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Comment by insane_dreamer

4 days ago

Don't chip fabs require a great deal of water? Wondering why a place like Arizona, with serious water issues, was selected.

6 comments

insane_dreamer

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vondur  4 days ago

According to TSMC: "To achieve our goal of 90% water reclamation, We will build an advanced water treatment facility (Industrial Water Reclamation Plant) at our Phoenix operation with a design goal of achieving “Near Zero Liquid Discharge”. This means the fabs will be capable of using nearly every drop of water back into the facility."

  • tw04  4 days ago

    While they reclaim 90% of the water, given the immense amount of water they use, it's still an exorbitant amount.

    With all 6 fabs online, and water reclamation in place, it's expected to be the equivalent of 160,000 homes:

    https://www.phonearena.com/news/tsmc-access-to-water-us-fabs...

    Now you can and absolutely should (IMO) make the argument that the fabs are far more important than the agricultural use in the area which is far more wasteful. But someone has to step up and do that and none of the politicians in the area seem to have been willing to make a commonsense decision and say: we're done growing crops in the desert when we've got endless better options.