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.