Intel has built fabs in Arizona for a long time, this isn’t a new thing. They do this because of seismic stability and a lack of severe weather. Water isn’t a huge concern because they can internally recycle most of it.

I’d argue there are plenty of other places in the US that fit that bill, but Intel having built fabs in Arizona for a long time is an important point on its own. Because of local history that’s where expertise for running a fab exists, so they’ll have a better supply of workers if they keep building fabs in Arizona than trying it out somewhere new.

Not challenging you, but I'd love to see some hard numbers on this. Like what is the total volume of water, recycle rate and. discharge rate and intake rate over a year.

Is it low enough to truck the water in?

Here is what I can find off hand:

https://www.theverge.com/22628925/water-semiconductor-shorta...

> 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. It has its own water treatment plant at its Ocotillo campus in Chandler that’s similar to a municipal plant. There’s also a “brine reduction facility,” a public-private partnership with the city of Chandler, that brings 2.5 million gallons of Intel’s wastewater a day back to drinking standard. Intel uses some of the treated water again, and the rest is sent to replenish groundwater sources or be used by surrounding communities.

I'm not sure what 95% is based on, and it seems like they can't reuse it all, but other clients can (e.g. it isn't suitable for cleaning machines, but is ok to drink).

Thanks, I appreciate it.

And power from palos verde nuclear power plant

vs. somewhere like Ohio? It is hard to believe moderate snowfall would override environmental externalities such as cooling costs and water use.

A thunderstorm will wreak havoc on a fab. A single, power blip lasting less a second can ruin whatever chips were being processed. At a minimum there will need to be additional testing done to ensure there is no hidden damage.

The thunderstorms that central AZ gets are extremely isolated and basically only happen for about 6 weeks a year.

Don't they have any backup power to cover short blips ? Sure their power draw is massive, but given the potential loses one would exect sufficiently beefy and expensive backups in place so that a burned out generator in a power plant or tree on a line does not cost you billions.

You would basically need to isolate yourself from the grid to be immune to any blips...it takes a while for a backup to come on line and even things out.

Believe it or not, the Midwest is not seismically stable.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Madrid_Seismic_Zone

Also, tornados.

Salt is BAD.

Sodium contamination messes up the threshold voltages of transistors.

And the Northeast uses salt everywhere for snow and ice control and removal.

A thousand years from now your last sentence will be a proverb if unknown origin.

Israel, UAE, and the Saudis have figured it out, you really think the US can't?

Arizona is close to the ocean and has plenty of sunlight. Solar power + desalination will make this a non-issue in the next 40 years.

UAE and the Saudis are desperately diversifying their economies and the royal families of those countries are desperately extracting wealth from those nations because they know their current approaches are fundamentally economically unviable without very high margin oil - and the market value, margins, and quantity available of that oil long term is highly suspect.

Israel is also investing heavily in knowledge work and other high margin industries, as well as investing outside the country, in an attempt to get high margin, high value income to offset the dangerous economic risks they have, in part due to limited and expensive water - and which for very strong and fundamental religious reasons still gives a very, very strong incentive for them to stay and stay functional. Israel in particular has a history of wars and armed conflict around the Jordan River (November 1964 to May 1967 and others).

There is a saying in the West - Whiskey is for drinkin', water is for fightin' - and it is very apparent how true it is if you watch how things develop over time. Water is life in the desert.

That’s not what I’m saying. I am saying that tax incentives will always create artificial conditions such that it’ll be cheaper to bring the mountain to Muhammad than Muhammad to the mountain (or ship a pair of sneakers half way a cross the world than to make them locally, or to build a water using plant in the desert than by the ocean).

Globally centralized allocation of resources would solve this, but that’s not feasible for a whole number of reasons, so instead it’s every desert for themselves.

There are many business friendly regions in the US with plenty of water. The mid-West for example. is pretty business friendly. KY, IN, TN, AR, MO, WV, and others all have plenty of water, and more business friendly laws than AZ

It's more about seismic stability from what I've read. Arizona has much less severe weather than basically anywhere in the US.

> All new manufacturing is in Southern US states because they're the ones that allow new plants to be built.

New manufacturing is built in the South because that's where wages are low, worker protections are weaker, and there is less union activity. Companies will essentially tell you this in their PR about opening new plants.

It's the lack of unions and cheap wages. Southern states are famously lax on workers rights and business regulations.

Arizona is not a Southern state, and while it is a right-to-work state, the minimum wage there is higher than in most of the country.