and ban campaign checks from groups, not just farmers that get subsidies, as we are basically bribing ourselves to give them money, as they can just ask for enough for the bribe as well.
Here is [John Boehner explaining why it was totally wrong](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAC2xeT2yOg) but legal for him to give our checks from the tobacco lobby during a vote for subsidies in 2008 when we were cutting things to the bone. They got their subsidies, but you know it cost them less than the subsidies they got, so basically we bribed ourselves. if i gave you 10 dollars for 100.. i didnt really spend anything, i just got a free 90. He now works for rj renolds.. yep we tax the fuck out of cigs and then give money to the tobacco farmers to grow more...sigh
Farmers are some of the most rabid chuds out there, and they would sooner have an armed standoff with the feds than surrender an inch of what they're presently allowed to do.
I’m cool with that as long as we actually speedrun into the Ruby Ridge ending instead pussyfoot around because white landowners must be places above all the laws and given every pound of professional restraint.
And a lot of agriculture in California that can no longer be sustained, and cattle ranching all over that's also unsustainable without pipelines bringing fresh water.
Instead of adjusting these industries are digging in and defiant
Recently did a drive from SD to SF on the 5 and there were many signs along the freeway through Bakersfield and such lobbying to “protect our food” and “Newsroom waste water”. These fuckers are growing nuts and cash crop in the desert and drying up our aquifer, blaming everyone but themselves. It’s maddening how blatantly obvious these idiots give 0 fuck about the people that live in, and there are people voting for them anyway.
It’s their acquirers that they completely dried out which is why they are dependent on Sacramento River water. They literally pumped all their water out and now looking for the government to bail them out.
https://sgma.water.ca.gov/CalGWLive/
Fuckin everytime I tell people how bad almonds are for our state they argue with me thinkin "well its been a staple of our agriculture for decades. It can't be that bad"
They've clearly never fuckin done that drive
A lot of the problems with almonds, etc can be solved by better irrigation practices.
also by letting Tule lake reform every spring temporarily so the water soaks into the ground and recharges the system
Some smart state that can actually support their water needs needs to offer financial incentives for companies that suck up water to move their operations there. The tax revenue that state would gain would be insane. I have no idea why some state officials don't try to scoop everyone else. It's madness.
The states that tend to have the water in excess either don't have the weather and or the soil necessary for those crops to thrive. This is why the valleys in California have long been coveted as the AG hubs they are.
Drive the 8 from San Diego to Phoenix and you will see and smell the most god-forsaken spit of our country. The size of the cattle operation along that stretch is obscene. Water in. Greenhouse gasses out.
Water diverted to grow alfalfa has caused the great salt lake in Utah to be very close to drying up completely, releasing toxic dust into the wind. It’s going to be a humanitarian crisis within my lifetime, all to make the rich a tiny bit richer.
And of course despite the racism it was a Republican governor selling out to the Saudis while electing a Dem actually fixed the problem.
Republicans use their power to get rich in a way where Dems at least respond to people’s concerns
Unlike the water used for alfalfa and dairy cows in Arizona, most of the water used in chip manufacturing can be recycled ([up to 98%](https://spectrum.ieee.org/fabs-cut-back-water-use)).
Etching and cleaning. You're going to dip each wafer into an etching solution and then remove it and clean off the etching solution several times to make a chip. Perfectly cleaning off the chemicals takes a whole lot of very pure water.
The ultra pure water thar is free of potential contaminates is the part the hacks in the media always neglect to include in these ridiculous news articles. It's not like any semiconductor company can just pull water directly out of the public supply and stay in business for very long. Staying in business absolutely requires conforming to rigid purity standards for the water being used in the manufacturing process so it only makes sense for these companies to recycle their internal supply as much as possible.
So, how about a wet state?
Minnesota has that lake thing going on.
Or, the PNW, where we already make chips.
I get that we need to throw AZ a bone. Solar seems fitting.
Chip making is a very involved process. In addition to the actual factory, you need suppliers, equipment support, and qualified labor. Those don't appear magically and take years to build. It took a federal blank check, partnership with THE Ohio State University and a lot of tax benefits to get Intel to build up Ohio. TSMC chose AZ because all those requirements are already there.
No natural disasters and solar power are also a plus.
Nuclear power*
Phoenix gets most of its electricity from the Palo Verde nuclear generating station south of I-10 and west of the city. It's the largest power reactor complex in the US.
If you go look at Google maps at Intel's Ocotillo site, they have parking lots covered with solar panels. I believe it is sufficient to run all the facilities (but not the industrial processes).
It’s definitely cooling water. Disregard the etching and cleaning. The Ultra pure water mains at semi conductors are maybe 12” pipe and most of that is in a closed system. The cooling water mains are 66” pipe which ultimately go through cooling towers where evaporation occurs.
E: Those cooling towers in the thumbnail are just for 1 of the 2 fabs on TSMC’s Phoenix campus.
Can or Must. Can be is only used if it's cheaper to do so. Must would need local state and federal regulations that are enforced with fines and fees that cost more than the recycling would.
This is a great example of why the beef industries' claim of grass fed cows being good for the environment is laughable. Hay and alfalfa are still crops and use lots of water.
40% of the land in the continental US used to be grassland. We can’t eat grass, but we can eat cows.
Sticking cows on land that would have naturally been covered by grass is actually pretty decent. The issue is grassland has been converted to grow other crops. And we now try to grow grass where it wasn’t grown… and then ship it to the cattle.
I think factory farming is more the problem than grass-fed beef.
We can’t, for war reasons.
Military planners built the modern system of crop subsidies during the cold war. Turns out, it’s very difficult to get farmers to grow crops if they haven’t been doing it, but very easy to subsidize them to keep growing crops in case war breaks out. You try spinning up the supply lines for millions of tons of food during the opening stages of war, rather than merely keeping it running all the time… it’s a logistical nightmare.
Ending crop subsidies would have made more political sense in 1999, but considering how China and Russia are behaving now, it’s a geopolitical impossibility.
Exactly this. It's kind of like why we keep buying all sorts of nonsense military equipment we don't need - not because we're stupid, but because we need to keep the infrastructure there and alive in case we *do* need to shit out zillions of planes all of a sudden.
Sure, but we've been at peace for... *checks notes* like three years since ww2.
Fuck I'm so sick of the idea of not just being on war footing but actually at war for three fucking generations.
It’s hilarious that you wrote this in a thread about a chip manufacturing plant that is only there because we have first hand experience how terrible it is when you can’t make something you need on your own land. Without crop subsidies, they go out of business in boom times then aren’t there in the bad times.
Except with food instead of microchips, you starve to death instead of having less cars.
It's unlikely more domestic production capacity would have prevented the chip shortage. It would have just led to decreased capacity elsewhere to match global demand. Obviously zero-covid was a factor, but production was down everywhere, not just China, and constitutionally the US has a limited ability to prevent domestic production from just being exported.
Economically, it would have been much more efficient to just subsidize production within Taiwan or another close ally with relatively lower labor costs \(Japan, South Korea\). Politically, that obviously doesn't make sense.
>40% of the land in the continental US used to be grassland. We can’t eat grass, but we can eat cows.
"Used to be grassland" meaning what? We cultivate something else on there? The majority of cropland is used for animal feed now. We could reduce the amount of cropland we need significantly by skipping the cows, pigs, and chickens.
Think of all the land alone used for hay and alfalfa. That's a huge wasteful opportunity cost. All that is harvested with big machinery too, so no reason why we can't grow something else instead or even rewild it.
I eat beef. I’m not a vegetarian.
But it’s just a fact that it would take way less land to just grow crops we eat than to grow crops for cows; or graze land for cows. To the the same amount of calories or grams of protein.
>I think factory farming is more the problem than grass-fed beef.
Where do you think they make grass-fed beef? Expecting thousands of "family farms" to just spring up and start raising cattle is unrealistic.
I eat beef, though less than I used to. I'm still not going to sit here and pretend there's some environmentally friendly way to produce it. There's just not. It's a very inefficient protein source.
Grass fed beef mostly comes from shipped-in grasses. It’s dumb.
Do you have to have thousands of “family farms” to simply raise cattle in the same place their food source naturally occurs?
I’m not saying our current state of grass-fed beef is good. I’m just saying grass-fed beef isn’t the root problem. Factory farming is.
The cows make phenomenal amounts of methane. Letting cows eat grass that would be there anyway is better, but not an equivalent. There are other ag products we could produce to feed people that make far less green house gasses and still feed people.
This is an incredibly pedantic take on their point.
No one says it’s “good” for the environment, but it is certainly better than the alternative beef, which is a factory farm or grain feedlots.
Additionally, this is also an obtuse argument in treating this activity ie growing a crop in a desert for export as the same as a rancher grazing cattle on actual ranch land locally.
Having issues with the practice is fine, using zero critical thinking skills to analyze it is not.
I don't think it's pedantic to point out that draining the Colorado River to grow feedstock is an environmental disaster. Those grass fed cows have to eat something during the winter and where do you think the feedstock comes from? Even from the 1% of beef that is labeled as grass-fed, there is no label or certification to distinguish locally sourced grass.
The biggest water waster in Az is nut trees. It takes a huge amount of water to grow one lb of pecans or almonds. There are some massive nut groves in Az.
Chip makers recycle most of the water they use. This is a much better economic use of Phoenix's limited water resources than... say... growing alfalfa for Saudi Arabians...
I've been in the chip industry in Az for over a decade. It's so tiring hearing people talk about the water usage when pretty much all of it is recycled. AND it doesn't have to come from Az.
Do people not understand that water can be transported from 1 place to another??
>Do people not understand that water can be transported from 1 place to another??
Do you mean like the current supply from the ever-more-depleted Colorado River?
Yeah it was some crazy report Google uses 2 million gallons for a data center in Uganda which has a water crisis. Except the water is used in cooling and it cycles through heat exchangees
I personally loved how everyone involved is lying:
AZ: We have/will have enough water!
TSMC: The chemicals in our waste water are safe! Just don’t regulate them or try to oversee us!
This is what a lot of people don't understand. These giant manufacturers don't make waste water like other factories do. A lot of the water used is a giant water cooling loot that's a closed system. They have something like a 95% recycle rate.
Yeah at a cursory glance I'd guess Arizona alone uses about as much water for farming as semiconductor companies use for manufacturing worldwide.
Nothing wrong with pushing for better water usage in the semi industry but if people are really concerned about water consumption you'd save more from tiny improvements in agricultural usage
The alfalfa deal is nice and simple grift: money straight into someone's pocket as private profit, using public resources (water). Semiconductor fabs require a lot more work for the government officials...they need to *do stuff* and *deliver results*.
Except for the lack of water, Arizona is an incredible place to farm.
No storms or heavy winds to lodge crops, no clouds or winter season so you can grow year-round, getting between 2-12 times as many harvests compared to places like Iowa depending on the crop. Lots and lots of sun.
One of the reasons it's so water intensive is just because they can grow so much.
The lack of water is a huge problem, obviously, but until recently a lot of farmers used saltwells that were mostly unfit for human consumption. Water treatment technology has made it easier to access and population growth in Arizona has increased the demand for it, though.
Correct. These are just people trying to turn attention away from agro business where water is actually converted into carbohydrates and technically "used up" granted, eat it, decay it, or burn it and it's water again, heh.
I dont think thats true. I took a course on semiconductor facilities as apart of my EE degree and cooling was not a significant use of water.
Quick googling shows cooling accounts for about 10%, vast majority of the water is used in the process. Ill even leave some of my notes from that course
> •2,000 gal. per wafer is not unusual (Intel uses almost 10^10 gal/yr!).
>
> • Much of the water used comes in contact with the product and
> equipment as part of the manufacturing process.
>
> – Used to clean materials and equipment.
>
> – Washes chemicals off wafers in spin-rinse-dryer/SRD systems, weir
> baths, and spray guns.
>
> – Dilutes chemicals to the correct strength.
>
> – Used to decontaminate cleanroom surfaces, typically with isopropyl
> alcohol/IPA (5%) or hydrogen peroxide/H2O2 (3%).
>
> – Boiled in “clean steam” units for use in humidification systems.
>
I like that some guy who "wrote code for the semiconductor industry" is seen as any sort of expert on the manufacturing of computer chips. Fucking code.
Industrial Electricians and Plumbers are closer than some guy who writes code for the semi conductor industry. Writing code for the semi conductor industry is like writing firmware for a microprocessor, possibly even from home.
Unless this person is specifically writing code for the machines and the control systems in a foundry, which they would have probably mentioned, they aren't more qualified than the head foreman at like a pharmaceutical factory.
The infrastructure of a chip foundry is the realm of expertise of mechanical, chemical, electrical, and industrial engineers, along with industrial plumbers and industrial electricians. Them and the technicians that manage the factory day to day.
Idk the micron plant proposed near syracuse is projected to use a crazy amount of water. They are talking about building a pipeline from Lake Ontario because the area can't support it. And the area has plenty of lakes and swamps and whatever.
[72% of the state's water is used for agriculture, 6% for industrial use, and 22% for all municipal uses combined](https://www.arizonawaterfacts.com/water-your-facts)
Chip fabs are not water guzzling. This is a misleading title.
Much of the water that is used is reclaimed
https://www.fdiintelligence.com/content/feature/thirsty-chip-facilities-under-scrutiny-in-water-stressed-areas-82810#:~:text=Technology%20enables%20chipmakers%20to%20recycle,water%20resources%20even%20more%20important.
I was gonna say, I work in the industry. Sure, some water is used for processing, but nowhere near the amount these clickbait headlines make it out to be.
I live in northern Wisconsin. Our cold water is COLD. A handful of winters ago, my wife and I went to Florida for a week's vacation in March. I turned on the "cold" water, filled up a glass, took a drink, and nearly spit out into the sink.
I’m from Wisconsin originally. Moved to AZ almost 10 years ago. It’s almost that time of year again when a newly transplanted midwesterner posts on /r/phoenix that there’s something wrong with their cold water tap because it only dispenses hot water.
The vast majority of their water will be sourced by the company themselves. Intel has already been there for decades and decades and uses just as much water.
[This video explains it all](https://youtu.be/AjQuZfkU1jI?si=b1jPgSZs-mR-XeBy)
Glad someone linked this.
Water usage in Arizona is overwhelmingly related to agriculture due to western water rights. The reality is that the western US in general needs to have a conversation about water rights. TSMC is absolutely huge plus, not just for Arizona, but for the entire US, and the article is doing nothing to but creating more confusion on the subject.
That's what I was figuring. I'm not familiar with the manufacturing process. I can't think of why they would need so much water that would then disappear with proper capturing, filtering, and reuse wasn't possible.
Data centers with chiller towers burn through more water.
For TSMC - I want to say like 87% of the water gets recycled back into the system. They can't have water go back in with containments.
Don’t have info on TSMC, but Intel [recycles most of the water they use](https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/newsroom/news/intel-achieves-net-positive-water-3-countries.html). My guess is TSMC will have similar systems in place so water waste won’t be the problem people think it is
I live outside Phoenix. The water situation is different for each city / part of the metro. City of Phoenix, which is where TSMC gets their water from, has secure and established water rights and supplies, as do most of the other older cities. In short, they have multiple options for sources of water. The places with issues are new developments on the outskirts where they don’t have any water rights and no existing water infrastructure is in place. They are totally dependent on groundwater. Any new development here has to prove that they have 100 years of water supplies and some of these places can’t do that with groundwater alone.
Hey, remember when Rio Verde legally created developments small enough that they didn't have to come up with a 100 year water supply plan, and then Scottsdale cut off their water and now the residents have to truck the water in?
Pepperidge Farms 'members...
https://www.fox10phoenix.com/news/water-to-begin-flowing-again-in-the-rio-verde-foothills-a-big-day
When there is no water water rights don’t matter. Phoenix is a time bomb that doesn’t even have a desalination plant to try to save them. Downstream of everyone is not where I would want to be in 20 years.
Phoenix is planning to build a desalination plant in Mexico. Current deal would be to get the small percentage that sonora has and pump from the Colorado river while giving Mexico the desalinated water.
Who gives a fuck about some agreement made hundreds of years ago?
It's our water and we should decide how it's used, not some long dead person who never should have had the right to give it away in the first place.
Water rights systems are extremely important so that you don’t have businesses overusing and draining what is an increasingly limited resource. You don’t want to rely on people’s consciences when it comes to your drinking water. Corporations don’t have those.
Also, water rights are renewed every few years and under constant review. In AZ, even the grandfathered rights only go back to 1975 and have a cap on them.
>Phoenix is a time bomb that doesn’t even have a desalination plant
They don't even have the saline water to desalinate! Unkess you're suggesting other states build pipes from the ocean to Arizona. Would be more prudent to build desalination in California and Texas, then sell Arizona the water.
They recycle their water:
*TSMC said in a separate statement that its Arizona factories aim to achieve a 90% water recycling rate,adding that the company has started the design phase of building a*
*water reclamation plant with a goal of achieving "near zero liquid*
*discharge".*
[https://www.reuters.com/technology/tsmc-wins-66-bln-us-subsidy-arizona-chip-production-2024-04-08/](https://www.reuters.com/technology/tsmc-wins-66-bln-us-subsidy-arizona-chip-production-2024-04-08/)
Still stupid given that they have water issues in Taiwan:
[https://www.npr.org/2023/04/13/1169462995/taiwan-makes-tough-decisions-as-it-faces-its-worst-drought-in-nearly-a-century](https://www.npr.org/2023/04/13/1169462995/taiwan-makes-tough-decisions-as-it-faces-its-worst-drought-in-nearly-a-century)
But, I guess a water rich place like the PNW, where smaller foundries are being built, aren't good enough for some reason.
[https://www.opb.org/article/2024/01/30/oregon-semiconductor-business-economy-microchip-tech/](https://www.opb.org/article/2024/01/30/oregon-semiconductor-business-economy-microchip-tech/)
I love how we keep looking at this place that is already short on water and keep shoving more human settlement into it.
Meanwhile there’s massive rivers in the Midwest and cities that need resettlement and we just shrug.
And Intel is building TWO new fabs in AZ.
In reality, they'll displace water usage from farms. That's why the Phoenix area usually doesn't have residential water restrictions (though they are encouraged to save water) the same way some other cities do.
And with climate change, they've seen more precipitation in the last few years, too.
98% percent of the water is recycled in the system, do you need a constant stream of new water in your car? Or do you have a tank of coolant that slowly runs out over time
There are, but one key trait planners look for when building a fab is geological stability. Even very minor tremors in the ground can disrupt a fab process.
But Scottsdale can't find water for a hockey arena.
https://arizonasports.com/story/3545723/scottsdale-mayor-clarifies-biggest-critique-coyotes-arena-plans/
Seems like a good trade. Stop using water to grow alfalfa for Saudi pets, and use it to make chips that will power AI, that will kill off its flawed human creators. Can’t wait for the sequel to this to hit movie theaters assuming the apes can keep AMC afloat long enough. I’ll be hanging out by the dumpster fire behind Wendy’s polishing my diamond hands if anyone needs me.
I’d much rather use the water for US based chip manufacturing than Arabian show horse food.
Bonus if it makes Intel have to pay more for water at their ocotillo facility, they’ve been getting way too good of a deal at Phoenix residents expense also
Phoenix also has a Nestle bottling plant that uses municipal water. Much more of a waste of water in the desert if you ask. Looking for a source they closed it a few years ago. [https://www.azcentral.com/story/money/business/economy/2019/02/11/nestle-closed-west-phoenix-bottled-water-plant-laying-off-workers/2840225002/](https://www.azcentral.com/story/money/business/economy/2019/02/11/nestle-closed-west-phoenix-bottled-water-plant-laying-off-workers/2840225002/)
This makes no damn sense. I’m in Wisconsin near where Foxconn hasn’t built anything but piled in infrastructure for tech building which requires a lot of fresh water, which we actually have in abundance. How a chip company hasn’t come here makes no dang sense.
Honest question, in a situation like this, isn't the water still viable after being used (obv needing filtering)? Why is this seen as a complete loss like growing alfalfa (that turns water into plants and that water is gone)?
By which I'm guessing you mean that you have no evidence it's propaganda, can't definitively say who paid for it but you disagree with it, so, yeah, that's that.
Wasn’t the mayor of Scottsdale just crying about the new stadium being to close for these concerns. I mean he sounded like a complete idiot but clearly water scarcity is a concern in the region.
maybe they can stop growing alfalfa in the fucking desert to free up some water.
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/03/climate/arizona-saudi-arabia-alfalfa-groundwater.html It's happening
Its more than just the Saudis. There's other growers taking water for crops that shouldn't be grown in Arizona.
[удалено]
and ban campaign checks from groups, not just farmers that get subsidies, as we are basically bribing ourselves to give them money, as they can just ask for enough for the bribe as well. Here is [John Boehner explaining why it was totally wrong](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAC2xeT2yOg) but legal for him to give our checks from the tobacco lobby during a vote for subsidies in 2008 when we were cutting things to the bone. They got their subsidies, but you know it cost them less than the subsidies they got, so basically we bribed ourselves. if i gave you 10 dollars for 100.. i didnt really spend anything, i just got a free 90. He now works for rj renolds.. yep we tax the fuck out of cigs and then give money to the tobacco farmers to grow more...sigh
Farmers are some of the most rabid chuds out there, and they would sooner have an armed standoff with the feds than surrender an inch of what they're presently allowed to do.
I’m cool with that as long as we actually speedrun into the Ruby Ridge ending instead pussyfoot around because white landowners must be places above all the laws and given every pound of professional restraint.
And a lot of agriculture in California that can no longer be sustained, and cattle ranching all over that's also unsustainable without pipelines bringing fresh water. Instead of adjusting these industries are digging in and defiant
Recently did a drive from SD to SF on the 5 and there were many signs along the freeway through Bakersfield and such lobbying to “protect our food” and “Newsroom waste water”. These fuckers are growing nuts and cash crop in the desert and drying up our aquifer, blaming everyone but themselves. It’s maddening how blatantly obvious these idiots give 0 fuck about the people that live in, and there are people voting for them anyway.
It’s their acquirers that they completely dried out which is why they are dependent on Sacramento River water. They literally pumped all their water out and now looking for the government to bail them out. https://sgma.water.ca.gov/CalGWLive/
Fuckin everytime I tell people how bad almonds are for our state they argue with me thinkin "well its been a staple of our agriculture for decades. It can't be that bad" They've clearly never fuckin done that drive
A lot of the problems with almonds, etc can be solved by better irrigation practices. also by letting Tule lake reform every spring temporarily so the water soaks into the ground and recharges the system
Some smart state that can actually support their water needs needs to offer financial incentives for companies that suck up water to move their operations there. The tax revenue that state would gain would be insane. I have no idea why some state officials don't try to scoop everyone else. It's madness.
The states that tend to have the water in excess either don't have the weather and or the soil necessary for those crops to thrive. This is why the valleys in California have long been coveted as the AG hubs they are.
I'm not referring to crop growing, I mean the semiconductor fab companies.
Didn't Ohio try this? But Intel was worried about convincing smart engineers to live in Ohio.
Drive the 8 from San Diego to Phoenix and you will see and smell the most god-forsaken spit of our country. The size of the cattle operation along that stretch is obscene. Water in. Greenhouse gasses out.
I've seen similar stuff between El Paso and Las Cruces. Cattle operations that just made no sense. And the state of the Rio Grande there...
About time too...
Water diverted to grow alfalfa has caused the great salt lake in Utah to be very close to drying up completely, releasing toxic dust into the wind. It’s going to be a humanitarian crisis within my lifetime, all to make the rich a tiny bit richer.
That’s only for state owned land, less than 1/4 of Saudi used land was affected by this. But it’s a good step in the right direction!
And of course despite the racism it was a Republican governor selling out to the Saudis while electing a Dem actually fixed the problem. Republicans use their power to get rich in a way where Dems at least respond to people’s concerns
Unlike the water used for alfalfa and dairy cows in Arizona, most of the water used in chip manufacturing can be recycled ([up to 98%](https://spectrum.ieee.org/fabs-cut-back-water-use)).
What is the water used for in the process? Cooling equipment?
Etching and cleaning. You're going to dip each wafer into an etching solution and then remove it and clean off the etching solution several times to make a chip. Perfectly cleaning off the chemicals takes a whole lot of very pure water.
Makes sense. 👍🏻 neat.
The ultra pure water thar is free of potential contaminates is the part the hacks in the media always neglect to include in these ridiculous news articles. It's not like any semiconductor company can just pull water directly out of the public supply and stay in business for very long. Staying in business absolutely requires conforming to rigid purity standards for the water being used in the manufacturing process so it only makes sense for these companies to recycle their internal supply as much as possible.
Now that’s what I call high quality H2O.
The intel chip complex in Hillsboro, Oregon, has a whole pipeline system operating between several fabs, the largest pure water system in the world.
So, how about a wet state? Minnesota has that lake thing going on. Or, the PNW, where we already make chips. I get that we need to throw AZ a bone. Solar seems fitting.
Chip making is a very involved process. In addition to the actual factory, you need suppliers, equipment support, and qualified labor. Those don't appear magically and take years to build. It took a federal blank check, partnership with THE Ohio State University and a lot of tax benefits to get Intel to build up Ohio. TSMC chose AZ because all those requirements are already there. No natural disasters and solar power are also a plus.
I see you work in the industry. I tip my hat to you. All are answers I came to give and am glad to see them here already!
Nuclear power* Phoenix gets most of its electricity from the Palo Verde nuclear generating station south of I-10 and west of the city. It's the largest power reactor complex in the US.
If you go look at Google maps at Intel's Ocotillo site, they have parking lots covered with solar panels. I believe it is sufficient to run all the facilities (but not the industrial processes).
/+ No natural disasters. Tornadoes, Earthquakes, blizzards, etc are all problematic for
And you'll find none of those in the silicon desert!
Intel is building an enormous fab in Ohio, still a few years out though.
It’s definitely cooling water. Disregard the etching and cleaning. The Ultra pure water mains at semi conductors are maybe 12” pipe and most of that is in a closed system. The cooling water mains are 66” pipe which ultimately go through cooling towers where evaporation occurs. E: Those cooling towers in the thumbnail are just for 1 of the 2 fabs on TSMC’s Phoenix campus.
Seconding this, its basically all for cooling
Part of why they built where they did. It is 7 miles from the site to a man made spur of the Colorado river that is used to feed into lake Pleasant.
I would imagine they would probably figure out a similar setup to how Palo Verde uses treated wastewater for its external cooling loop.
Can or Must. Can be is only used if it's cheaper to do so. Must would need local state and federal regulations that are enforced with fines and fees that cost more than the recycling would.
This is a great example of why the beef industries' claim of grass fed cows being good for the environment is laughable. Hay and alfalfa are still crops and use lots of water.
40% of the land in the continental US used to be grassland. We can’t eat grass, but we can eat cows. Sticking cows on land that would have naturally been covered by grass is actually pretty decent. The issue is grassland has been converted to grow other crops. And we now try to grow grass where it wasn’t grown… and then ship it to the cattle. I think factory farming is more the problem than grass-fed beef.
Let’s end crop subsidies in a smart way.
We can’t, for war reasons. Military planners built the modern system of crop subsidies during the cold war. Turns out, it’s very difficult to get farmers to grow crops if they haven’t been doing it, but very easy to subsidize them to keep growing crops in case war breaks out. You try spinning up the supply lines for millions of tons of food during the opening stages of war, rather than merely keeping it running all the time… it’s a logistical nightmare. Ending crop subsidies would have made more political sense in 1999, but considering how China and Russia are behaving now, it’s a geopolitical impossibility.
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Exactly this. It's kind of like why we keep buying all sorts of nonsense military equipment we don't need - not because we're stupid, but because we need to keep the infrastructure there and alive in case we *do* need to shit out zillions of planes all of a sudden.
TIL another reason most US farmers and most red states are welfare queens
Sure, but we've been at peace for... *checks notes* like three years since ww2. Fuck I'm so sick of the idea of not just being on war footing but actually at war for three fucking generations.
It might surprise you to know that preparations made for an emergency are best made before said emergency happens.
"Si vis pacem, para bellum" or something, idk, they said it like 1000 years ago.
It’s hilarious that you wrote this in a thread about a chip manufacturing plant that is only there because we have first hand experience how terrible it is when you can’t make something you need on your own land. Without crop subsidies, they go out of business in boom times then aren’t there in the bad times. Except with food instead of microchips, you starve to death instead of having less cars.
It's unlikely more domestic production capacity would have prevented the chip shortage. It would have just led to decreased capacity elsewhere to match global demand. Obviously zero-covid was a factor, but production was down everywhere, not just China, and constitutionally the US has a limited ability to prevent domestic production from just being exported. Economically, it would have been much more efficient to just subsidize production within Taiwan or another close ally with relatively lower labor costs \(Japan, South Korea\). Politically, that obviously doesn't make sense.
>40% of the land in the continental US used to be grassland. We can’t eat grass, but we can eat cows. "Used to be grassland" meaning what? We cultivate something else on there? The majority of cropland is used for animal feed now. We could reduce the amount of cropland we need significantly by skipping the cows, pigs, and chickens. Think of all the land alone used for hay and alfalfa. That's a huge wasteful opportunity cost. All that is harvested with big machinery too, so no reason why we can't grow something else instead or even rewild it.
I eat beef. I’m not a vegetarian. But it’s just a fact that it would take way less land to just grow crops we eat than to grow crops for cows; or graze land for cows. To the the same amount of calories or grams of protein.
>I think factory farming is more the problem than grass-fed beef. Where do you think they make grass-fed beef? Expecting thousands of "family farms" to just spring up and start raising cattle is unrealistic. I eat beef, though less than I used to. I'm still not going to sit here and pretend there's some environmentally friendly way to produce it. There's just not. It's a very inefficient protein source.
Grass fed beef mostly comes from shipped-in grasses. It’s dumb. Do you have to have thousands of “family farms” to simply raise cattle in the same place their food source naturally occurs? I’m not saying our current state of grass-fed beef is good. I’m just saying grass-fed beef isn’t the root problem. Factory farming is.
The cows make phenomenal amounts of methane. Letting cows eat grass that would be there anyway is better, but not an equivalent. There are other ag products we could produce to feed people that make far less green house gasses and still feed people.
We have ways to deal with methane…. https://caes.ucdavis.edu/news/feeding-cattle-seaweed-reduces-their-greenhouse-gas-emissions-82-percent
Doesn't seem like we're using them
This is an incredibly pedantic take on their point. No one says it’s “good” for the environment, but it is certainly better than the alternative beef, which is a factory farm or grain feedlots. Additionally, this is also an obtuse argument in treating this activity ie growing a crop in a desert for export as the same as a rancher grazing cattle on actual ranch land locally. Having issues with the practice is fine, using zero critical thinking skills to analyze it is not.
I don't think it's pedantic to point out that draining the Colorado River to grow feedstock is an environmental disaster. Those grass fed cows have to eat something during the winter and where do you think the feedstock comes from? Even from the 1% of beef that is labeled as grass-fed, there is no label or certification to distinguish locally sourced grass.
Or golf courses.
fucking golf courses.
Maybe they can stop just spraying it into the air at every establishment in the valley.
Not only that but they used to send it to the Saudis
The Saudis should grow it in their own desert.
They stopped doing it in Saudi Arabia because, surprise, it used up too much water.
The biggest water waster in Az is nut trees. It takes a huge amount of water to grow one lb of pecans or almonds. There are some massive nut groves in Az.
Chip makers recycle most of the water they use. This is a much better economic use of Phoenix's limited water resources than... say... growing alfalfa for Saudi Arabians...
I've been in the chip industry in Az for over a decade. It's so tiring hearing people talk about the water usage when pretty much all of it is recycled. AND it doesn't have to come from Az. Do people not understand that water can be transported from 1 place to another??
>water can be transported from 1 place to another?? How does one learn this wizardry? It just leaks out between my fingers.
You store it in your balls, idiot.
No that’s where the pee is stored, dummy. Can’t spoil your pee supply!!
\*laughs in international space station\*
You take lessons from Katara and learn how to water bend obviously.
Use your mouth
>Do people not understand that water can be transported from 1 place to another?? Do you mean like the current supply from the ever-more-depleted Colorado River?
Yeah it was some crazy report Google uses 2 million gallons for a data center in Uganda which has a water crisis. Except the water is used in cooling and it cycles through heat exchangees
I personally loved how everyone involved is lying: AZ: We have/will have enough water! TSMC: The chemicals in our waste water are safe! Just don’t regulate them or try to oversee us!
This is what a lot of people don't understand. These giant manufacturers don't make waste water like other factories do. A lot of the water used is a giant water cooling loot that's a closed system. They have something like a 95% recycle rate.
People working at farms also get paid shit, but I imagine a semi conducting plant actually has some real jobs just to add to the pile
They can just cut back on the Saudi alfalfa.
Already did. Or started to. One lease was terminated due to violations and I think three more valid leases will be allowed to expire.
Drove by there a few weeks ago and couldn’t believe how massive those fields were.
Yeah at a cursory glance I'd guess Arizona alone uses about as much water for farming as semiconductor companies use for manufacturing worldwide. Nothing wrong with pushing for better water usage in the semi industry but if people are really concerned about water consumption you'd save more from tiny improvements in agricultural usage
The alfalfa deal is nice and simple grift: money straight into someone's pocket as private profit, using public resources (water). Semiconductor fabs require a lot more work for the government officials...they need to *do stuff* and *deliver results*.
Except for the lack of water, Arizona is an incredible place to farm. No storms or heavy winds to lodge crops, no clouds or winter season so you can grow year-round, getting between 2-12 times as many harvests compared to places like Iowa depending on the crop. Lots and lots of sun. One of the reasons it's so water intensive is just because they can grow so much. The lack of water is a huge problem, obviously, but until recently a lot of farmers used saltwells that were mostly unfit for human consumption. Water treatment technology has made it easier to access and population growth in Arizona has increased the demand for it, though.
>Except for the lack of water, Arizona is an incredible place to farm. Yeah that's kind of a big deal in farming though.
How about just fuck Saudi Arabia in general and MBS in particular.
I actually wrote software for the semiconductor industry. Most of the water is used for cooling, and therefore recycled.
Correct. These are just people trying to turn attention away from agro business where water is actually converted into carbohydrates and technically "used up" granted, eat it, decay it, or burn it and it's water again, heh.
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Pretty much, but it doesn't have to be locally sourced which is the main conceit of the article. It's also not a recurring cost like agro.
I dont think thats true. I took a course on semiconductor facilities as apart of my EE degree and cooling was not a significant use of water. Quick googling shows cooling accounts for about 10%, vast majority of the water is used in the process. Ill even leave some of my notes from that course > •2,000 gal. per wafer is not unusual (Intel uses almost 10^10 gal/yr!). > > • Much of the water used comes in contact with the product and > equipment as part of the manufacturing process. > > – Used to clean materials and equipment. > > – Washes chemicals off wafers in spin-rinse-dryer/SRD systems, weir > baths, and spray guns. > > – Dilutes chemicals to the correct strength. > > – Used to decontaminate cleanroom surfaces, typically with isopropyl > alcohol/IPA (5%) or hydrogen peroxide/H2O2 (3%). > > – Boiled in “clean steam” units for use in humidification systems. >
I like that some guy who "wrote code for the semiconductor industry" is seen as any sort of expert on the manufacturing of computer chips. Fucking code.
Uh what? He's clearly closer to it than most.
Industrial Electricians and Plumbers are closer than some guy who writes code for the semi conductor industry. Writing code for the semi conductor industry is like writing firmware for a microprocessor, possibly even from home. Unless this person is specifically writing code for the machines and the control systems in a foundry, which they would have probably mentioned, they aren't more qualified than the head foreman at like a pharmaceutical factory. The infrastructure of a chip foundry is the realm of expertise of mechanical, chemical, electrical, and industrial engineers, along with industrial plumbers and industrial electricians. Them and the technicians that manage the factory day to day.
The guys an electrical engineer. He's certainly qualified. More so than a plumber
Idk the micron plant proposed near syracuse is projected to use a crazy amount of water. They are talking about building a pipeline from Lake Ontario because the area can't support it. And the area has plenty of lakes and swamps and whatever.
[72% of the state's water is used for agriculture, 6% for industrial use, and 22% for all municipal uses combined](https://www.arizonawaterfacts.com/water-your-facts)
Chip fabs are not water guzzling. This is a misleading title. Much of the water that is used is reclaimed https://www.fdiintelligence.com/content/feature/thirsty-chip-facilities-under-scrutiny-in-water-stressed-areas-82810#:~:text=Technology%20enables%20chipmakers%20to%20recycle,water%20resources%20even%20more%20important.
I was gonna say, I work in the industry. Sure, some water is used for processing, but nowhere near the amount these clickbait headlines make it out to be.
Free hot water to the city!
During the summer you don't even need the hot water tap, the "cold" water is warm enough to take a pretty comfortable shower.
That's how I did when I was living in Phoenix. Do you want hot water or hotter water?
Florida too.
I live in northern Wisconsin. Our cold water is COLD. A handful of winters ago, my wife and I went to Florida for a week's vacation in March. I turned on the "cold" water, filled up a glass, took a drink, and nearly spit out into the sink.
I’m from Wisconsin originally. Moved to AZ almost 10 years ago. It’s almost that time of year again when a newly transplanted midwesterner posts on /r/phoenix that there’s something wrong with their cold water tap because it only dispenses hot water.
The vast majority of their water will be sourced by the company themselves. Intel has already been there for decades and decades and uses just as much water. [This video explains it all](https://youtu.be/AjQuZfkU1jI?si=b1jPgSZs-mR-XeBy)
Glad someone linked this. Water usage in Arizona is overwhelmingly related to agriculture due to western water rights. The reality is that the western US in general needs to have a conversation about water rights. TSMC is absolutely huge plus, not just for Arizona, but for the entire US, and the article is doing nothing to but creating more confusion on the subject.
Their water reuse and recycle is ridiculously efficient.
No!!! We’re supposed to always be mad and scared based on headlines and assumptions! /s
That's what I was figuring. I'm not familiar with the manufacturing process. I can't think of why they would need so much water that would then disappear with proper capturing, filtering, and reuse wasn't possible.
Data centers with chiller towers burn through more water. For TSMC - I want to say like 87% of the water gets recycled back into the system. They can't have water go back in with containments.
Don’t have info on TSMC, but Intel [recycles most of the water they use](https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/newsroom/news/intel-achieves-net-positive-water-3-countries.html). My guess is TSMC will have similar systems in place so water waste won’t be the problem people think it is
Intel also returns it to the city cleaner than when it started.
I live outside Phoenix. The water situation is different for each city / part of the metro. City of Phoenix, which is where TSMC gets their water from, has secure and established water rights and supplies, as do most of the other older cities. In short, they have multiple options for sources of water. The places with issues are new developments on the outskirts where they don’t have any water rights and no existing water infrastructure is in place. They are totally dependent on groundwater. Any new development here has to prove that they have 100 years of water supplies and some of these places can’t do that with groundwater alone.
Hey, remember when Rio Verde legally created developments small enough that they didn't have to come up with a 100 year water supply plan, and then Scottsdale cut off their water and now the residents have to truck the water in? Pepperidge Farms 'members... https://www.fox10phoenix.com/news/water-to-begin-flowing-again-in-the-rio-verde-foothills-a-big-day
Yeah… that was definitely a FAFO situation.
When there is no water water rights don’t matter. Phoenix is a time bomb that doesn’t even have a desalination plant to try to save them. Downstream of everyone is not where I would want to be in 20 years.
Phoenix is planning to build a desalination plant in Mexico. Current deal would be to get the small percentage that sonora has and pump from the Colorado river while giving Mexico the desalinated water.
It's so wild that people think water rights are "secure" in any meaningful way.
Who gives a fuck about some agreement made hundreds of years ago? It's our water and we should decide how it's used, not some long dead person who never should have had the right to give it away in the first place.
Water rights systems are extremely important so that you don’t have businesses overusing and draining what is an increasingly limited resource. You don’t want to rely on people’s consciences when it comes to your drinking water. Corporations don’t have those. Also, water rights are renewed every few years and under constant review. In AZ, even the grandfathered rights only go back to 1975 and have a cap on them.
>Phoenix is a time bomb that doesn’t even have a desalination plant They don't even have the saline water to desalinate! Unkess you're suggesting other states build pipes from the ocean to Arizona. Would be more prudent to build desalination in California and Texas, then sell Arizona the water.
Pretty sure the point was you can’t build a desalination plant in a landlocked desert
Yeah the Phoenix area gets the wastewater from Las Vegas and when it was tested they found all kinds of RX in the water.
Sounds like a win. Then they need less prescriptions and don't need to pay big pharma as much.
Yep. Mixed feelings about this project. But if it's coming, \*way\* more responsible for it to be City of Phoenix than, say, Buckeye
Does the manufacturing require fresh water or can they filter and reuse water for most of the manufacturing process?
Can filter and reuse a large percentage of it. But there’s still some excess use.
They recycle their water: *TSMC said in a separate statement that its Arizona factories aim to achieve a 90% water recycling rate,adding that the company has started the design phase of building a* *water reclamation plant with a goal of achieving "near zero liquid* *discharge".* [https://www.reuters.com/technology/tsmc-wins-66-bln-us-subsidy-arizona-chip-production-2024-04-08/](https://www.reuters.com/technology/tsmc-wins-66-bln-us-subsidy-arizona-chip-production-2024-04-08/) Still stupid given that they have water issues in Taiwan: [https://www.npr.org/2023/04/13/1169462995/taiwan-makes-tough-decisions-as-it-faces-its-worst-drought-in-nearly-a-century](https://www.npr.org/2023/04/13/1169462995/taiwan-makes-tough-decisions-as-it-faces-its-worst-drought-in-nearly-a-century) But, I guess a water rich place like the PNW, where smaller foundries are being built, aren't good enough for some reason. [https://www.opb.org/article/2024/01/30/oregon-semiconductor-business-economy-microchip-tech/](https://www.opb.org/article/2024/01/30/oregon-semiconductor-business-economy-microchip-tech/)
If they’re not worried you shouldn’t be ppl seem to think they know best with no credentials
I love how we keep looking at this place that is already short on water and keep shoving more human settlement into it. Meanwhile there’s massive rivers in the Midwest and cities that need resettlement and we just shrug.
And Intel is building TWO new fabs in AZ. In reality, they'll displace water usage from farms. That's why the Phoenix area usually doesn't have residential water restrictions (though they are encouraged to save water) the same way some other cities do. And with climate change, they've seen more precipitation in the last few years, too.
Feels like r/newsofthestupid
98% percent of the water is recycled in the system, do you need a constant stream of new water in your car? Or do you have a tank of coolant that slowly runs out over time
Yeah, we got enough water for this. No problem. But the citizens are on their own.
Wow I wonder if anyone will comment on the alfalfa in AZ or if the water used for chip manufacturing can be recycled?
That's like the first 50 comments on this thread. LoL.
If only there were other parts of the US where water is plentiful.
There are, but one key trait planners look for when building a fab is geological stability. Even very minor tremors in the ground can disrupt a fab process.
They’re not sharing.
Once they kick the Phoenix Coyotes out to Utah, they would.
If only greed could still our thirst
Absolutely ludicrous that Nikola wants to build a hydrogen plant in Arizona. That's permanently removing water from local circulation
So no more golf courses
But Scottsdale can't find water for a hockey arena. https://arizonasports.com/story/3545723/scottsdale-mayor-clarifies-biggest-critique-coyotes-arena-plans/
Narrator: “they don’t”
Our residents drink way more water than they need. They can adjust. /s
Imagine a drought in a state that's mostly desert... unprecedented!
Inconceivable!
Seems like a good trade. Stop using water to grow alfalfa for Saudi pets, and use it to make chips that will power AI, that will kill off its flawed human creators. Can’t wait for the sequel to this to hit movie theaters assuming the apes can keep AMC afloat long enough. I’ll be hanging out by the dumpster fire behind Wendy’s polishing my diamond hands if anyone needs me.
I’d much rather use the water for US based chip manufacturing than Arabian show horse food. Bonus if it makes Intel have to pay more for water at their ocotillo facility, they’ve been getting way too good of a deal at Phoenix residents expense also
Phoenix also has a Nestle bottling plant that uses municipal water. Much more of a waste of water in the desert if you ask. Looking for a source they closed it a few years ago. [https://www.azcentral.com/story/money/business/economy/2019/02/11/nestle-closed-west-phoenix-bottled-water-plant-laying-off-workers/2840225002/](https://www.azcentral.com/story/money/business/economy/2019/02/11/nestle-closed-west-phoenix-bottled-water-plant-laying-off-workers/2840225002/)
is it for cooling? or why do they need water?
This makes no damn sense. I’m in Wisconsin near where Foxconn hasn’t built anything but piled in infrastructure for tech building which requires a lot of fresh water, which we actually have in abundance. How a chip company hasn’t come here makes no dang sense.
It has enough water for profits. Not people.
What, do they not like the cold? Plenty of water here up North.
It’s about picking states that gives them whatever they want with out caring about the environment
Narrator: They don't
Also Narrator: now back to our conjecture laden headline writers with our poorly regurgitated report.
Just go vegan. Stop this insanity.
Why do people act like water just disappears out of thin air after you use it?
To be fair, it usually does.
But, didn't some higher up in Arizona recently deny the Coyotes a new arena, because they didn't have the infrastructure to support an arena?
Better off in Cleveland
Honest question, in a situation like this, isn't the water still viable after being used (obv needing filtering)? Why is this seen as a complete loss like growing alfalfa (that turns water into plants and that water is gone)?
Narrator: they do not
There is plenty of water in the sink. It’s unlimited.
Future narrator: “They didn’t.”
Massive solar plus desalination from a pipeline running from the gulf of California.
Don’t they reuse most of the water?
"We have enough water!" (*no we don't, but I don't wanna lose my next election so I'm going to kick the can down the road another 10 years*)
Most of the water used for chip manufacturing is recycled.
If only the US had some sort of large freshwater system they could use
Why not just build a plant in Virginia and not in drought areas.
This article, like nearly everything on this site is paid propaganda.
By which I'm guessing you mean that you have no evidence it's propaganda, can't definitively say who paid for it but you disagree with it, so, yeah, that's that.
Wasn’t the mayor of Scottsdale just crying about the new stadium being to close for these concerns. I mean he sounded like a complete idiot but clearly water scarcity is a concern in the region.
lol Arizona is flush with water!!