Why it issues: The pandemic demonstrated how provide chain disruptions might affect know-how worldwide. Since then, pure disasters and different occasions that might have an effect on essential areas have drawn elevated consideration. Whereas the state of affairs within the southeastern United States following Hurricane Helene continues to develop, observers have confirmed that an vital element of semiconductor manufacturing lies in one of many worst affected areas.
Images of the destruction following Hurricane Helene revealed important injury and potential lack of life in Spruce Pine, North Carolina. The small mining city hosts the world’s solely identified supply of pure quartz, a mandatory element for manufacturing laptop chips.
Hurricane Helene unleashed catastrophic rain, wind, and flooding throughout a number of southeastern states. As of Monday, the loss of life toll has exceeded 130, and round 600 individuals stay unaccounted for. Mountainous areas of western North Carolina noticed notably extreme injury, with over 40 confirmed lifeless amid the state’s worst flooding in a century.
Photos and video courtesy of Richard Crouse and the Let’s discuss Spruce Pine FB group. The agricultural space of the mountains has been completely decimated by Hurricane Helene. Persons are stranded. It is a dire state of affairs. @WRAL @ABC11_WTVD @WLOS_13 pic.twitter.com/FeqG2jbK89
– kelciecrouse (@kelciecrousee) September 28, 2024
In lots of areas, together with Spruce Pine, flooding has destroyed buildings, roads, and bridges, isolating cities and stranding residents. Though the security of these affected stays the first concern, questions have begun swirling concerning the standing of two mines in Spruce Pine.
The services, owned by Sibelco, extract and course of quartz, which is required to fabricate the crucibles that firms like TSMC use to refine silicon wafers. Computer systems, tablets, smartphones, and different electronics worldwide include quartz originating in Spruce Pine. Photo voltaic panels additionally depend upon the fabric.
A home floating down the river in Spruce Pine, NC. My household and I are protected. However main injury to my house and the entire neighborhood. pic.twitter.com/yeCkPnDlKX
– American Muckrakers (@AmericanMuck) September 30, 2024
Various sources exist, however none exhibit the purity of the quartz from Spruce Pine, which resulted from the collision of North America and Africa a whole bunch of hundreds of thousands of years in the past. Ed Conway from Sky Information claimed that operational stoppages at Spruce Pine would considerably disrupt international semiconductor provide chains for a couple of years as producers develop different strategies of processing quartz.
The standing of the mines stays unclear, as authorities are nonetheless assessing the state of affairs. Nonetheless, images and eyewitness descriptions point out extreme flooding within the city. Roads into the city are slender, and not less than a few of them have been flooded and washed away, complicating efforts to ship support and certain disrupting quartz exports.
Hurricane Helene is not the primary pure catastrophe of 2024 to generate concern round know-how provide chains. In April, Taiwan suffered a 7.4 magnitude earthquake, inflicting a short pause in TSMC’s operations. Such incidents might probably derail the fragile technique of fabricating semiconductors.
