions almost always wrong. In reality... I'd wager that the semiconductor industry uses very little bromine compared to say, plastics; and that it can be recycled or sourced from other places with minimal technological investment (e.g., as a simple byproduct of salt production in the US).
- weird_tentacles 6mo ago
  [dead]
- zasz 6mo ago
  I clicked through on the link that the article said showed that bromine was impossible to recycle. The abstract says "Here we propose a catalytic strategy that enables the selective and mild-condition conversion of all organobromides present in wastes into renewed bromides for Br recycling. It employs Ullmann-type reactions enabled by inexpensive Cu(I), simple ligands and hydroxides in DMSO–H2O solvent. This strategy achieved >95% bromide yields at a temperature ≤120 °C for complex real-world Br-laden wastes." I'm sure it would take a long time to make this process fit for mass bromine recycling, but it's a bit hard to take the rest of the article seriously.

vlovich123 6mo ago

Helium has been increasing in price at about 8% per annum compared with 2% for inflation, so it seems like a strong case that we are actually running out of easily accessible, cheap helium access. Since 2006 there have been 4 global supply disruptions and it’s now believed to be a regular occurrence vs not really happening before. It only seems like nothing happens if you stop paying attention.

rootusrootus 6mo ago
As long as we're still throwing away the lion's share of what comes out of the ground, it seems easy to dismiss the problem. Perhaps we were just paying a subsidized price and now the market is getting involved?
nradov 6mo ago
Helium isn't a good example. Prices were artificially low for a long time due to the US federal government gradually selling off their strategic reserve. As a scuba diver it was great but we knew it couldn't last.
- vlovich123 6mo ago
  That wouldn’t explain the 8% growth per year from before the sell off of the government strategic reserve which should have provided downward pressure. In fact, the supply chain shocks started happening just as the reserves got depleted. Shocker that.

nradov 6mo ago

I think I heard we're also running out of attention span?

weird_tentacles 6mo ago
[dead]

jubilanti 6mo ago

This argument chain in this article is 100% speculative and circumstantial. The fearmongering that this could "halt production of the world's supply of memory chips" is absurd and irresponsible. But you don't get to the front page of HN with "bromine is important, the current cheapest and highest volume producer is in a war zone, so we should make sure the supply chain is robust, here are some ideas." The article cites "multiple occasions" in which Iranian missiles got through and hit the Negev region. Follow the link and that's two incidents almost a month ago, when Iran tried to hit the nuclear research facility. They hit one town 35km north and another 20km to the west. Those are the only strikes the article cites in the area. That was in the early days of the war, when Iran was firing their most precise missiles, in direct response to US-Israeli attacks on Iran's Natanz nuclear facility and still... The ICL bromine facility is another 25km to the west of that town, or 40km from the nuclear research facility. There's not a lot of industrial or residential in the area. If they manage to hit anything, it'll almost certainly be the evaporation pools. Okay but then "The mechanism of disruption does not require a direct hit on an ICL facility" but then that paragraph is the most circumstantial. The mechanism is insurance rates, which apply for any ship that docks at an Israeli port? How are those going to go up any more than they already are with a near miss, and if so, how is that not just standard above-average wartime inflation? How are the ships with the bromine not going to get to South Korea via the Mediterranean if insurance rates rise? But really what's the likelihood that Iran is going to fire off whatever of its remaining stocks of still very imprecise missiles are left, to try to hit a needle in a haystack target with nothing else around for collateral damage?

chasil 6mo ago
As I posted elsewhere today, Iran has already inflicted significant damage on two regional aluminum smelters. This is a difficult target, with far more defences to overwhelm. Doing so would have far-reaching consequences. https://www.recyclingtoday.com/news/aluminum-association-comments-on-attacks-on-persian-gulf-industry-infrastructure/ https://www.recyclingtoday.com/news/aluminum-association-com...
refurb 6mo ago
You’d think after a couple dozen “interrupted supply of X could halt Y industry” articles per year, yet these things never actually happen, would cause readers to grow skeptical. I guess not.

HerbManic 6mo ago

We will never run out of almost anything but pricing can go up (and down) as availability relative to demand changes. So for some people it will run out based on that, but it will never be gone.

dimaggiosghost 6mo ago

I have a half-serious theory these shortages are submarine articles to drum investor interest so smart people like this forum get a feeling they should go invest in industry X, because of course it's a key shortage. Marketed to an audience that likes to think they're one step ahead. How many of us thought "hmm I wonder what the next one of these is, and how do I invest"?

cess11 6mo ago

There's a difference between "sand" in the general, and sand suitable for construction purposes. There's sharp sand and soft sand, and you need sharp sand for e.g. concrete, else it will crack and rot. There is manufactured sand, but obviously it's more expensive than good old extraction of river beds and beaches, which is scarce. https://web.archive.org/web/20140705163239/http://na.unep.net/geas/getUNEPPageWithArticleIDScript.php?article_id=110 https://web.archive.org/web/20140705163239/http://na.unep.ne...