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TheRealWatson | 1 year ago

Also, doesn't chip manufacturing require a lot of water? Water is not the first thing that comes to mind when I hear Arizona. I think I'm about to learn a lot with this.

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caseyohara|1 year ago

Yes, ~10 million gallons per day (equivalent to 33,000 households). But the plant's water recycling and re-use is very efficient, so it's mostly a one-time hit up front.

BurningFrog|1 year ago

From what I read the overriding factor was geological stability. Apparently these factories are very sensitive to vibrations. I guess when you do precision work at nanometer scale these things matter.

Arizona isn't water rich, but it manages to keep the 4 million people around Phoenix hydrated, so there is water.

kristofferR|1 year ago

> From what I read the overriding factor was geological stability.

Guess they are tired of dealing with all of Taiwan's earthquakes.

buzzert|1 year ago

Arizona actually has a lot of water because of several successful and ambitious irrigation projects in the last century.

So much so, that it has become an agricultural region for growing notoriously water intensive crops like alfalfa and pistachios.

rurp|1 year ago

It's notoriously unsustainable. Those water intensive crops would be wildly infeasible if the farmers had to pay anything close to a market price for the obscene amounts of limited water they consume.