Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Intel breaks ground on $20B Arizona plants as U.S. chip factory race heats up

reuters.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 326 posts

Re: Intel breaks ground on $20B Arizona plants as U.S. chip factory race heats up

#121

Post by thehappypm »

adventured wrote: post #83
ethanbond wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

… what? The US southwest is entering its first ever Tier 1 water shortage next year, meaning Arizona will have reduced supply equivalent to 1.2MM people’s annual consumption. No reason to believe we don’t go straight from here to Tier 2, onto Tier 3, and so on. Nature doesn’t provide enough water in a desert to be running sprawling metropolises and even more massive farms and graze land - especially water-intensive c…

> Nature doesn’t provide enough water in a desert to be running sprawling metropolises It sure does. Nature created us. We build desalination plants and pipelines. Humans are amazing. There's no reason Arizona can't work with California to fund a bunch of desalination plants along the coast near San Diego (which already has relevant expertise at it). It's something like 120 miles from the ocean to Arizona's border, a…

Nobody would ever pump water into Arizona from the coast. That's basically running hydro plants in reverse.

Re: Intel breaks ground on $20B Arizona plants as U.S. chip factory race heats up

#122

Post by NikolaeVarius »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #111
PragmaticPulp wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Industry is a surprisingly small portion of water consumption in many places. In many states, household water use (including lawns) can handily exceed the water used by industry. Using this water for domestic chip making is arguably a very reasonable use of water. If we’re going to start cutting water usage, let’s start with things like golf courses in the desert instead of critical chip-making infrastructure.

I feel a bit of tension. I'm not a big fan of people using water to grow grass in the desert, but I'm also not a big fan of making tens or hundreds of thousands of people sacrifice so that one large corporation can profit. Yeah, I know that chip manufacturing helps everyone by improving our economic independence, and that's not a small thing, but we're already writing Intel a big check and they obviously benefit from…

Its fucking lawn grass. Its one of the most worthless things in the world and a complete waste of resources. At least chips do something other than sit there wasting water.

Re: Intel breaks ground on $20B Arizona plants as U.S. chip factory race heats up

#123

Post by rrss »

jjoonathan wrote: post #119
rrss wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the same verge article: > Last year, the company pledged that by 2030 it will restore and return more freshwater than it uses. It’s nearing that benchmark in Arizona, where Intel says it cleaned up and returned 95 percent of the freshwater it used in 2020

Yeah. It's unfortunate that alongside this incredibly important detail the article carries a bunch of highly judgemental wording that encourages people to incorrectly interpret "use" not as "cycle through" but as "remove from water supply and banish to a superfund site." The rest of the comment section is guilty of this too. I fully appreciate the need for independent verification, but assuming the worst is not that,…

yeah. If there is something I’m missing, hopefully someone can point out what it is, because I don’t really understand why this matters.

Re: Intel breaks ground on $20B Arizona plants as U.S. chip factory race heats up

#124

Post by throwaway894345 »

NikolaeVarius wrote: post #122
throwaway894345 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel a bit of tension. I'm not a big fan of people using water to grow grass in the desert, but I'm also not a big fan of making tens or hundreds of thousands of people sacrifice so that one large corporation can profit. Yeah, I know that chip manufacturing helps everyone by improving our economic independence, and that's not a small thing, but we're already writing Intel a big check and they obviously benefit from…

Its fucking lawn grass. Its one of the most worthless things in the world and a complete waste of resources. At least chips do something other than sit there wasting water.

I agree. But the idea of asking tens or hundreds of thousands to give up their frivolities so a single corporation can profit strikes a nerve in me, however irrational it may be. I'm not reflexively anti-corporation--corporations are economically necessary--but I guess I'm touchy about the question of whether people exist for corporations or corporations for people.

Re: Intel breaks ground on $20B Arizona plants as U.S. chip factory race heats up

#125

Post by spiderice »

rrss wrote: post #116
buryat wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I decided to check how much water a plant would use a plant used 4 million gallons of water a day (according to https://www.theverge.com/22628925/water-semiconductor-shorta... ) which is about 126000 metric tons a day arizona used 7 million acre-foot of water in 2017 ( https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-environme... ) which is about 19000 acre-feet a day == 23014434 metric ton a day (using http://www.…

Why does this metric matter, when 95% of the water Intel uses is already returned to the water supply? From the same verge article as the 4 million gallons a day figure: > Last year, the company pledged that by 2030 it will restore and return more freshwater than it uses. It’s nearing that benchmark in Arizona, where Intel says it cleaned up and returned 95 percent of the freshwater it used in 2020

How is it possible to return more fresh water than you use? Where does the surplus come from?

Re: Intel breaks ground on $20B Arizona plants as U.S. chip factory race heats up

#126

Post by vmh1928 »

kd913 wrote: post #5

Doesn't chip making a lot of water, most of it in Arizona is fed by Lake Mead? The same reservoir that is at 30% capacity, with acute water shortages and with 4 years of increased precipitation necessary for an adequate refill. We are adding a chip making facility which needs a lot of water here? This sounds like a recipe for disaster whenever there is a period of water stress which appears to be occurring in that re…

Some statistics about Arizona's water sources and where it goes. 72% of the water is used by agriculture. 6% to industry 22% to municipal use

http://www.arizonawaterfacts.com/water-your-facts

But yes, water usage is a big issue in AZ at the moment with Lake Mead and Powell at very low levels which has triggered and will trigger more cuts to the use of Colorado River water via the Central Arizona Project canal.

Arizona has no law even measuring, much less restricting groundwater pumping which is a big problem getting bigger as cuts in Colorado River usage lead to more pumping.

Re: Intel breaks ground on $20B Arizona plants as U.S. chip factory race heats up

#127

Post by josephcsible »

PerkinWarwick wrote: post #71
mcphage wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do we really need to produce more IC's ? In this case, it's not so much about more ICs (although we do need more right now), but it's who's making the ICs . The US is trying to ramp up their internal production capability, rather than depending on Taiwan as heavily.

A lack of Taiwan dependency may well avoid a world war.

I'd rather have another world war than for China to slowly but "peacefully" conquer the world.

Re: Intel breaks ground on $20B Arizona plants as U.S. chip factory race heats up

#128

Post by tzs »

buryat wrote: post #22
kd913 wrote: post #5

Doesn't chip making a lot of water, most of it in Arizona is fed by Lake Mead? The same reservoir that is at 30% capacity, with acute water shortages and with 4 years of increased precipitation necessary for an adequate refill. We are adding a chip making facility which needs a lot of water here? This sounds like a recipe for disaster whenever there is a period of water stress which appears to be occurring in that re…

I decided to check how much water a plant would use a plant used 4 million gallons of water a day (according to https://www.theverge.com/22628925/water-semiconductor-shorta... ) which is about 126000 metric tons a day arizona used 7 million acre-foot of water in 2017 ( https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-environme... ) which is about 19000 acre-feet a day == 23014434 metric ton a day (using http://www.…

4 million gallons X 3.785 kg/gallon X 1 metric ton / 1000 kg = 15140 metric tons, not 126000 metric tons. The calculation for Arizona is correct.

That gives 0.066%, no 0.55%.

Re: Intel breaks ground on $20B Arizona plants as U.S. chip factory race heats up

#129

Post by apocalyptic0n3 »

Buttons840 wrote: post #51
buryat wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I decided to check how much water a plant would use a plant used 4 million gallons of water a day (according to https://www.theverge.com/22628925/water-semiconductor-shorta... ) which is about 126000 metric tons a day arizona used 7 million acre-foot of water in 2017 ( https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/arizona-environme... ) which is about 19000 acre-feet a day == 23014434 metric ton a day (using http://www.…

So one business / structure will use 1/200th of all water? That does sound like a lot.

Not exactly. Fabs use a lot of water to run, but it's mostly self-contained with very little loss. I can't remember the exact number, but the fabs Intel already have in Phoenix only lose around 4-5% of the water. The rest is reclaimed and recirculated. I believe the two breaking ground today will be even more efficient, possibly even net producers once rain water and other sources are taken into account. It's been a few months since I read into it, though, so I may be misremembering

Re: Intel breaks ground on $20B Arizona plants as U.S. chip factory race heats up

#130

Post by jjoonathan »

spiderice wrote: post #125
rrss wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does this metric matter, when 95% of the water Intel uses is already returned to the water supply? From the same verge article as the 4 million gallons a day figure: > Last year, the company pledged that by 2030 it will restore and return more freshwater than it uses. It’s nearing that benchmark in Arizona, where Intel says it cleaned up and returned 95 percent of the freshwater it used in 2020

How is it possible to return more fresh water than you use? Where does the surplus come from?

Because water that isn't fresh can become fresh. We have the technology.

They're already purifying a staggering amount of water, might as well purify a bit more while they're at it.

Post reply on HN