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A comment on House Bill Funds CHIPS Act, Stresses R&D. Parent comment

Re:House Bill Funds CHIPS Act, Stresses R&D by karmicthreat on Monday May 30, 2022 @02:41PM (#31562166)
It's not less chemical intensive at all. Some aqueous processes have replaced more toxic ones. But dissolved copper and solvent waste makes up the majority of ever fabs waste stream. TSMC/Intel etc have made pretty big strides in zero landfill hazardous waste. It just gets recycled and used in other processes internally or by other companies.

I don't know what the Chinese fabs do, so I have no idea if pump their waste out into the environment.

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Re:House Bill Funds CHIPS Act, Stresses R&D by Kadin on Monday May 30, 2022 @04:16PM (#31563219)
> dissolved copper

You would think that dissolved copper would have some recovery value, given the price of copper.

I am reminded of the waste from silver halide photographic processing, which at one point was just dumped into rivers (an unfortunate amount went into the Great Lakes); when the price of silver increased, suddenly it became worthwhile to recover the silver rather than let it go down the literal drain.

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