Thursday, February 25th 2021
Report: TSMC and UMC are Trucking in Water Amid Shortages
Manufacturing silicon is no easy task. You need to have all the right supplies available all the time. One of the most used ingredients in silicon manufacturing is water. Almost every process needs it and it needs to be constantly available to the manufacturer. According to the report coming from Reuters, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) and United Microelectronics Corporation (UMC) are experiencing water shortages. The Taiwan island is in trouble, as the typhoon season has been rather mild and water supplies are at the historic lows. Water restrictions are in place all across the island and the reservoirs in the center and southern regions are at only 20% capacity.
The lack of water is a big problem for TSMC and UMC, as both companies rely on the constant income of it. With water restrictions in place, TSMC has to keep its facilities running and needs to solve the problem. That is why Taiwan's biggest silicon manufacturer is now making small orders of waters, delivered by a truckload. TSMC expects to compensate for the lack of water coming from its regular sources with truckloads of it. While we do not know the numbers of it, we can expect the water use to be very high if we take into account the number of wafers TSMC produces at its facilities.
Source:
Reuters
The lack of water is a big problem for TSMC and UMC, as both companies rely on the constant income of it. With water restrictions in place, TSMC has to keep its facilities running and needs to solve the problem. That is why Taiwan's biggest silicon manufacturer is now making small orders of waters, delivered by a truckload. TSMC expects to compensate for the lack of water coming from its regular sources with truckloads of it. While we do not know the numbers of it, we can expect the water use to be very high if we take into account the number of wafers TSMC produces at its facilities.
37 Comments on Report: TSMC and UMC are Trucking in Water Amid Shortages
Taiwan is an island, not a particularly big one, nor tiny. That said, Taiwan relies entirely on man made reservoirs for the water supply, as there are very few natural lakes due to the geography of Taiwan.
The highest mountain in Taiwan is nearly 4,000m high, with the central and eastern parts of Taiwan mainly being highly elevated mountain terrain. This has the effect that the rainfall is quickly washed out into the ocean.
As such, the government has built a range of reservoirs over the years to try and prevent the rainwater from rushing out into the ocean straight away.
Unfortunately some of these reservoirs have been filling up with silt and other sediment due to illegal construction, as well as dumping of unwanted materials and obviously some natural deposits. This has lead to the actual volume of several reservoirs to be lowered quite significantly.
On top of this, there were almost no typhoons hitting Taiwan last year, which is a big source of freshwater. This past winter and spring has also been unusually dry.
As such, there has been a water shortage in the central and southern parts of Taiwan since late last year.
It doesn't help that people are clueless when it come to water conservation here (dumb example, our ex neighbours had a sprinkler system in their 15-ish square meter garden, that was running on a timer, so even if it was pissing down, it would kick in) and that the water pipes are old and leaky, partially thanks to constant quakes hitting the island.
There's no shortage of water in the northern part of the island, as yet though, but there are also very few chip fabs up here.
It should be noted that water shortages happen every few years in Taiwan, so this is nothing really new. The government is also looking at building more reservoirs.
Note that Taiwan does have reverse osmosis facilities for purifying seawater, but as pointed out, these are not free to operate.
Anyone interested in seeing the current water levels in the various reservoirs can have a look here.
eng.wra.gov.tw/
An additional note is that at least TSMC claim that they recycle most of their water they use for chip production, although I guess some of it is being lost somewhere, so they have to add some more into the system at some point.
They could easily have the correct facilities to clean/purify the water in a way that it is usable afterwards (maybe not for drinking) but as it is right now they just flush what they don't need into the environment, let it take care of itself.
If they would have a similar recycling/upcycling solution as European companies are forced to have it would be different. And not even more expensive (as you save a lot by being able to reuse water - sustainability is actually not a
big cost factor, used wisely it can save a lot of money - only the implementation costs a bit) as it is right now. And they wouldn't get into situations as right now, where they have issues as the water they flush out of the system is so toxic/ruined that they can't even re-use it for semiconductor production again......
which says a lot about how this water is leaving the factory and what this means for the environment (plants / animals AND humans living "down river" from the plants)
Please don't confuse Taiwan with China.
There are quite strict environmental laws here and you can't just dump whatever you want in nature. It might've been like that here 20+ years ago, but not these days.
You really have no idea what you're talking about. If TSMC did what you're claiming, they're would be massive protests outside of their fabs and the local environmental agency would be shutting them down. Please educate yourself before making ridiculously stupid comments.
csr.tsmc.com/csr/en/focus/greenManufacturing/waterResourceManagement.html
csr.tsmc.com/csr/en/focus/greenManufacturing/wasteManagement.html
csr.tsmc.com/csr/en/focus/greenManufacturing/airPollutionControl.html
They even cut down on kitchen waste water ffs.
Also:
At least they are trying, but to me it's unclear just how much of this recycled water is actually going back into their production. Also Industrial waste water does not sound like water fit for their production, or does "Industrial Water" mean water fit for their production purposes?
Nor read the full page of information?
And yes, as a massively profitable multi-billion-dollar business they would be a prime candidate for using desalination plants, but that depends on said plants actually existing in sufficient amounts (and not being needed for fundamental necessities like drinking water). And of course there's the question of how they are powered. The world is definitely going to need more desalination in the coming decades, but we also need clean energy to power those plants, otherwise we're just going to keep making things worse.
They're a very progressive company when it comes to all of this and it's not just feel good stuff.
csr.tsmc.com/csr/en/focus/greenManufacturing/climateChangeAndEnergy.html
This is most likely affecting TSMCs fabs in Taichung and Tainan worse than the ones in Hsinchu, since Taichung and Tainan are further south than Hsinchu, but you knew that, right?
Normally Taiwan gets most of it's rain courtesy of typhoons, but there was only one that really brought any rain last year. The next rain season doesn't normally start until the latter half of April, which is when what they call the plum rain seasons starts.
So far, none of this has affected the manufacturing and it's unlikely it ever will. I would expect the Taiwanese government to cut off water to a lot of other companies before they do it to the chip makers.
I'm curious what the agenda of some of you are here. Yes, there's a bit of a dry spell here, so TSMC and UMC had to source water from other parts of the island. Exactly how does this affect your lives?You going to be the skipper?
Snow levels here
svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/2983
;)