“In response to these challenges, as of September 26th, we have temporarily suspended operations at our Spruce Pine facility,” a Sybelco spokesperson said.
“We are working closely with our local teams to ensure we can resume operations as quickly and safely as possible, and we are actively working with local authorities and other partners to manage the situation. Our top priority is As well as ensuring the safety of our Spruce Pine facilities, we remain committed to the health, safety and well-being of our employees.”
Quartz Corp. did not immediately respond to WIRED’s request for comment.
Social media posts claim that flooding could halt global semiconductor production. Although this doomsday scenario is unlikely, experts are seriously concerned about the potential impact of flooding on the technology industry and the economic impact of prolonged supply chain pressures caused by site closures. There is.
“It’s not just how bad the floods are that matters,” said Chris Hackney, a human geographer at the University of Newcastle in the UK. “Due to damage to infrastructure such as roads, transportation, electricity and mining equipment, production will be halted for some time. There is also the possibility of landslides.”
“Any disruption to the supply chain will impact prices and production of high-end electronics and high-tech products,” Hackney added.
Tom Bid, a senior scientist at the British Geological Survey, believes stockpiling and other emergency response operations could keep the disaster from causing minimal disruption.
“The impact on the technology industry will largely depend on how long it takes for businesses to restart,” he says. “Most manufacturers probably have some inventory, so there will be some ‘headroom’ in the system. If the problem is temporary, there may be no visible effects. ”
BID estimates that it will take about a month before any serious effects are felt.
However, other researchers warn that serious costs are likely to be incurred as a result of the disaster. “I’d be surprised if it didn’t make you flinch, or worse,” Penn said.
“The ripple effect on the global technology industry will depend on the scale of the damage. There is very little publicly available data on HPQ reserves worldwide. They are shipped to other countries (often Norway) for processing and refining stages before being distributed around the world.
Penn, who co-authored an upcoming paper on spruce pine with independent researcher Fran Baker-Kurdy, told WIRED that the event is likely to cause interacting climate effects. told.
“If there is indeed a significant shortage, I think the industry will look to use less pure materials,” he says. “This is unfortunate because the industrial processes required to refine silicon are energy-intensive and have negative environmental impacts.In other words, this tragic encounter with climate instability in North Carolina This could have ripple effects that exacerbate climate instability in other regions.”
Mr. Penn also cited a number of serious chemical contamination incidents that Quartz has been involved in in recent decades.
He said that between 1981 and 2018, Quartz faced six violations for pollution crimes, including leaks of toxic chemicals. In 2018, the company leaked hundreds of gallons of hydrofluoric acid into a nearby river basin. The discharge caused fish deaths and was one of numerous water code violations Quartz has committed over the past decade, some of which have resulted in fines.
“One of the lessons from this is that an ‘AI’ future is inevitable,” Penn added. “Even if the spruce pine remains intact, the damage done to local communities is a stark reminder of the need for infrastructure development to work with ecosystems, rather than against them.
“I’m concerned that AI investments and climate instability are colliding. This could be the first domino to fall.”
