A Sibelco spokesperson said: “As of September 26, we have temporarily suspended operations at the Spruce Pine facilities in response to these challenges.
“We are working closely with our local team to safely resume operations as soon as possible and are actively coordinating with local authorities and other partners to manage the situation. Our top priority remains the health, safety and well-being of our employees, as well as ensuring the safety of the Spruce Pine facility.”
Quartz Corp did not respond to an immediate request for comment from WIRED.
Viral posts on social media claim that global semiconductor production could come to a halt as a result of the floods. This doomsday scenario is unlikely, but experts are deeply concerned about the impact the flood could have on the technology industry and the economic fallout from the prolonged strain on the supply chain caused by the site closure.
“The most important thing won't just be the floods, as bad as they are,” said Chris Hackney, a human geography researcher at the University of Newcastle in Britain. “The damage to infrastructure – roads, transport, energy and mining equipment – will halt production for a while. There is a risk of landslides.”
Hackney adds that “any disruption to supply chains will have an impact on the prices and production of high-end electronics and technology.”
Tom Bide, a senior scientist at the British Geological Survey, believes it is possible the disaster will prove minimally disruptive due to stockpiling and other types of emergency work.
“The impact on the technology industry will depend greatly on how long it takes for operations to resume,” he says. “It's likely that most manufacturers will have some level of inventory, so there will be some slack in the system. If the problems are temporary, this may have no discernible effect.”
Bide estimates it will take about a month before any serious effects are felt.
However, other researchers warned that the disaster is likely to have serious costs. Penn says he “would be surprised if there wasn't some withdrawal felt, if not more.”
“Any further impact on the global technology sector will depend on the extent of the damage. There is little publicly available data on HPQ reserves worldwide. The physical products that Spruce Pine produces don't stay there. They are shipped to other countries – often Norway – for the processing and refining phase before being distributed around the world.”
Penn, who co-authored a forthcoming paper on Spruce Pine with independent researcher Fran Baker Kurdi, tells WIRED that the episode is likely to lead to interacting climate impacts.
“I would imagine that the industry would turn to using lower purity material if there were indeed a ripple shortage,” he says. “This is a shame, as the industrial processes required to purify silicon are energy-intensive and environmentally harmful. In other words, this tragic encounter with climate instability in North Carolina could have a domino effect that worsens climate instability elsewhere. It's a vicious circle.”
Penn also cites a number of serious chemical pollution cases that Quartz Corp has been at the center of in recent decades.
Between 1981 and 2018, he notes, Quartz Corp faced six violation cases for contamination offenses, including spills of toxic chemicals. In 2018, the company leaked hundreds of gallons of hydrofluoric acid into a nearby river basin. The discharge caused fish kills and was one of several water rule violations committed by Quartz Corp over the past decade, some of which have resulted in fines.
“One lesson from this is that an 'AI' future is not inevitable,” Penn adds. “Even if Spruce Pine remains intact, the damage done to local communities is a stark reminder of the need to make infrastructure commitments that align with ecologies rather than against them.
“I fear that AI investments and climate instability are on a collision course. This could be the first domino to fall.”
